Singita: Understanding The Brand

If there’s one thing I love about a brand, it’s when it doesn’t make me do any work and knows exactly what it stands for.  Yes, laziness is my life’s work.

Most brands understand this.  McDonald’s?  Cheap poison.  Apple?  High-quality products that make you a better person simply by owning them, as I remind myself each time I buy another one.  Lamborghini?  Small penis.  Easy.

The safari world works differently.  Great Plains splits into Réserve Collection and Explorers Collection.  Natural Selection runs the same trick with different adjectives.  Wilderness offers Premier, Classic, and an “Adventures” category, presumably for people who want to live out their Ghost and the Darkness fantasies, sleeping next to a railway and being murdered by lions.

So one group can offer very different options, just to confuse you, but the divide was at least obvious.  You’d arrive at a Classic Camp and, before the hairs on the back of your neck could stand up, you’d feel your soul leave your body, screaming, and evaporate into the cursed walls of that squalid little building.  Then you’d arrive at a Premier Camp and your feet would lift off the ground as a cloud of joy swept across your loins and released ecstasy into your veins.  Good times.

These days, some “Classic” camps earn the label purely because they don’t have a plunge pool. And plunge pools are shit.  There are now so many inconsistencies within brands that it is impossible to keep on top of them without visiting every single property — and even then, they refurb, relaunch and get bought out often enough that your notes are out of date by the time you land.  Meanwhile, every person in sales is explaining that their product is the finest thing ever assembled by human hands.

Singita doesn’t do this.

One Tier to Rule Them All

Historically, this has been a wonderful thing.  You think Singita, you think high-end.  Done.  This is a very deliberate company, often the most expensive in the areas they operate, fixated on private concessions and not seeing other vehicles, and lots of lovely jubbly rooms and facilities.  Seven years passed between their last two openings.  World domination is clearly not the plan.

And then I went to Singita Explore and Singita Mara River Tented Camp.  It was like discovering that Einstein and Mother Teresa were actually Kardashians.  Explore and Mara River are, put bluntly, awful camps.  Peel the Singita name off, hang a stranger’s logo in its place, and both would be judged harshly, even if they cut their rates in half.

Mara River is like stepping into a camp from 20 years ago, one that opened to no fanfare, as it was already out of date and PR wanted to hide the public shame. It’s basic, built in canvas, unbearably hot during the day, and lacking anything approaching luxury. And then I had the weirdest guide in history, who looked like he was having his own Falling Down moment.  And yet it is Shangri-La next to Explore. Explore is an exclusive-use camp where, if you would like a shower, somebody has to warm up a bucket for you.

Singita Explore

Three Hundred Dollars of Daylight

Which brings me to Sasakwa.  I came here straight after Mara River Tented Camp, and could only laugh, at the idea that this place costs a mere $300 per person per night more.  There is nothing that these properties share in common, other than a logo.  Sasakwa, Sabora, Faru Faru – excellent properties in the Grumeti area.  Milele, Kilima, Serengeti House – even better Signita-run villas.

Sasakwa is a manor house on a hill.  Tennis courts, library, pool room, spa, gym, your own heated pool, and one of the great views in East Africa.  A Cottage at Sasakwa and a room at Mara River sit in broadly the same price band.  That is insane.  One of those two properties is a wild bargain.  The other is the reason I can’t sleep at night, sitting up doing sums like Jim Carrey in The Number 23. You didn’t watch it, did you? How I envy you. It’s like a Monet and a carrier bag of dogshit going under the hammer on the same afternoon and fetching the same price.

So what’s the point of all this? God knows. If you can work out my own mind, do let me know.  I think it’s this: no brand is as consistent as you want it to be. Not Cheval Blanc, judging by what it has become and definitely not from what it seems to be becoming. Not anyone. Except maybe Airelles?  Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.  It would be nice to have one you could rely on completely in Africa, and I had hoped that was Singita.  Alas.

Also, there’s something that feels deceptive about it. With the prices all being similar, the Singita name tricks you into thinking it’s the same. But all it’s doing is using the “no one ever got fired for hiring IBM” maxim. Yes, I’m almost 40, and still reference IBM. Basically, it makes you think that you’re going somewhere great.

Singita Sasakwa Hillside Suite

And Yet, Elela

Elela opens in the Okavango on 11 December, on the old Abu concession, and I’m probably more excited about it than they are.  Eight stilted camps, 170,000 hectares, private guides, private chefs, created so that each room is its own self-isolated camp.  Sounds mental.  Sounds great.

I’ve just spent five hundred words explaining the issues with two of their camps, and I’ve already booked to visit next year.  Consistency, it turns out, isn’t the same thing as excellence.