Our African Safari Partners
Who do we work with when designing luxury, bespoke safaris for our guests to Africa?
Part of what makes a safari designed by Stanley Safaris so special is the careful consideration we give to selecting our accommodation partners throughout Africa. Stanley Safaris makes sure our guests receive the best level of care and get the most for their money by taking four factors into account when choosing to partner with a camp.
This is what we look for when choosing who to work with:
Small, Privately Owned Luxury Safari Camps and Lodges
Small, privately owned safari lodges and camps are the best suited to offer a personalized experience to our guests. Stanley Safaris has over 40 years of experience exploring the best parts of Africa, and so often, we have a personal relationship with lodge owners and the people responsible for looking after our guests.
They are passionate about Africa, and this shows in the way they treat their people, the environment, the animals, and their guests. It is well worth your time to get to know these people during your stay. Listen to their stories around the campfire in the evenings. Doing so will make your African safari experience even more memorable.
Small camps are also not governed by rules, schedules, and timetables. Guest experience is the most important thing, and this flexibility is what ensures a truly memorable African safari. It is these spur-of-the-moment experiences that visitors will relive with their family and friends at the end of their trip.
Prime Safari Locations
Stanley Safaris only works with camps and lodges situated in prime locations in Africa. Doing so ensures the best experience possible for our guests. Animals move throughout the year, but using our expert first-hand knowledge of Africa, we make sure our guests are staying in the right camps, at the right time of year.
Safari Experiences and Guiding
A safari to Africa is more than just a vacation. It’s about the experience – meeting some of the friendliest people on earth, interacting with unique wildlife, and getting to know this diverse and beautiful continent. For our guests to feel they have truly experienced Africa to the full, it’s vital that their guides live up to expectations. A guide can make or break someone’s African experience, and so selecting camps with excellent guides is one of the most important factors we consider when deciding which camps we want to work with.
To us, thread counts, gourmet food, and personal butlers are not what is important in a safari to Africa. Exceptional food and wines are a given with the camps we work with, but what really counts is the safari experience they are able to give our guests.
Conservation and Community
We strongly believe that the survival of Africa’s wildlife is our responsibility, and because of this, Stanley Safaris will only partner with properties playing an active role in conservation and community projects within the areas they operate.
Sadly, it is all too often that the “conservation and community” tagline is used simply as a marketing tool, so it’s very important to us that the camps we use, practice what they preach.
Guests staying at our partnered camps often have the opportunity to visit the projects being supported and see the exceptional work being done on the ground. We are not a voluntourism company, but by working with key partners, we know that our guests’ money is going to fantastic community and conservation projects.
Second, to this, guests can get involved by donating, and certain camps and lodges offer opportunities to donate to certain research and conservation efforts and then get to see the work being carried out. Whether guests donate to rhino notching and monitoring in Tswalu Kalahari in South Africa, Morukuru in Madikwe, or Marataba Conservation Camps – we know the money is going to the right places.
Often camps have been built in certain locations to help conserve the area. Tourists pay conservation fees to access the area, and in doing so, poaching is reduced and the local communities can see the benefit of conserving the area and wildlife. Local camps and lodges employ people from the local communities and so again, the tourist’s money is making its way back into the local communities which is key to the future of our wild places.
This article was designed to give you some insight into the thought process behind the Stanley Safaris African experience. If you like what you see and need some help planning your dream African safari, get in touch and we’ll create a bespoke luxury safari, just for you.
