The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
– Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
We borrowed our title from Oscar Wilde, who knew a thing or two about wild behaviour in polite society. His comedy teases people who perform sincerity rather than practise it. Twenty years of building safaris has taught us the same distinction: in this business, earnestness is not a tone of voice. It is an operating principle.
This is an essay about how we work: why we can afford to be honest, how we decide what to recommend, and what actually goes into getting you onto that first game drive with everything in order.
We are fortunate
We are not a lodge group. We own no camps, carry no beds we are obliged to fill, and answer to no brand that needs its shoulder season rescued. When we recommend a lodge, it is because it fits you: your dates, your budget, your people. That independence buys us the two qualities this trade needs most, discernment and honesty.
It also obliges us to be straight about the exceptions. Where we have a commercial partnership with a lodge or group, we say so on the page. Earnest means showing our workings.
One of our guests put it better than we could:
I initially contacted Anja for a price on a specific hotel, which I’m now going ahead with, but what really impressed me was how much genuine interest she took in the rest of my trip. She offered thoughtful advice and additional quotes, and was completely relaxed about me using other providers where that made sense. At no point did I feel any pressure. She even went above and beyond by proactively phoning and chasing another travel provider on my behalf while I was waiting for a response — despite there being no commission in it for her.
– Tom F., United Kingdom, January 2026, via Trustpilot
The two-hundred-flavour problem
Information flows more freely than ever, and you would think that makes choosing easier. It does the opposite. Psychologists who studied two ice-cream parlours, one stocking around two hundred flavours and one around twenty, found that people sought out the bigger parlour and then walked away less happy with what they chose there. More options attract us. They also bury us.
There is a reason the most coveted ice-cream brand in the world launched in 1961 with exactly three flavours: vanilla, chocolate and coffee. Häagen-Dazs understood that curation, not abundance, is the premium position. A safari is the same problem at a grander scale. Kenya or Botswana, tented or walled, February or September: the raw option set runs to thousands of itineraries. You can fixate on a detail that seems decisive but is not, or simply freeze.
I initially felt overwhelmed trying to coordinate different lodges, dates, and availability during high season, but she helped me find the perfect combination of camps within our budget and travel style.
– Claudia N., United States, June 2026, via Trustpilot
And here is the happy irony: the details matter far less than the one choice you have already made, the people closest to you, the ones you would want beside you on the game-drive seat in the first place. Get that right, and every version of the trip is already most of the way to perfect.
How we actually decide
The first cut is unglamorous: availability. No amount of longing puts you in a sold-out camp in migration season, so real dates come before dream lodges.
After that come the rate sheets: prosaic documents that operators and suppliers share within the industry, dense with the minutiae that decide whether a trip actually fits. Honeymoon specials, child policies and what they mean for game drives, how rooms and family units are arranged, what is included and what quietly is not. Unglamorous reading, and exactly where a good recommendation starts.
Then there is first-hand knowledge. We live and work in South Africa. Our overheads are lower than they would be in London or New York, which shows up in our pricing, and our safari specialists carry colloquial knowledge that is hard to come by from outside the country: which camp’s new head guide has lifted the whole sighting record, which road transfer looks short on the map and is not, which lodge photographs even better than it cooks.
The part nobody photographs
Deciding is half the work. But behind every trip sits an enormous amount of organisation: deposits and balances in the right currency at the right time, documents collated, visa requirements checked against each passport in the party, transfers reconfirmed, dietary notes passed to every kitchen. We handle all of it. Think of us as a central human API for your trip: one person who speaks fluent airline, lodge, bank and embassy, so you do not have to.
And that is before you reach the lodges and establishments themselves: vast networks of possible entropy, kept on the rails by tireless individuals, game rangers, chefs, maintenance teams, often operating far from any logistical hub. A remote camp that feels effortless is the most heavily organised place you will ever sleep.
…the SA embassy in our region required additional police certification of our reservation, the Safari.com team went to the police station and sent us the certified documents on the same day. Amazing service. Highly recommend!
– IReyes, Philippines, June 2024, via Trustpilot
Four things a friend taught me
Years ago a friend pressed a copy of Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements on me, and four lines have stayed with us as a business ever since: always do your best. Keep your word. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t take it personally.
Doing our best is self-explanatory. Keeping our word starts with the part you would simply assume: everything booked, every reservation confirmed, every detail where it should be. It extends to the things you have not thought of yet, which is why every booking currently includes complimentary travel insurance. And it holds when something goes wrong: miss a flight and we are rearranging suppliers before you have cleared the transfer desk, and whatever the call, on any aspect of your trip, we are here to help. Not making assumptions is why we ask about your knees before recommending a walking safari. And not taking it personally is why you can tell us the first itinerary we put in front of you missed the mark, and get a better version by morning.
Twenty years of not failing
You learn little from success. You learn from the near-misses: the flight connection that was legal on paper and miserable in practice, the beautiful lodge that was wrong for a honeymoon, the border post that wanted an unabridged birth certificate nobody had mentioned. Success is mostly the emergent state of having stopped failing in new ways. After twenty years in the game, our knowledge is hard-won, and it is yours to use.
If you are somewhere in the two hundred flavours right now, tell us where you are stuck. A safari specialist will reply in as little as 15 minutes during working hours. Earnestly.
Email us at helpmeplan@safari.com, tap the WhatsApp button above, or call us toll-free on 1-888-SAFARIS (US and Canada).
Written by Safari.com Editorial
