Our team includes some of the most experienced people in the safari world. Every expert has spent years travelling the areas they recommend — on the ground, in camps, with guides. When they suggest a lodge, it is because they have been there.

Safari experts, not salespeople 

Our average team tenure is well over a decade. People do not tend to leave ATR. It has been said it is something of a life sentence — even those who do leave usually find their way back.

Over ten years, on average

When you enquire, we match you with the expert best suited to your trip. Or feel free to browse the team and reach out to someone directly. Either way, you will be talking to someone who genuinely knows what they are talking about.

The right expert for you and your trip

Tanzania

Set on the East Coast of Africa, Tanzania is a truly remarkable place, the richest and most diverse safari country, with far more than its fair share of Africa’s crown jewels, including Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

This is the place to head if you are looking for a truly diverse African experience, usually an overland journey, with equal parts of epic wildlife, majestic volcanic scenery, authentic tribespeople, farms, villages and towns.

It’s also top of the list if you want to combine safari and tropical beaches.

In all honesty, Tanzania alone is worth several trips.

Trips from USD 4500

Kenya

Also on the East Coast of Africa, Kenya is the second most visited safari country on the continent, a place of great diversity, with popular reserves including the Maasai Mara, Amboseli, Tsavo and Samburu, as well as some much more remote wilderness areas and an extensive tropical coastline.

Unfortunately, the better known reserves in Kenya can get very busy in core areas, so we need to tread carefully to deliver a quality safari.

If you are looking towards the upper end of the budget range, then trips can be remote and fabulous. But if you are looking for value, you may be better off looking at Tanzania or countries further south. 

Trips from USD 5000

Botswana

Moving to the south of the continent, Botswana is widely considered to offer the highest quality safari in Africa.

The experience is not as diverse as Tanzania, but the remoteness and purity of the bush experience is unsurpassed.

If you are looking for either an easy vacation or a deeply immersive wilderness experience, this is the place. We just need to be careful about the very high prices during the Jun-Oct dry season.

Botswana is great in combination with Victoria Falls, the Cape or the tropical beaches of Mozambique.

Trips from USD 6000

Our safari experts have incredible 
first-hand knowledge and an average
of 12 years experience building great 
trips.

Expertise and experience

Since 1999, we have created over a million sample  trips and helped over 120,000 guests fall in love with  safari Africa.

A proud history

Over the years we have polished our operation to be super-reliable. Arranging your trip should be almost as much fun  as going on safari. 

Seamless and fun

Your trip should cost no more than if 
you had booked all the components directly. You effectively get our services for free.

Delivering value

Every single trip that we build is unique. Your trip will be precisely tailored to meet the exact requirements of everyone in your group.

Supremely tailor-made

The first safari company on the internet, we helped to shape the modern safari and we continue to be the prime innovators in our field.

Original innovators

Tell us your whatever you know about your ideal trip. Whether you're drawn to specific wildlife, particular regions, or have preferences about the style of accommodation, the more we understand, the better we can help you to craft the perfect experience.

Share your ideas

South Africa

South Africa is by far the most popular location for safari. It is a vast and incredibly diverse country, with far more highlights than could ever be included in a single trip.

The primary trip shape is a combination of safari in Kruger, with time in Cape Town, the Whale Coast and the Cape Winelands.

There is a huge choice of safari accommodation, right across the price spectrum, including some of the best lower cost options in Africa, so this is often the place to head on a lower budget.

However, South Africa is a much more developed country than those further north and the safari experience can feel significantly less pure and wild.

Trips from USD 3500

Zimbabwe

Also in the southern part of Africa, Zimbabwe is best known for the Victoria Falls, but also offers some of the most earthy, authentic, heart-pumping safari on the continent.

If you are looking for a short safari of 3-5 nights, then Hwange has some great value options.

Otherwise, Zimbabwe is a relatively high-priced location, which appeals most to experienced Africa travellers, who appreciate the extremely high levels of safari guiding.

The walking safari here can be truly extraordinary, with deliberate approaches onto elephants and lions. 

Trips from USD 4500

Zambia

Set in southcentral Africa, Zambia is a delightful backwater, also best known for the Victoria Falls, but with a handful of superb safari reserves.

The camps here have a reputation for intimacy, authenticity and a pleasantly homespun feel, many with a marked leaning towards walking safari, which is always a good sign.

Zambia is a mid-to-high price safari environment, which tends to appeal most to experienced safari travellers in search of new frontiers and first timers who are specifically looking for somewhere unusual for their safari. 

Trips from USD 5000

We did not set up ATR to make money. We set it up because we wanted to protect the wild places we love. In developing countries, conservation runs almost entirely on tourist revenue. Directing that revenue to the right places is the most powerful conservation tool there is.

Why we started

Since 1999 we have contributed over half a billion dollars of turnover to the world of safari and paid over fifty million dollars in direct conservation fees. The areas under conservation across Africa have grown by over 40% in that time.  

What it has achieved

We work only with lodges and operators who genuinely have conservation at heart. Your park fees, your camp nights, your guide's wage feeds something bigger. Your trip will be one of the best things you have ever done, and it will leave the places you visit better than it found them.

What it means for your trip

Having helped secure the future of most of Africa's major safari areas, we are now turning our attention to lesser-known locations where conservation needs remain urgent. We are also pioneering the same approach in South America, the Indian Subcontinent and beyond.

Our next chapter

Your dedicated safari specialist will work with you to build a selection of sample trips. We'll discuss seasonality, wildlife movements, logistics, lodge options, activity levels, whatever is necessary. And we will keep on refining until we are all confident that we have reached the perfect trip.

Crafting your trip

Everything is arranged. All you need to do is turn up. You probably won’t even need to show your paperwork, you will simply glide from one group of friendly and efficient local hosts to the next. And our support team remains on hand throughout, leaving you free to focus entirely on the extraordinary experiences ahead.

