Very little of it is margin

What a night is built from

• Park and conservancy fees. Charged per person per day. In the Mara conservancies this is a substantial share and it is the lease payment to the Maasai landowning families — the reason the land is not fenced or farmed.
• The camp. Staff, food flown or driven a long way, generators, water, and maintenance in a climate that destroys things. Small camps often rebuild every few years.
• Vehicle and guide. The guide is the biggest single determinant of your experience and is paid accordingly. Fuel in a remote park is not cheap.
• Transport between parks. Internal flights or long road transfers — frequently 10–20% of a whole trip.
• The agency. Planning, availability checks, contracting, payment handling, and somebody answering the phone at 11pm when a flight is cancelled.

The four ways a cheap quote is made cheap

1. A shared vehicle. You will see everything, on five strangers’ schedule. Frequently the entire price gap between two quotes.
2. A camp outside the boundary. Lower headline rate, an hour to the gate each way, and a park entry fee charged every time you drive in.
3. Driving a leg that should be flown. Nairobi to the Mara is five to six hours. Real savings, and most of a day each way.
4. Rate periods that do not match your dates. Check the quoted season against your travel dates.

Why we itemise

Because an itemised quote can be compared and a total cannot. If another agency comes in lower, we would rather you could see exactly which of the four choices above they made — and then decide.

Sometimes the answer is that theirs is genuinely better value for what you want. We would rather you found that out from a comparison than from a shared vehicle in the Mara.

Get an itemised quote to compare