Booking a Safari Locally in Botswana — Is It Safe?

Considering a Botswana safari but unsure whether to book with a local agent, an international travel agency, or a DMC (destination management company) directly? It’s a common concern — questions around payment safety, accountability, and whether a local operator can really match the service of a big-name agency come up again and again. The truth is that local, on-the-ground agents offer the same payment security and insurance as overseas agencies, while adding something international agents simply can’t: current knowledge of guide movements, camp conditions, and Delta water levels, along with personal accountability in a small, tightly connected industry. This article lays those concerns to rest — in detail, and from someone who lives here.

Why book you safari with a local agent in Botswana?

Out of interest on how to improve our operation, and because much like Kipling’s young elephant I am insatiably curious, I’ve been asking a number of our guests what their biggest concerns were before booking a safari to Botswana. While I received very different and varied responses, by far and large, the most common concern was around the safety and security of booking a safari with a local agent such as myself. While a concern prior to travel, all reveal how this was not something they should have ever been worried about. 

Nonetheless, I’ve been chatting with other local agents in Botswana who are competitors and friends, and I wanted to address this. 

The lion’s share of safari bookings to Botswana are put together by international travel agencies in London, New York, or other major cities, by consultants who are excellent at their jobs. They care about their clients and have often even been to the Okavango Delta at least once. Many people have amazing safaris through them. It’s a legitimate way to sell a safari, and I don’t want to attack it. However, I do want to focus here on the benefits of booking through a local agency and how any concerns around booking with local agents are unfounded, and how a safari changes when the person booking your trip lives here. 

Okavango Delta conditions change constantly

The Okavango Delta is not a fixed ecosystem. It changes. It changes every year. It changes every month. And in some places, you can see it changing daily. It breathes in its own way, and it is unpredictable. A camp that is a mokoro paradise in one season can be dry and dusty the next. Some camps that offered game drives last May, were flooded and only accessible by boat (sorry no game drives) this May. And a camp that was only accessible by boat last month, can now be accessed this month. 

We are on the ground and the ground moves

It’s an ever-changing ecosystem and we monitor it continuously. You can see what we are watching on our live flood monitoring page, which we keep updated through the season.

This is not trivia. It determines whether the camp you are paying for will deliver the experience you are imagining. If you want water, we will send you where the water actually is this year, not where it was three years or even 1 year ago. 

Only the locals really know where the local wildlife hangs out

The same goes for wildlife. Predator movements, where the buffalo herds are drawing lions, which pans are holding, where the wild dogs have denned. This changes month to month, and because we know most of the guides and camp managers, we hear about it from people who were out there this morning.

And we accommodate this. While we have a fairly good idea of how things look, it’s impossible to judge exactly what wildlife and water will be doing a year in advance. If you book a safari a year or more ahead, a few months before your trip, we are going to reassess and ensure the conditions are at their best. If not, we make the necessary changes to ensure every guest has the best possible experience. The best marketing for us is a happy guest, and the best way we can support Botswana is by having guests return to their home and rave about our home. 

_{Me (Rory) and Tumie – my partner in Safari shenanigans and oldest school friend out on mokoro}

We know Botswana’s guides personally

Your guide will do more to shape your safari than you imagine. Two guests in the same camp can have entirely different experiences depending on who is guiding the safari, and who is tracking.

We know these people. We have sat around fires with them into the late hours. We know their families and we know the challenges they face. We know who is exceptional with birds, who is extraordinary with big cats, who is endlessly patient with children, and who is best with the serious photographers. We have an intimate feel and understanding of who will work best with whom. 

We also know when someone is on the move. Guides change camps, and because we know many of the guides, we know who is unhappy and where long before they make their move. We often have repeat guests who want to safari with the same guide – which is understandable. But guides move. Because we know them personally and know where they are from, we also often know where they are going. And this matters. A great guide will transform a mediocre safari into an unforgettable experience, and ensuring that guests get the best guides is something that we’re able to do as local agents. 

We know which Concession areas in the Okavango are settled

Concessions in Botswana are leased, and leases come up, get contested, and get reallocated. Occasionally a camp changes hands, or its tenure becomes uncertain, or the operating rights shift in a way that affects everything from which roads can be driven to who is managing the area next season.

Understanding the Concessions in Botswana is nuanced but we follow this closely, because it is our business to do so. We have our ears to the ground and we are constantly listening. We know which lodge operation owner had a beer with which local politician last night, because we are here. And as such, there are lodges that we may quietly steer clients away from in a given year, not because the lodge is bad, but because its situation is unsettled and you are spending too much money to be a test case.

We also know which communities are unhappy with their agreements with the lodges, and we steer away from these as well. I tend to find that a guest can always tell when a community is unhappy, even when they never see that community. This unhappiness becomes a part of the landscape, and you can feel it when there’s just “something in the air”.

You will not find this in any brochure. I certainly would not expect to. But it’s something that we concern ourselves with and something we focus on as local agents. 

We’ve slept in the safari lodge rooms

We visit camps constantly, and not as a junket. We know which tent has the view, and which one backs onto the generator. We know where the walk from your room to dinner is long and dark and where that will bother you. We know which camps are genuinely good with children and which say they are. We know which are sociable and which camps let you sink into the deep privacy you may desire. Many of the lodges in our destinations portfolio have a section with or personal take on the lodge, something we work on updating constantly.

