Why Exclusive Use Properties Are Worth It, Even in Small Groups

I love exclusive-use homes and villas.  I will go out of my way to stay in them, even when it might not make the most sense. Or, to a lot of people, any sense at all.  I’ve stayed at Ol Jogi (11 bedrooms) and Thanda Island (9 bedrooms) with just my dad.  Melote House (8 bedrooms), La Cigale (9 bedrooms), Moskito Island (11 bedrooms) with my wife and two kids.  And plenty of other places where the staff outnumbered us several times over.  I’ve even gone as far as staying in Kubili House (5 bedrooms) and Cheetah Plains (4 bedrooms) when traveling completely solo.

There’s an assumption that “exclusive use” only makes sense if you’re a group of eight plus people and you all share a tattoo from that time things got out of hand in Bangkok.  It’s often perceived as ideal for celebrating something loud, expensive and needing plenty of rooms for to store all the dead prostitutes.  In reality, the empty bedrooms don’t bite.  If you don’t use them, they don’t make it feel like you’re wandering through a haunted stately home at midnight, where a cursed, pale, porcelain doll called Annabelle stares at you from the end of the hallway.  An exclusive use property with just as a couple is great.  Or even just two adults and a couple of kids running feral around a lawn the size of a small principality.

Yet I’m often met by bewilderment when I mention it.  I guess the idea of all those unused bedrooms is somehow wasteful. Or unsettling. Or morally questionable.

So here’s the logic.

All Yours, Yours, Yours

Even at a very good lodge or resort, you are sharing the team.  The waiter has four tables.  The manager is firefighting someone else’s dietary meltdown. Maybe the safari guide is having the audacity to talk to someone else, which breaks your heart, because you really thought this time — this time — you two had something. The way he said “big male leopard” felt different.  At an exclusive-use property, King Kong ain’t got shit on you. You are God.

Take somewhere like Arijiju.  Five bedrooms.  Private concession.  Spa, gym, cinema room, tennis court, squash court, pool that elephants occasionally treat as their local water bar.

Now imagine being four people there.  You don’t feel like you’re “under-occupying” it. You feel like minor royalty.

Breakfast not just when you want it — 4pm, purely out of spite — but where you want it. Fancy relocating to a completely secluded spot for a full feast you decided on fifteen seconds ago? Congratulations. You now live like this.  Game drives when you want them too. Which, in my case, meant being out until 2am following lions because no one was tapping their watch or suggesting we “wrap up.”

Zero Friction Luxury

Which brings me to what I see as true ultra-luxury travel: zero friction.  Luxury isn’t about the quality of marble, it’s about absolute ease.  It’s frictionlessness.  No competing priorities.  No “we’ll see what we can do.”  No compromises because another guest has already booked the best guide or the best vehicle or the best dinner table.

Exclusive use eliminates things you didn’t even realise were there.

Quality

A lot of exclusive-use properties, like Singita Milele and Ol Jogi, are someone’s actual home. And you might not be surprised to learn that someone who can casually spend tens of millions of dollars on a house in the bush is unlikely to have gone to Home Depot.

Even if Ol Jogi did hire the interior designer of Mordor, whilst overcoming a glue sniffing problem, it is still an incredibly impressive, ambitious place that very clearly spared no expense.

Exclusivity

There’s a reason they’re called exclusive use.

Luxury hotels sell privacy as a concept.  Exclusive use delivers it at another level.  No waiting for your game drive vehicle because another room is running late.  No negotiating spa slots.  No having to clip your toenails in the discomfort of your massive suite, when you can do it right now, right here, in the pantry.

If you want to do a short drive because it’s hot and the kids are melting, you do that.  If you want to stay out for six hours tracking wild dogs, you do that.  If you want to take a load of meth and try and do unspeakable things to a dolphin….actually, that’s illegal. And really weird. Don’t do that.