Travel with confidence

It is impossible to overstate how important seasonality is to a savanna safari trip.

The month that you choose to travel will greatly affect where you should go, what you will see, how much traffic you will encounter and how much you will spend.

In the linked article, we divide the year into five periods. The first two, the Jun-Oct dry season and the Nov-Dec early green season, cover probably 95% of all trips. The other three periods cover the more complicated Jan-May period, when conditions change fast, but which contain some real hidden gems.

We will always take full responsibility for your trip being perfectly constructed around the seasonality.

Seasonality

For most people, the length of their core safari in Africa is limited by budget, as this is almost always the most expensive part of a trip.

Ideally, you would spend maybe six to ten nights in the bush, split between multiple camps, but that can be reduced to as little as 3-4 nights if necessary.

On top of that, you can combine with some fabulously diverse, but thankfully lower cost locations, like Victoria Falls, Cape Town or the tropical beaches of the Indian Ocean.

Most Africa trips end up in the range 12 to 28 nights.

Duration

Tailor-made safari trips most commonly fall in the range USD 5000-20,000 per person, excluding your international flights.

There are cool trip options across the price range and we are more than happy to work with all the different budget levels.

If you are hoping to spend towards the lower end, you should perhaps start by looking at safari options in South Africa, the Hwange area of Zimbabwe and Botswana during the Jan-Mar late green season.

At the middle and upper end of the range, there are great options in all countries, mostly getting progressively more remote, more luxurious and more reliable as you head upwards.

Budget

Many of us here at ATR have travelled extensively with our own kids, so we know for a fact that safari is great for families.

This is the kind of trip that guarantees to generate memories that you will share for the rest of your lives.

However, there are significant health issues to consider in most safari areas, so we need to proceed with caution.

Most dry season safari is ideal for kids of 12 years and older, eminently feasible for kids 8-11 years and potentially viable from 6-7 years old. If your kids are 0-5 years, then it’s probably best to stick to the non-malarial areas of the Cape, then progressing up into Namibia as they get older.

Family safari 

Safari is an inherently romantic experience that can be endlessly tailored to suit you.

We have been helping guests to build awesome honeymoons for many years. We have intimate knowledge of some of the wildest and most romantic places in the world.

Perhaps the most important piece of advice is to be yourselves. Please don’t feel it is necessary to fit into the usual romantic tropes if they’re not for you. Just focus on having a great trip.

We very much understand the importance of these trips, we know that your honeymoon needs to really hit the heights and be a truly life-punctuating experience.

Honeymoon safari 

On safari, luxury means different things to different people.

The most conventional meaning is that the accommodations are extremely comfortable, with elevated levels of hospitality. This is relatively easy to deliver, there are lots of luxury lodges.

However, simply inserting more luxurious lodges into your trip is no guarantee of a better safari. In fact, the opposite can be true.

For us, the hallmarks of a truly high quality safari are a suitably slow pace, wonderful remote locations, superb safari guiding, exclusive and intense wildlife interaction, precisely tailored experiences and considered attention to detail. We can do that.

Luxury safari 

It started around a kitchen table, with a blank sheet of paper passed between friends who wanted to do something more interesting with their lives.

Three of the founders had first gone to Africa in their teens — spontaneously, on a hunch — and ended up working as safari guides in Zambia. They never quite got it out of their system. In 1999, along with a fourth co-founder, they decided to do something about it.

Their first website was called "All About Zanzibar". It was, by their own admission, terrible. But it was also the most thorough resource on Zanzibar that existed anywhere online, and the enquiries came almost immediately.

By 2002, The Daily Telegraph had run a two-page spread calling it "the future of travel, the future of the internet." The year after, Richard Branson was handing them a Virgin Fast Track award as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK.

Since then we have expanded across Africa, launched operations in South America, the Indian Subcontinent and beyond, and partnered with conservation group Nawiri. We are still run by the same founding team, still based in the pretty village of Shere in southern England.

The founders are still here. Still here every day.

Independent and unbiased

Most safari companies have ownership ties to specific lodges, hotel groups or travel conglomerates. We do not. Our only obligation is to you. Every lodge we recommend is there because one of our team has personally visited, inspected and photographed it — not because someone is paying us to fill beds.

25+ years of specialist expertise

We founded ATR in 1999 as the world's first properly organised online safari resource. We have been doing this, and only this, ever since. Our team averages over ten years with us. When you work with us, you are drawing on a depth of knowledge that takes decades to build.

Every lodge, personally inspected

We are the only safari company that regularly visits, inspects and photographs every lodge and camp across Africa and beyond. Not brochure descriptions. Not aggregator star ratings. We know what every lodge is actually like — the good, the bad, and the ones that are genuinely not to be missed.

Conservation is our primary purpose

We did not start ATR to make money. We started it because we wanted to protect the wild places we love. Since 1999 we have contributed over half a billion dollars of turnover to the world of safari, paid over fifty million dollars in direct conservation fees, and watched the areas under conservation across Africa grow by over 40%. Your trip will have a real and measurable positive impact on the places you visit.

Every trip built around you, not us

No packages. No set itineraries. We build every trip from scratch around your budget, your dates, your interests and your group size. Earthy and edgy or easy and extravagant — we will find the right combination. If you are not sure where to start, that is absolutely fine. Most of our guests aren't. Trips from around USD 2,500 per person. You set the ceiling.

Reviews we never chase,
feedback we treasure

We do not chase five-star reviews. The feedback on Google is just guests who wanted to share their experience — and there is a great deal of it. Our average rating is 4.9. Search for ATR Safari and read it for yourself. We think it says more about us than anything we could write on this page.