Planning travel to anywhere in the world always comes with one big, overarching question: “How much will it cost?”. When all of us look at planning trips, we often start with an understanding of what our budget can allow. That budget is different for each of us, and it changes depending on financial resources and desire. After all, someone passionately wanting to go to a destination is often prepared to spend more to fulfil that dream than someone else who is being dragged there. Interestingly enough, this is sometimes the case when couples travel together, and it is always a fun balancing act to manage!
We often approach travel planning from this one angle, looking at how we can align (or stretch) budgets to fit our desired experience. More often than not, it starts and ends with the same question: “What can I get for my money?”.
But what if we were to flip this approach on its head? Instead of asking, “How much will it cost?”, what does it look like when we ask, “What does paying more actually get me?”
As we continue to increase the budget for our trips, our trips start to move from one style of travel to the next. Let’s look at those categories and what sort of experience they offer.
The Too Cheap
Don’t confuse cheap with good value. Too Cheap is the lower cost version of something, be it a $2 T-shirt from an online retailer or a reheated hot dog in a petrol station.
When it comes to some travel companies, it’s pretty easy to spot this category. These are typically pre-packaged trips, run on frequent set dates, in set locations. They usually have flights included. You can find them plastered across the back of newspapers or on online discount sites, often with words like “Deal”, and the whole sales pitch is around how much it is apparently ”valued” at. This is the type of trip that, unlike anything else on this list, is actually designed price first. Similar to a piece of IKEA furniture, most of these start with an appealing price and then work backwards to find things to fit in within that. Experience be damned, this is about what will sell!
The good thing about these trips is that you will end up in the country you want to visit, for a low price. If you want to just tick the boxes and see the main sights with everyone else, then go for it. Some ‘stop and flop’ destinations like beach stays do well with this sort of thing. The downside of this is that the experience in more experiential destinations, like Africa, is typically lacking. That cut has to come from somewhere, and with the flights included, it isn’t coming from there. In fact, they often have a buffer built into the airfares to allow for availability and seasonality movement. So, the cut is instead coming from your land costs and from something that they hope you won’t notice (like a missing game drive). And if it is your first trip, you won’t notice when you book, but you will afterwards.
Fancy heading to South Africa for time with the animals? Most of these 20-day tours only have 1 day in the Kruger National Park (much busier than the neighbouring reserves), with the rest of the time driving vast distances by coach between locations.
Want to head to East Africa to see the vast plains? Expect a few days sidelined in a random, remote location for no real reason. Lake Eyasi or Mwanza are two options we see pop up commonly in Tanzania, for example. Why? This diversion helps to keep the trip long enough to market but the price low enough to compare favourably to other itineraries. This is because safaris are more expensive than a few days in a random location, so these operators can pad out the itinerary and look better side by side.
Want to visit Antarctica? You can, but it will usually be on the largest ship that allows shore landings (which is 500 passengers). With 500 passengers being the maximum limit for be allowed to make shore landings (but also only 100 people allowed at any one time) this large ship will give you far less time onshore at the location. If you don’t know these rules, then when you book, you won’t know the difference.
And flexibility? That costs extra.
The Good Value
This is where, at The Explorer Society, we begin our range of options. Cheap is never worth doing, but good value is always worth looking for. In terms of standards, for Africa and South America, this is usually around the 3-star range. For the Middle East, this is often around the 4-star range. This sort of accommodation is simple, clean and comfortable. It’s never the focus of the trip, but it enables you to take the trip and enjoy it to its fullest.
In safaris in Southern Africa, this usually means that the lodge you stay in usually isn’t the famous location or the most central, but it still offers a good quality safari. And more importantly, it isn’t, unlike the Too Cheap category, completely isolated from the experience. It will likely mean a private reserve or concession, often linked to other reserves or to the national parks themselves. The savings here come from the more simple standard of accommodation. This is the same in the Middle East, where this level usually just means a simpler hotel located a bit further away (but not too far) from the action. You can see this in Cairo, with the Giza hotels being a few blocks back from the Pyramid view, and quite a bit cheaper.