When we’re talking about Africa, a lot of exclusive use properties are also on private concession, so you’re not queuing at sightings and you’re not lining up behind five vehicles because someone found a lion.  It might just be you.

Your Rules

I’ve lost count of how many safaris have been altered by the presence of that one guest who thinks they’re filming a wildlife documentary (ok,guilty, it’s normally me), or another who believes they own the place.  Ok, guilty, that’s also me.

When it’s exclusive use, the energy is yours.  Dinner can be long and boozy.  Or quick and efficient.  Kids can eat pasta in pyjamas whilst loudly singing whatever that song from K-Pop Demon Hunters that they endless do, without a single death stare from honeymooners.  You can sit in silence around a fire without someone explaining blockchain.  That is worth more than an extra bedroom you don’t strictly “need.”

Easier For Young Families

Which brings me to another very practical point: it’s infinitely easier for young families.

There’s no worrying about children being too loud.  Or learning all the rules about child friendly pool hours. No sudden horror when your child wanders into someone’s meticulously staged surprise engagement and permanently features in their proposal photos.  The house becomes yours.  The staff become familiar.  The kids relax faster.  And parents relax faster because most of these places are all inclusive and they’re trashed on the booze and there’s often a nanny included, looking after the kids.  I’ve booked countless first-time safari families into exclusive houses for this reason alone.  

It also teaches your children the valuable life lesson of sharing and understanding that not everything revolves around them.  Oh wait.

It Protects the Trip

This one is often overlooked. When you’re spending $150k–$300k on a trip, the biggest risk might not be the weather. It’s other guests. One enormous group with a portable speaker, or one dominant, obnoxious twat who thinks the Wolf of Wall Street was a training video, and suddenly you can hear the faint wail of police sirens as you’re gently away for having accidentally turned the trip into Scream 8. True story.

Exclusive use insulates the investment.

The Maths Isn’t as Mad as It Sounds

Let’s address the bit you’re pretending not to think about: the price.

Yes, exclusive-use properties look eye-watering on paper. $25,000 a night. $40,000 a night. Numbers that feel like someone fell asleep on the keyboard.

But divide that by four or five people and suddenly you’re often hovering around what you’d pay for top-tier suites at leading lodges anyway. Ok, not always. But more often than people assume.

It’s possible that you’re not adding spend so much as reallocating it. Instead of booking multiple premium rooms and sharing infrastructure with strangers, you’re buying the infrastructure itself.  We’re conditioned to fixate on nightly room rates, because that’s how hotels train us to think. But a vast suite in a mediocre hotel is still a mediocre experience.  What you’re really paying for at a hotel is all the staff and facilities, that’s really what you’re there for, and at an exclusive use property it’s all yours, all the time.

You Notice the Quality More

When it’s just you in a space, you actually experience it.  The architecture.  The art.  The silence.  The way light moves across a terrace at 6pm.  Ok, sorry, I snored off from how boring this all sounds.  But in an exclusive use property, you stop feeling like a guest.  You start feeling like it’s your place.

In a shared lodge, you often orbit the same spaces: dining room, main lounge, vehicle, suite.  In an exclusive-use house, you roam.  Cinema room at 3pm.  Gym at midnight.  Wine cellar tasting just because.  Long lunches that migrate from terrace to lawn to pool.  You extract more value because you use all the infrastructure you’re paying for.

Excess

C’mon, this is luxury travel.  Every single thing about it is excessive.  Why not take it to 11 and do it properly?

Conclusion

So, is staying in a large villa in a small group objectively strange? Or am I just less sociable than most people and fine with it?

If you measure value purely by bedrooms filled, probably not worth it.  If you measure it by ease, privacy, flexibility, luxury and overall quality of experience, then why are you even reading this sentence?  Just get on it.

Some of the best travel moments I’ve had were in houses that felt (temporarily) mine. Exclusive use isn’t about scale and showing how big your bollocks are, because you’ve secured an almighty mansion.  It’s about the complete experience.  And a small group can still deliver that.