Camps have personalities, and so do guests. Matching them is most of the job, and it cannot be done without having an intimate knowledge of each lodge. We also know the camp managers, and their personalities have a great bearing on the lodge itself. 

When something doesn’t go according to plan, we are here.

And something usually does change gears. A charter shifts, weather closes a strip, a connection fails, a bag goes missing between Johannesburg and Maun.

_{My boys on safari in the Okavango during our last trip up}

When that happens at six in the morning Botswana time, we are awake, in the same time zone, with the phone numbers of the people who can actually fix it, and with the right relationships that mean we get things solved quickly. We are not a message left overnight in an inbox eight time zones away, to be picked up when an office opens.

This is the single most underrated reason to book locally, and the one guests only appreciate once they have needed it.

We are answerable to the local Botswana tourism industry

We live here. We will run into your guide, your camp manager and your pilot shortly after your trip. Our name is attached to your trip in a small industry where everyone knows everyone.

This creates a form of accountability. If we send the wrong guest to the wrong place, or if one of our guests has a shitty experience, we are going to get a lot of flack for it.  This means we will tell you when something is not right for you, even when saying so costs us your booking. We would rather lose a guest than sell you a camp you will not enjoy, because we will hear about it, and so will everyone else.

Your money stays within the Botswana economy

When you book through an overseas agency, a meaningful share of what you pay never reaches Africa at all. It settles as a margin in another economy.

Booking with an agency based here means the planning fee, the salaries, the office, the taxes and the supplier relationships all sit on this side of the world. The guides, trackers, chefs, housekeepers, mechanics, pilots and camp teams who make your safari possible are supported by an operation that is part of the same economy they live in.

This is the difference between tourism that extracts and tourism that circulates.

Giving back is part of the work, not a sales pitch.

Conservation in this region does not run on goodwill. It runs on money, jobs and long-term relationships with the communities who live alongside the wildlife you have come to see and who carry the cost of doing so.

We are dedicated to uplifting communities and to conserving wildlife. While we support different initiatives in different ways, my personal focus is on the restoration of traditional governance and ensuring local communities see value in wildlife rather than a threat or a pest they are forced to put up with. We do this conservation work through our Empower Nature project.

It’s important to ask hard questions. And as a former journalist, I personally love asking hard questions. Go ahead and ask any international agent or operator what proportion of what you pay reaches households in the communities bordering the concession, and in what form. The answers, or lack thereof, are going to be revealing.

The small things we do ourselves

There is a convention in this industry of leaving a handwritten note in a guest’s room on arrival, from their agent. It is a lovely gesture. It is also, very often, written by the camp manager on the agent’s behalf, because the agent is on another continent and has never met you.

Where we can, we try and write ours ourselves, in person, because we are here.

And at the end, if the timing works, we will buy you a coffee or a cold beer in Maun or Kasane on your way out. And this is always my favourite part of the job. Getting to finally know you. We do this because we love it. We’ve often worked with you for months over email and over the phone, and once you’ve completed your safari, we want to hear about it all and in person. The sightings, the guide who was brilliant, the morning the wild dogs came through camp. We love hearing about it all. And we also do this because these one-on-one conversations help us get better. The honest, unfiltered version of how your trip went, told over a drink rather than typed into a feedback form, is worth more to us than you can imagine, and it really helps to improve. 

We offer payment reassurance

Being based in Africa often means payments with wire transfers are just easier. However, most local agents, us included, now take card payments through the same international gateways the large overseas agencies use, with the same encryption and the same 3D Secure verification. Booking locally does not mean improvising with bank transfers to an account you have never heard of, and I think this is a concern that really should be laid to rest.

For some guests this matters a great deal, and we think it should. Being small and local should never mean being less professional. We have the same tools and can provide the same levels of insurance. The fact that we’re here means we can also back that all up.

The marketing conundrum

As a local agent, I need to face the truth. We will never be able to compete with the international agencies on their level because we just don’t have the capital required. Google AdWords for search terms like “Okavango Safari”, are some of the most expensive in the world and generating a lead through Google Ads can cost more than $1000 USD per click. We just can’t compete there. Not anywhere close. In all honesty, over 95% of our clients are referrals and repeat guests. However, while we may never be able to ever compete to get your attention on web searches, I don’t believe we should be sidelined given the fact that we are based here. We are present, and we’re able to deliver in ways no one else can. 

Our monthly African Wild newsletter shares news from the bush; fireside tales, boots on the ground conservation work, expert insight on conservation efforts in Botswana, practical advice on having the best safari and of course access to our exclusive safari specials. We’d love to have you on the inside track with us.

What we offer instead is depth and dependability. We are current, and we have first-hand, accountable knowledge of a landscape we live in, and a relationship with you that starts before you book and does not end when you land back home. We develop trust and we develop friendships, and we do what we say we will do. Our word is heavy. It carries weight here.  

And so, if that is the kind of safari you are after, come and talk to us. We would love to have you. Genuinely.

Our word carries weight here because we live with the consequences of it. If we send you to the wrong camp, we’re the ones who hear about it — from the guide, the camp manager, and you.” — Rory Sheldon, Founder, The African Wild