In East Africa, this standard of travel usually means that your lodge will be bigger, rather than smaller and boutique. It might be a chain of African lodges, which allows you to string together long stay deals. This will almost always be on a small group tour, as it is more affordable to divide transport costs and guides amongst fellow travellers. It is still small group travel, and still in the right locations, but you can expect simple accommodation and a few buffet meals along your way.
In Antarctica or the Arctic, this standard means you still can travel on a small expedition ship, but it might be an older one. It’s typically been refurbished, but your cabin will have twin beds (not doubles), portholes and often some funky wood panelling.
At the end of the day, this level is about opportunity. Not everyone can afford to travel in style, but they should still be able to travel well. This standard delivers great value options at a price that doesn’t exclude everyone. And remember, there is no such thing as a 3-star lion or the cheap snow in Antarctica.
Side note: Interestingly enough, there is also a large group of people who choose to travel in this category but also get there using business class airfares. Again, value is in the eye of the purchaser.
The Mid Range
This is arguably the most popular way to travel in our Society, especially amongst our Australian travellers. Again, value is an important factor here, but this level is for travellers who want a bit of extra comfort as they travel, and also to be able to travel where and when they want to. This might also be for travellers who want to travel on longer trips (i.e. 30 days or more), which means their healthy budget has to stretch across the longer length of the trip. Whilst this category covers a wide variety of budgets, the unifying feature is that all of these travellers want something a bit special for their trip.
This special might be the accommodation level, but it also might be the destination. This is because this category also unlocks itineraries in more expensive destinations like Botswana or Zambia, which have a barrier to entry to some travellers because of the higher base cost. This might be because of the light aircraft flights required, like in Botswana, or because of associated fees (i.e gorilla permits in Rwanda and Uganda).
At this standard, your lodge options in Southern Africa tend to divide into two choices. One is to get closer to the ‘action’. For example, this can mean a nice lodge located closer to the famed Sabi Sands area in the Kruger Reserves of South Africa, close to where the premium lodges are situated. The other way is to stay where you are but go smaller, with camps that have less of a communal feel and more of a private escape. Fly-in lodges in Hwange (Zimbabwe) or even lovely, intimate guided tours in Namibia, this is the range that allows that sort of travel.
In East Africa, this budget level allows access to private itineraries, meaning you can design a trip around your wishes. This might be using a light aircraft flights or a privately guided vehicle, but the main factor here is the flexibility it offers. It means you can choose the trip you want, rather than choosing from a set list of options.
In the polar regions, the ship generally gets a little more modern, at least on the inside. This allows small ship travel, but with more comfort. Admittedly, there can be a gulf between the good value and the premium in these destinations, although some bridge that gap.
The ‘5 star’
This is an interesting category, and an interesting type of traveller.
There’s a good reason we don’t use star ratings. As a rating system purely for gauging the amenities of a city hotel, it makes sense. As a system for rating the experience, there are fatal flaws. ‘5-star’ has become shorthand for luxury, but as anyone who has stayed in a 5-star Big Name Hotel in a city can attest, luxury can be a difficult concept to pin down. Does a generic room with a marble bench top, a concierge desk, and a business centre mean it is a better place to stay than an intimate, boutique hotel? The more grand a hotel in some places can also mean it becomes larger, unwieldy and impersonal. Your hotel might have 100 rooms and a fountain, but if you have nowhere to comfortably sit in your small room, then how luxurious is it? And when it comes to locations with wildlife, like Africa or Antarctica, what is a 5-star stay? It is a fancy Big Name Hotel in an ok spot, or a small and private tented camp in a stunning spot?
The ‘5-star’ category appeals to people who want to stay at a Big Name Hotel. You can see this sort of thing in the luxury American chain hotels that have been built in the Masai Mara. You know what to expect, for as it is almost the exact same thing you can get in Thailand, Singapore or France. The location is almost secondary, as you are merely staying at this Big Name Hotel. And, you get to use points!
