Kenya safari and Zanzibar beach holiday

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION

Two of the trip’s named properties generate their own renewable power. Breezes Beach Club and Spa runs a 1MW solar installation of 2,640 panels, enough to power the equivalent of around 700 homes, and has cut its water consumption by half through indigenous plant landscaping rather than irrigation-hungry lawns. Zanzibar Serena Hotel operates on a grid-tied solar system, one of several Serena properties across East Africa doing the same.

Fairmont, which operates the Nairobi hotel on night one, has committed as a group to a 46% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a target validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative, and has joined the UN’s Global Tourism Plastics Initiative to remove single-use plastics from its hotels.

Vegetarian and vegan meals available upon request.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

The stay at Giraffe Manor sits beside the AFEW Giraffe Centre, set up in 1979 to protect the giraffe population in Kenya when numbers had fallen to around 130. More than 27 giraffes bred and raised through the centre have since been returned to the wild in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service, and the wider population in Kenya has climbed past 1,000. Guests can visit on foot from the manor’s own grounds, and the property’s giraffe sponsorship scheme sends half of each donation directly to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

In the Masai Mara, Leopard Hill sits inside the Naboisho Conservancy, land leased directly from Maasai landowners rather than owned by the lodge, which keeps it under community control rather than open to subdivision or cultivation. The conservancy runs a low-volume, low-impact tourism model and is recognised for having some of the highest lion densities anywhere in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. Game drives here are also led by Maasai guides drawn from the surrounding communities.

Breezes Beach Club and Spa treats its wastewater and reuses it for irrigation rather than discharging it, and has removed single-use plastics from the resort in favour of recyclable materials and glass bottles. Its own marine biologist oversees reef protection directly offshore and trains staff in marine conservation.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY
Saruni Leopard Hill’s Naboisho lease payments support more than 500 Maasai families with a direct monthly income, in many cases the first time these landowners have had a steady income from the land itself rather than from farming it or selling it on. Saruni’s Basecamp Maasai Brand also gives women artisans a route to income through traditional beadwork, a model the Safari Collection mirrors at Giraffe Manor, where Samburu women’s cooperatives make the beaded giraffe keychains sold through the property.

Breezes Beach Club and Spa sources its fresh produce from farmers and fishermen on Zanzibar’s east coast, and works with local artisans on interior design and furnishings for the resort. Across the trip, ownership runs from an internationally branded city hotel and two international hotel groups through to a Kenyan safari operator built around a direct community land-lease model, so who benefits shifts across the trip rather than sitting with one operator throughout.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY
Staffing on the safari section of the trip is heavily local. Saruni Basecamp’s properties draw 86% of their staff from the neighbouring Maasai and Samburu communities, and the Naboisho Conservancy’s tourism camps as a whole report a 95% local workforce. Breezes Beach Club and Spa also prioritises hiring locally on Zanzibar’s east coast and promotes internally, running its own training programmes to move staff into management roles rather than bringing managers in from outside.