About us
Who you are booking with
A licensed Sabah operator, working in forests our own group looks after.
Borneo Wildlife Holidays is operated by Inno Travel & Tour Services Sdn Bhd, a licensed tour operator based in Kota Kinabalu, holding tourism licence KKKP 1949. We are a member of MATTA, the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents.
We are also a member of the Yayasan Sabah Group — the state foundation whose remit covers a large part of Sabah’s interior forest. Imbak Canyon, Maliau Basin and Danum Valley all sit within land the Group manages. We say that as a matter of relationship rather than privilege: it means the people planning your journey know the ground, the seasons and the permissions, and it means the conservation of these forests is not an abstraction to us.
Everything is arranged individually. We do not run set departures, we do not operate fixed groups, and we do not sell a catalogue. You will deal with one person from the first email to the last night of the journey.
How we work
- Tailor-made, genuinely
- Every itinerary starts blank. Most journeys run between eleven and seventeen days and combine three or four places — typically a river, a lowland forest, somewhere remote, and often the coast at the end.
- Planned and operated by the same company
- We are the ground operator, not an intermediary. The person who writes your itinerary is in Sabah, and so is the team running it.
- Guiding is the product
- Our guides are Sabahans who work these forests all year. On the sort of journeys we arrange, the difference between a good week and a disappointing one is almost always the guide rather than the destination.
- Small numbers, by design
- Several of the places we go have few beds, controlled access, or both. That constrains what we can sell and we would rather build around it than pretend otherwise.
What we will not do
- Promise you an animal
- This is wild forest. Every sighting is patience and luck, and any operator who guarantees one is not being straight with you. We will tell you honestly what is likely, what is possible and what would be remarkable.
- Put you in contact with great apes
- No handling, no feeding and no touching of orangutans or any other great ape, anywhere on any journey we arrange, including at rehabilitation centres. Observation at a proper distance only.
- Oversell the accommodation
- Some of the best forest in Sabah has a research station in it rather than a lodge. Where a room is fan-cooled, or the generator goes off at night, we will say so in writing before you book.
- Borrow someone else’s certification
- We name certificates only where they exist and we say who holds them. The Imbak Canyon Studies Centre, for example, holds GSTC Hotel Criteria certification — reference HAVR220109, awarded December 2022. That certificate belongs to the centre, not to us.
Company and licensing
- Operating company
- Inno Travel & Tour Services Sdn Bhd
- Company registration
- 199798-K
- Tourism licence
- KKKP 1949
- Trade association
- MATTA member MA0757
- Group
- A member of the Yayasan Sabah Group
- Office
- Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
Agents and tour operators will find insurance, capacity and emergency-contact detail on our trade information page.
The people
Photographs of the team in Kota Kinabalu and in the field.
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Talk to us
Tell us roughly when you would like to travel and how long you have. We will come back to you with a suggested route through Sabah and what it costs.
Start an enquiry