Originally Posted by
threepointkid
Curious if anyone has thoughts on this. Although I’d love to stay at as many Singita’s hope to do so in the coming few years, as a traveler I have changed in the sense that I am more after unique wildlife experiences than just a nicer room, food, service, amenities. This dawned on me when I balked at Singita Sabi Sands’s prices and stayed at Londolozi instead and realized that during my stay I actually was allowed to traverse onto the Singita land which was no better or worse than Londolozi’s land, there are plenty of lodges that deliver a high level of service and food, perhaps not quite as high as Singita, but the value is not there for me to upgrade to staying at their properties. In Tanzania, there are not properties comparable to Singita Grumeti, so staying there gives guests access to a private ecosystem they would not have otherwise, so to me there is more value to be had from my perspective.
If cost is not an object, then perhaps I would be inclined to book Singita Sabi Sands for my next stay in that area. Feel free to delete this post if being somewhat budget sensitive is not appropriate for this forum, although Londolozi is not exactly cheap, still clocking in at approximately $4800 a night.
I think this is a super interesting take. I've stayed at Singita properties multiple times over and while I can appreciate why people rank them as #1, the difference between Singita and less expensive but still premier camps in places such as Kruger/Sabi Sands is sometimes minimal.
What I have come to realise from my own safari experiences is that the thing that makes or breaks a safari trip for me is of course the wildlife (albeit something that the camp cannot necessarily control), the guides/trackers (though I have discovered that it isn't always the case that the most expensive camps have the best guides) and to a certain extent I also see safari as having a "social" element. The fact that one camp may have more gourmet type food versus more comfort food in others doesn't really make all that much personal difference. For example in Botswana, my absolute favourite 10/10 experience was &Beyond's Nxabega camp which was a fraction of the cost of the subsequent Wilderness premier camps that we stayed in (would rank them as 5/10).