SafariStays Passes 1,000 Safari Properties as Demand Grows for Tailor-Made African Safaris

Cape Town — SafariStays, the online booking platform for safari lodges, camps and guesthouses across Southern and East Africa, has passed 1,000 listed properties, driven by rising demand from international travellers for tailor-made safari itineraries rather than off-the-shelf packages.

The platform launched in 2026 with a single premise: booking a safari should be as straightforward as booking a hotel, without losing the specialist knowledge that a safari actually requires. Travellers can browse lodges, camps and guesthouses in one place, see real availability and rates, and confirm a booking directly — while still getting itinerary help from people who know the routes, the seasons and the properties.

Why tailor-made is winning

The generic safari package is losing ground. Travellers arriving from the UK, Europe and North America increasingly want an itinerary shaped around their own interests, budget and pace — a photographic-focused camp in one region, a family-friendly lodge in another, a few nights in a gateway city at either end.

That is difficult to assemble on a mainstream travel site, where safari properties sit alongside city hotels with no context about distances, seasons, malaria zones, road conditions or park access. It is equally difficult through a traditional agency, where the traveller has limited visibility of what they are actually paying for.

SafariStays sits between the two. Every itinerary is built from properties that are live and bookable on the platform, so a tailor-made plan is not a wish list — it is a route that can be confirmed.

Built for independent and self-drive travel

A significant share of safari travel across Southern Africa is self-drive, particularly in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. Travellers hire a vehicle, plan a route and move between camps and lodges over one to three weeks.

SafariStays has been designed around that traveller. Alongside the booking engine, the platform provides route-planning tools and destination guides covering driving times, seasonality, park entry, and where it makes sense to break a long leg. Rather than treating self-drive travellers as a niche, the platform treats them as a core audience — a group large travel booking sites have largely overlooked.

Guided and fly-in safaris are supported in the same way, with the itinerary built around the properties and the season rather than around a fixed departure date.

Supply growth across the region

The platform now lists over 1,000 properties, from owner-run guesthouses and campsites to private-concession safari lodges. Coverage is deepest in Namibia and South Africa, with a growing footprint elsewhere in Southern and East Africa.

Many of the properties on the platform are independently owned and have historically had limited online distribution, relying on direct email enquiries or on being buried in the listings of large international travel sites. SafariStays works directly with these owners, giving them a distribution channel aimed specifically at safari travellers.

What a tailor-made safari through SafariStays involves

Travellers submit an enquiry with their dates, budget range, group size and interests. The SafariStays team responds with a proposed route and a shortlist of properties, adjusts it against feedback, and confirms the bookings once the itinerary is agreed. There is no charge to the traveller for the planning itself.

Typical requests range from a first-time seven-night Kruger and Cape Town combination through to multi-week self-drive circuits taking in Namibia's desert regions, the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls.

About SafariStays

SafariStays is an online booking platform for safari lodges, camps and guesthouses across Southern and East Africa, operated by Safari Stays (Pty) Ltd. The platform combines direct, confirmable bookings with tailor-made itinerary planning and self-drive route tools, working directly with independently owned properties across the region. SafariStays is based in Cape Town, South Africa.

More information is available at safaristays.com.