However, sometimes this famed ‘5 star’ might be an iconic old hotel, one that has sat there for 100 years (with plumbing that has also sat there for 100 years). For these travellers, sometimes the experience matters less than saying they have stayed at ‘that’ hotel. This is a trickier one, as to be fair, some of these grand hotels have been carefully restored and updated, with modern amenities cleverly woven around the character of the building. But then there are the ones that coast by, living off the name, happy to deliver old rooms at modern prices, giving you a high tea and a manufactured feeling of history. However, just because something has stuck around doesn’t mean it is good (just ask influenza). For this sort of information, ask an expert (hello!) and find out the real experience of these hotels. We’ve been there, we’ve seen it.
For polar regions, this same approach applies, but we merely replace the Big Name Hotel with the Big Name Ship. It is often a mid-sized ship, travelling around the world on certain cycles, draping itself in luxury. They talk about their gastronomy and their sumptuous suites, each with a butler. In this case, the ships are usually new and quite luxurious, but there still remains a flaw. The clue to identifying whether this is a good ship or a ‘5-star’ Big Name Ship is to look at their itineraries or marketing. When you look at their itineraries for any destination, including dream destinations like Antarctica, the information almost always focuses on the Big Name Ship. Never mind what you do, or the things you might see in the destination, that is less important in terms of information given than the Big Name Ship. For some travellers, the destination is the ship, which just happens to be in Antarctica. Antarctica is what you see out the windows, or occasionally visit, but you are travelling on this ship.
At the end of the day, if you want to fulfil a wish by staying at a Big Name Hotel or a Big Name Ship, then power to you. But, if that accommodation option wasn’t a long-held dream, then often it is a case of putting the cart before the horse. You should plan your accommodation around the location and the experience, not the location you visit around the accommodation. Save those points for a vacation, not an exploration.
The Premium
This category is the crème de la crème of standards. It feels almost insulting to list them as 5-star hotels, for the reasons given above. These are all definitely luxurious and are often rated at 5-star levels, but are typically unique to each location and cleverly designed around the local environment. This is the difference between the Premium and the ‘5-star’ options, because with Premium the comfort doesn’t make it less authentic. Rather than choosing the luxury over the experience, as some travellers fear, in this way you merely experience the destination in great comfort.
In this category, the service level is sky high, the accommodation well thought out and the food worthy of high end restaurants. Travellers who visit these lodges and hotels love and appreciate these elements, but tellingly, they never remember them first. They instead remember the experience that the location delivers. All that the lodge provides, deliberately, comes in service of showing off the incredible aspects of the area. This is by using local materials, training and employing the local community and reflecting the unique sense of place the lodge sits on. This is just as true at Estancia Cerro Guido in Patagonia, or Sabi Sabi in South Africa, or Mara Plains in Kenya.
The big difference with this standard compared to the ‘5 star’ is that the feeling of the place changes from lodge to lodge, with each of them aiming for their own unique character and interpretation of the local environment. The standard may be the same, but the feeling changes. This also leads to flexibility that only these places can provide, with customisation of experience and a smaller ratio of guests to guides. In fact, as you journey up into this range, you will find the lodges and ships shrink in size. The luxury comes from the exclusivity of it all, of the connections you can make when you have the undivided attention of the guide showing you this land. Camps and lodges here might only have a few rooms, or maybe solely exclusive use, catering only to private groups. Rather than journey along well-trodden paths, you can then receive an experience that is created for you. Rather than forcing an experience through their branded mould, they instead just shape it for you. In this category, you are often in the ‘best’ location, and with healthy-sized private conservancies and concessions. There are no crowds, just you and the local experience.
