The days of basic safari camps in small canvas tents have become rare, so it is not always straightforward to understand what makes a “luxury” safari. For many people, “luxury” is quantified by the quality of the accommodation itself - the interior decor, service, food quality and general ambience of each safari camp or lodge.

Indeed, even when the ‘luxury’ element is more tuned to the quality of the experience or remoteness of location in which the camp or lodge is situated, the accommodations are usually still of a very lovely standard. The question remains, however, what makes a luxury safari luxurious for you as an individual or group?

Time, isolation and uniqueness of experience should all be major focal points when considering a luxury safari as all 3 of those elements of luxury have become synonymous with modern safari travel in Africa. Needless to say that any luxury safari is going to be no small financial undertaking. It can be true that a fairly basic-appearing camp in an extraordinary location that delivers first-class experiences and guides can still reach the USD$850 per person / per night mark and more.

Botswana and South Africa are kings of the luxury safari world where opulent accommodations, food, wine and service are concerned. Botswana, in particular, manages to combine these with experiential safari and remoteness of location, rather gloriously too, giving you everything you could imagine and then some.

Zimbabwe and Zambia do have some stunning camps and lodges but here the experience and guiding quality are the main defining characteristics of luxury. Old-school safari camps, atmosphere and remoteness of camp locations are the mainstay of what makes a safari in these two countries incredibly difficult to beat.

Tanzania has started to come to the table with epic luxury safari camps in recent years but also has some quite outstanding remote safari camps for high-quality isolation luxury safari.

Kenya, much like South Africa, has very opulent safari camps mixed in with some excellent next-level down luxury camps that offer similar levels of service at reduced costs.

To list all the camps that we love in this rather ambiguous category of safari type would be a bit silly as it is entirely subjective and down to your own perceptions and degrees of importance of what constitutes a luxury safari. The greatest example of this would be some clients we recently had that were very fortunate to have no budget ceiling, whom we challenged to mix in a "luxury camp" that was far off the beaten track with no wifi or cell phone signal or close proximity to any other camp or form of civilization. It was a pretty basic looking camp but was the part of the trip that resonated with them most.

The best thing to do at this point is to get in touch with us, preferably by phone, to allow us to get to know you a little and advise on the kind of luxury safari that would give you your trip of a lifetime experience.