Luxury
A clear step up in space, service and location, with the wild right outside the door. For guests who count the stay as part of the journey.
Safari lodges & camps
ArushaArusha Coffee Lodge
It stops the Arusha night from being a layover. The car turns off the main road into a tree-lined drive, the coffee estate shuts the city out — and the trip has, in effect, already started.
TarangireMulti-tierLemala Mpingo Ridge
What stands out here is the view. The lodge is built along a ridge inside Tarangire National Park, and everything — rooms, restaurant — looks down the length of the Tarangire valley. Plenty of hotels sell you on "staying inside the park"; Mpingo Ridge goes one step further: the game drive can be over and you are still sitting there watching Tarangire.
Lake EyasiMulti-tierZiwani Lodge
Wilderness the whole way — and then, at the end of it, a small oasis of white walls, stone and timber. What moved us is not the luxury but the sheer improbability of it being there. If Lake Eyasi is on your route and the budget allows, this is where we send you, almost without deliberating.
NgorongoroNgorongoro Lodge Meliá Collection
Unlike most wilderness luxury, which leans on the feel of canvas, this is a genuine international five-star — built on the rim of the crater, pairing the most valuable view in Ngorongoro with modern hardware and hotel-grade service. The game drive ends and the crater is still there, in front of the pool and the restaurant.
NdutuLake Masek Tented Lodge
In an area dominated by seasonal mobile camps, Masek takes comfort about as far as Ndutu allows: the same lakeside, core game-viewing position, but with a real bathtub, power around the clock and a pool — comfortable, without giving up the wild.
Central SerengetiFour Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti
It asks you to trade almost nothing between staying in genuine wilderness and staying in a genuinely top-tier hotel — it gives you a five-star resort first, then puts the whole Serengeti outside the window.
Western SerengetiMulti-tierMbalageti Serengeti
Built on the Mwamveni ridge with an enormous outlook — restaurant, pool and public areas all look out over open plains. Its real selling points are the position, the view and a thoroughly traditional African safari atmosphere; how good the stay itself feels depends largely on which room you take.
Northern SerengetiLemala Kuria Hills
The northern Serengeti is not short of expensive, excellent lodges. What is rare is one where the position is good enough, the rooms comfortable enough and the service genuinely high — and the price is unusually kind. Kuria Hills stands exactly there, and every suite comes with its own plunge pool.
Zanzibar
ZanzibarBaraza Resort & Spa
After several days in the African bush you arrive at the Indian Ocean and check into something built like a Zanzibari sultan’s palace — luxurious, and never letting you forget which coast you are on. That is how a trip should close.
ZanzibarKilindi Zanzibar
What wins people over here is a kind of privacy that "five-star" does not really cover: once you are in, there are few people, a great deal of space, and nothing you need to think about. Budget permitting, it is the property we most recommend on the main island of Zanzibar.