Accommodation Styles

The styles of accommodation choices vary quite widely, and these will have an effect on your holiday.

Below is a summary of the main types of camps, lodges and hotels you will experience on your safari.

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Permanent Luxury Tented Camps

Although budget unfortunately does not always allow, where possible, we would love for every traveller to experience at least a couple of nights at a luxury tented camp.   

This is as far from camping as you can get, with some of the tents having all of the amenities of a 5 (or 6) star hotel room, including hot and cold running water, showers, sometimes baths, comfortable beds, electricity and more.

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Mobile Luxury Tented Camps

Also in the higher price range, mobile luxury tented camps provide a safari experience of days gone by.  Although they will not move during your stay, these camps are designed to relocate every few months, in order to access the best wildlife spots for each season.

Also truly luxurious, with en suite and showers, they are usually a bit more basic than the permanent camps, in that the showers may be of the bucket variety (filled with hot water by camp assistants), and electricity may not be 24 hours.

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Game Lodges and Safari Lodges

While also varying in size and style between them, game and safari lodges could be defined as having bricks and mortar rooms, thereby not providing the "under canvas" experience.  But many of them offer incredibly opulent suites, with few rooms, while others, such as some of the chains in East Africa, can be more of a "hotel in the bush."

The small group scheduled itineraries tend to include these larger lodges.

As a general rule, the larger the lodge, the lower the price, and there are some great value options available which will still provide you with excellent game viewing locations.

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Beach Resorts and Lodges

The quality and style of beach accommodation varies from the rustic, barefoot hideaways to the large and glitzy resorts with numerous restaurants, bars and pools.  

While we try to recommend the smaller options, there are some larger resorts which do offer great value and a good, relaxing beach experience.

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Hotels

Obviously applying to city stays, there are numerous world brands of hotels available in each location, offering the standard hotel room experience.

As expected with these, some are better than others, and most of the time the quality is directly proportional to the cost.

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Boutique Hotels

If you'd like to avoid staying in the generic hotels, there are always boutique hotel options available, which usually would be more costly, but which offer a far more personalised level of service.   These are smaller and with more attention to detail allowing for a superior stay.

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Villas

Pertaining mostly to Cape Town, although there are some options further up the African east coast as well, a villa stay provides you with the use of a fully self-catering house or apartment, which is fantastic for larger groups, or if you are looking for a more flexible and independent holiday.

Price-wise, depending on the number in your group, villas can often be far cheaper than hotels, with amazing facilities and locations.