Safari Is Booming. Guiding Isn’t

For years I thought private guiding was the most unnecessary industry on earth. Up there with politicians and whatever it is that M. Night Shyamalan now does. Good lodges have good guides. Why pay twice?

That used to be true. It’s becoming less so.

Safari lodges are becoming the new Starbucks, with one on every corner. Don’t get me wrong, some of it is exciting, like the recently announced Mokolwane Plains, and the upcoming Singita Elela and Suyian Homestead. Some of it is less thrilling, like the endless exploitation of the Mara and the new breach of brands entering the fray. Though I can’t shit on anyone wanting a livelihood, or wanting to grow their business.

Anyway, back to the point. The industry is growing faster than it can keep up with. Every new lodge needs guides, and great guides aren’t delivered in bulk by stork. You can’t make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant, and you can’t make a guide with 20 years’ experience as quickly as new lodges are opening.

In Zimbabwe, earning the professional licence that lets a guide lead walking safaris usually takes four years or more. Some take a decade, and plenty never make it. A lodge opening next season can’t wait that long, so camps are hiring very young, very inexperienced guides. And a licence only proves what a guide knows; it says nothing about whether you’ll want to spend a week with them.

Over the last few years, guiding quality has been slipping, often at excellent lodges. Everyone starts somewhere. I’d just rather they didn’t start on a client’s once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Before you all get overly paranoid, yes, you’ll still find excellent guides out there. But the odds have gone from around 99% to, let’s call it, 90%, in a very short space of time. I’ve been to multiple camps in the last year with highly inexperienced guides. Sometimes it’s a lack of knowledge, like the madness I experienced at Singita Mara River Tented Camp. Or sometimes it’s personality. Like I experienced at Singita Mara River Tented Camp.

And so, with great reluctance, we have to embrace that perhaps, for the first time ever, I was wrong.  Private guides are alright, ya know.  And now I confess: hiring a private guide starts to make sense. Perhaps this is going the way of business class: economy has got so bad that people pay up just for a semblance of humanity.  But avoiding a terrible time isn’t the only reason to hire one. First, experience. You choose who’s guiding you, rather than getting whoever’s allocated. Then there are your interests, like a specialist photographic guide, and continuity – one guide across a multi-camp trip means no starting from scratch every few days.

I expect more private vehicles, more lodges building guide rooms, and more travellers bringing their own guide.  Which means I’ll be recommending the very thing I used to shit on. I’d love to call it personal growth; it’s really just mercy.