From the Fee Index

Africa's most expensive safari beds that publish a price

We pulled the published per-person nightly rate from every lodge, camp and campsite across the seventeen parks we cover, 324 places in total, and ranked the fifteen highest that actually put a number on paper. A published rate at this end of the market almost always buys full board, an open vehicle, a private guide and the logistics of getting you somewhere with no road in. It rarely buys marble taps, and the camps that could afford them mostly do not tell you what they cost.

If you only want the answer

The highest per-person rate we found published anywhere in our network is $2,889 a night at Mombo Camp in Moremi, fully inclusive. Fourteen more camps clear $1,300, most of them in Moremi, Lower Zambezi and South Luangwa, and nearly all wrap meals, drinks and activities into that single figure rather than pricing the room alone. That is still not the real top of the market. Singita Pamushana and most of the private camps inside Mana Pools publish no rate at all, so treat this ranking as the ceiling of what is visible, not the ceiling of what exists.

The ranking, highest published rate first

Every figure below is per person per night, as published by the operator unless marked third-party, and gathered between July and September 2026. Two prices that would otherwise top this list are missing on purpose. A Robin Pope Safaris mobile walking package in South Luangwa lists at $6,578 for seven nights, which works out to about $940 a night once divided, and a Baines' River Camp fishing special in Lower Zambezi runs $1,995 for four nights, about $499 a night. Both are real published prices, but for multi-night packages rather than a single night, so they are not comparable to the rest of this table and sit out of it. Kokoko Camp in Ruaha is excluded for a similar reason: its $1,600 is priced for two guests sharing, not per person. Ubuyu, a Banyan Tree Escape in Ruaha, is excluded because our data flags its opening status as unconfirmed.

Where a camp publishes a seasonal ladder, the rate shown is its lowest published figure; several of these camps run considerably higher in July to October peak season, noted in the table.

#	Camp	Park	Rate	What it covers	Source
1	Mombo Camp	Moremi, Botswana	$2,889 pppn	All-inclusive; peaks at $5,043 in high season	Operator (Wilderness)
2	Xigera Safari Lodge	Moremi, Botswana	$2,750 pppn	Not stated in our data; peaks at $4,500	Operator
3	&Beyond Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge	Moremi, Botswana	$2,680 pppn	All-inclusive: meals, house drinks, laundry, activities, medevac cover, VAT, park fees and airstrip transfers; peaks at $4,100	Operator, confirmed by &Beyond 1 Sep 2026
4	Chief's Camp	Moremi, Botswana	$2,400 pppn	Fully inclusive per this source; peaks at $4,350	Third-party
5	Chitabe Camp	Moremi, Botswana	$1,710 pppn	Not stated in our data; peaks near $3,390	Operator (Wilderness)
6	Shumba Camp	Kafue, Zambia	$1,600 pppn	All-inclusive	Operator (Wilderness)
7	ol Donyo Lodge	Tsavo, Kenya	$1,590 pppn	All-inclusive, including Kenya's conservation fees, unusual for this market	Operator (Great Plains Conservation)
8	Tuludi	Moremi, Botswana	$1,545 pppn	Excludes a mandatory $60 pppn conservation fee; peaks at $3,545	Operator (Natural Selection)
9	Chiawa Camp	Lower Zambezi, Zambia	$1,510 pppn	Meals and activities included; $120 pppn park and conservation fees added on top; peaks at $1,995	Operator, owner-run
10	Old Mondoro	Lower Zambezi, Zambia	$1,510 pppn	Same basis as sister camp Chiawa: $120 pppn fees on top; peaks at $1,995	Operator, owner-run
11	Puku Ridge	South Luangwa, Zambia	$1,510 pppn	About $120 pppn in levies and park fees on top; peaks at $1,995	Operator
12	Gomoti Private	Moremi, Botswana	$1,494 pppn	Fully inclusive, exclusive-use camp booked for 4 to 6 guests	Operator, confirmed by Machaba Safaris Aug 2026
13	Qorokwe Camp	Moremi, Botswana	$1,480 pppn	Not stated in our data; full published ladder runs to $2,940 in peak months	Operator (Wilderness)
14	Anabezi	Lower Zambezi, Zambia	$1,425 pppn	Basis not detailed; $90 per bed-night park and conservation levy added to every invoice	Third-party
15	Chinzombo	South Luangwa, Zambia	$1,330 pppn	All-inclusive; park fees extra	Operator (Time + Tide)

Rows 9 to 11 are all Chiawa Safaris group properties, tied within $1 of each other at the low-season rate. That could be a coincidence or a pricing floor set by the operator; our data does not say which.