In polar regions, this premium category comes across in two different ways. One is via the more modern small ship expedition vessels, with modern ships and cutting-edge design. These ships are designed for the regions they travel in and focus on the destination, rather than the ship. And because of this, the destination list expands, visiting areas well beyond the standard itinerary. In Antarctica, this might mean places like the Ross Sea or Snow Hill. In the Arctic, it means visiting the Northwest Passage and Western Greenland. These ships will shrug off the luxury tag, preferring to call themselves exploratory, but they are very comfortable explorers.
The other way to define Premium, in the polar regions, is to have even more personalised adventures. This is accomplished by using very small, and even micro ships, taking 1/2 to 1/10th the number of passengers as the small ships. This allows, again, for customisation and unrivalled attention from the onboard experts, as well as a sense of involvement in the trip. You are no longer a passenger, but now part of the expedition. There is a big difference between 500 passengers and 50, and that changes all aspects of the experience.
It should go without saying that the downside of this category is the cost. This premium experience isn’t cheap and is well out of reach for many travellers. And don’t get us wrong, you don’t need to travel at this level in order to have a wonderful time. However, if you can travel at this level, then you are definitely getting the highest levels of experience, in all aspects of your trip.
The Remote
As seen in the Premium category, having extra funds means access to higher standards of accommodation. However, what it also allows for is access to unique and incredible experiences, far beyond the beaten path. If you want to explore back like it was the early 1900s, this is what that means. And yes, it was costly back then, too.
This category is devoted to remote opportunities, like fly-in safaris in the Congo, setting foot where hardly anyone has ever done so before. It means to head to more remote parts of Africa, like the deserts of Tswalu in South Africa or the untouched wild southern regions of Tanzania. In Antarctica, this can mean enjoying a semi-circumnavigation of the continent or flying on chartered private jets to stay on the continent in isolated wild camps. It might mean heading to the South Pole or using an icebreaker to reach the North Pole. These are luxury experiences, but more importantly, these are happening in wild and remote areas. Operating in these locations isn’t cheap, especially as they might be the only ones in that region, and this is where the cost (and the value) comes into it.
Paradoxically, the price of these experiences doesn’t always align with the standard of the accommodation. Indeed, Remote doesn’t always mean it is Premium. For these types of travellers, this can mean foregoing luxury as you head into developing (or redeveloping) areas, like Gorongosa in Mozambique. Or, somewhere like wild Kafue in Zambia, it might mean staying in a simple tent by the river, but the whole safari camp is yours. The money you pay for these experiences can come down to something as simple as the cost of getting both you and the camp there. In a full circle moment, back to the Good Value category, this again means simple accommodation. Here again, you are paying for the destination.
The other major difference here is that, unlike telling people you stayed at a ‘5-star’ Named Hotel, the people you tell will have no idea where you went. They often will have never even heard of it. You have this experience all to yourself and have explored it in the true sense.
Which level is best?
Ultimately, the word ‘luxury’ has been hijacked in a never-ending arms race to focus on amenities and social media-grabbing eccentricities. But true luxury isn’t about these things.
The world we live in is amazing. It is creative, inventive, stunning and never ceases to wow travellers immersed in it. You don’t need ridiculous amenities and gold-leafed eccentricities to help someone enjoy their stay. A lodge, a ship, or a hotel just needs to allow the location to shine. True luxury is a true look at a location, far away from the crowds and bucket list tickers, with all the little things considered. We have stayed at countless varieties of lodges, hotels and ships. We don’t remember the thread count of the sheets, but we do remember the moments shared with family and (new) friends.
True luxury is the ability to make the trip your own and experience the destination as it is and should be. This means that the trip doesn’t all have to be one standard of accommodation. This might mean that the perfect trip for you could be a mix of Good Value, Premium and Mid Range places, with a Remote thrown in. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the trip is yours, and it allows you to experience it in the style you want, with the people you want. Whether the drink be a bespoke cocktail in a Premium lodge at a private sundowner, a cold beer in a wildlife hide at a Mid Range lodge or a soft drink on the deck of an old Good Value ship in the cold, as long as you are experiencing the destination in a true way, then it is the right place to go.
So forget how much something costs. How much is the experience worth?