What all-inclusive actually buys at this tier

Two camps on this list spell out exactly what their headline number includes, and both are worth reading closely because most do not. &Beyond confirmed directly that Sandibe's rate covers accommodation, three meals a day, soft drinks, house wines, local spirits and beer, refreshments on game drives, laundry, every safari activity, emergency medical evacuation cover, VAT, park fees and the transfer to and from the lodge airstrip. That is the fullest inclusion list in this ranking, and it is also the only one that folds park fees into the room rate rather than billing them separately.

ol Donyo Lodge does something similar for less than two-thirds the price: meals, drinks, activities, its signature star beds, transfers and Kenya's conservation fees are all inside the $1,590. Great Plains calls that rare for the Kenyan market, and our data agrees; every other Tsavo-area camp we track quotes the KWS $80 conservation fee as an extra on top of the room.

Gomoti Private shows a different shape that all-inclusive takes at this tier: the whole camp booked exclusively, four to six guests minimum, fully inclusive per Machaba Safaris directly. You are not really paying $1,494 for a bed so much as for a private camp with a floor set under the group size.

For the rest, including Mombo, Xigera, Chitabe and Qorokwe, our data carries a from-rate and a seasonal ladder but not a line-by-line list of what it buys. Mombo's own listing does say fully inclusive; the others simply do not say, so treat all-inclusive as the safari industry's default assumption at this price point and confirm the specifics before you book.

The fee that still lands on top of a $1,400 night

Three of the fifteen camps here, Chiawa, Old Mondoro and Puku Ridge, all from the same Chiawa Safaris stable, add roughly $120 per person per night in park and conservation fees to a room rate that already starts at $1,510. Anabezi, a few kilometres down the same river, adds $90 per bed night. Chinzombo states plainly that its all-inclusive rate excludes park fees. Tuludi's $1,545 headline leaves out a mandatory $60 pppn conservation fee. None of that is hidden and all of it sits in the small print, but none of it is unusual either: it is simply how Zambia and Botswana price a bed separately from the land it sits on.

Our Fee Index puts a number on that land. A standard day inside Moremi, one adult's entry fee plus a share of the vehicle fee, runs about $69; inside Kafue about $58. Zambia's Game Management Areas, where Chinzombo and several Lower Zambezi camps sit, often carry no national park entry fee at all unless you actually cross into the park, which is one reason a GMA camp can undercut a park camp on paper before the fee line is even added. Whatever the number, it applies on top of the room, every night, for every person, at almost every camp on this list.

The one exception in our data is unusual enough that its own operator flags it. That Robin Pope Safaris mobile walking package in South Luangwa, at roughly $940 a night once divided out of its $6,578 seven-night price, rolls the park fees into the headline figure. Robin Pope's own listing calls that unusual, and having checked the other published rates in our network, we agree.

The tier that publishes nothing

Above this list sits a tier that never appears in it, because it declines to name a number at all. Singita Pamushana, perched on a private reserve bordering Gonarezhou, tells enquirers to expect top-of-market, fully inclusive pricing and nothing more specific than that.

Inside Mana Pools the pattern is even starker. Almost the entire private camp roster, a dozen separate operators in a single national park, quotes nothing but enquire. Owner-run camps such as Vundu, Little Vundu and Camp Mana sit alongside safari-company operations like Nyamatusi Camp, Mana River Camp and Tembo Plains Camp, and not one of them puts a dollar figure anywhere we could find, not a website, not a rate sheet, not a range.

Singita Pamushana Lodge, Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve bordering Gonarezhou: expect top-of-market, fully inclusive pricing, no figure given.
Vundu Camp and Little Vundu, Bushlife Safaris, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Camp Mana, Sunpath Safaris, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Kavinga Safari Camp, owner-run, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Nyamatusi Camp and Nyamatusi Mahogany, African Bush Camps, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Zambezi Expeditions and Kanga Expeditions, African Bush Camps, Mana Pools: enquire only.
John's Camp, Robin Pope Safaris, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Mana River Camp, Machaba Safaris, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Chitake Mobile Camp, Bushlife Safaris, Mana Pools: enquire only.
Tembo Plains Camp, Great Plains Conservation, Sapi Private Reserve next to Mana Pools: enquire only.

None of this is a criticism. A camp that never publishes a number never has to defend it against a competitor's, and the people booking these places are rarely comparing brochures. It does mean this ranking, built entirely from what is written down, is honestly a list of the ceiling of the visible market rather than the ceiling of the market itself.

Check the numbers yourself

Every rate here came from an operator's own rate card or a named third-party source, gathered between July and September 2026, and every park fee mentioned above comes from the authority tariffs behind our Fee Index. Rates move with the season and the year, so confirm both before you book.