Our story

wide-eyed and ill-equipped

Like all the best companies, ATR Safari started as a ridiculously naive and unlikely proposition.

A handful of wide-eyed youngsters started out with a vague idea of doing something cool and doing something for the greater good.

Only after decades of endless hard work and utter dedication, do we arrive at the company we see today.

Here’s a very abbreviated version of that crazy story.

The origins of ATR lie way back in the 1980s, when three foolhardy teenagers (Greg Welby, Tony Fishlock and Lenny Franklin) rejected the suffocating bosom of their home lives and spontaneously flew to Africa, in the naive and random hope of becoming safari guides.

Miraculously they ended up in the Kafue area of Zambia, working for legendary safari guide Map Patel.

A few years and many irresponsible adventures later, for various complicated reasons, they all found themselves migrating back home and, soon enough, inexorably slipping right back into the dull ordinary lives that they’d fought so hard to escape.

the first attempt at escaping the monotony

a game of exquisite corpse defined our future

Ten years later, in 1999, the three friends (now an engineer, an accountant and a bar manager) once again felt those same simmering urges. Only now they were old enough to take themselves a little more seriously. They really did want to live more exciting lives after all.

One fateful day, along with four of their best friends, they managed to gather themselves around a kitchen table and discuss the possibilities of chucking it all in and doing something more interesting instead.

But what would that thing be?

A blank sheet of paper was produced and passed around the table. Each person wrote a one line description of this new venture, folding the page over before passing it on. When the paper had completed its circulation, it was unravelled and revealed.

The new venture would be centred on travel, it would involve meeting interesting people, it would be cash positive (since they had no money) and, above all, it would focus on doing something “for the greater good”, whatever that meant.

This is the true story of how we decided to start a safari and conservation company.

Now, it just so happens that one of the three founders had recently sat next to a man on a plane, who operated a small collection of rental properties on Zanzibar.

That was our starting point.

Within weeks, they found themselves based in a gloriously ramshackle Sultan’s Palace just north of Stonetown. These were exotic, exciting and nerve-wracking times.

Every day was spent travelling the length and breadth of the island, taking photos on a crappy little digital camera, cataloguing all the various hotels and guesthouses.

It was sweaty and chaotic work, but eventually they had captured enough information to return back to London and get down to work.

the zanzibar connection

the earliest days of the internet

Of course, back in 1999 the internet was pretty new.

Our team of three all knew vaguely what it was, they had used it to search for a few things and one of them had actually bought a book online.

Somehow this seemed to be the future, so they set about creating their first ever website.

It’s hard to describe quite how rudimentary it was, just a simple grid of content. The largest images were about the size of a postage stamp. Everyone was on 56k dial-up connections, so you had to watch the pictures download, line by tiresome line.

They called their new company “All About Zanzibar”.

Despite the rank amateurishness of this awful website, it was undoubtedly the best and most comprehensive resource on the internet for Zanzibar and, in no time at all, they were inundated with inquiries for accommodation.

Trouble was, everyone wanted to combine the island with safari on the mainland, so they next spent months travelling around all the safari lodges and campgrounds, ultimately publishing the information on a similarly terrible sister website called Into Tanzania.

Now we were really ready to roll.

expanding onto the mainland of East Africa

the talk of the town

One morning in 2002 the team was shocked to discover that The Daily Telegraph in London had published a massive two page spread about the nascent company.

Apparently this was “the future of travel, the future of the internet”.

We were the first people to properly collate and organise hotels and travel options on the web. Many years before companies like Expedia had even been dreamed of.

Up to that moment, it had just been a little old us, a small crew, working out of an apartment. Suddenly the whole thing started to feel a bit bigger and more important.

Another year later, the team was stunned to suddenly receive an email from Richard Branson, letting them know that they had won Virgin’s prestigious Fast Track award, as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK. Greg and Tony went off in a bit of a daze to meet the renowned entrepreneur and the Prime Minister.

A major problem that the team faced in the early years was that the internet was even younger in Africa.

We had to invest a huge amount of time and energy introducing hotel and lodge owners to the online world and setting them up with email accounts, in order that we could communicate. We even ended up running classes in some areas, so that we could teach their staff some computer basics.

Other big challenges included getting hold of hotel availability and guaranteeing that our bookings had been properly logged. Most properties still kept their master reservations in a book at the front desk. They were literally recorded in pencil, so our bookings could easily be erased in favour of a customer standing in the front lobby.

We had to introduce a number of intense checking procedures to overcome this and other major issues. At one stage we actually had full time members of staff cycling around the various properties to physically check our bookings.

It all sounds like ancient history now, but that’s how it was.

revolutionising the mechanics of travel

desirable, aspirational and addictive

One of the most gratifying aspects of running our little company over the years has been the remarkable extent to which our guests enjoy their safari experiences.

We are so lucky to have a ‘product’ that is so utterly fantastic.

We have long-since come to appreciate the power of safari, the rejuvenating effect of nature and the contagious passion of the local people.

Within a few months of starting, we had become used to feedback like “a life-changing experience” or “the best thing we’ve ever done in our lives”.

Fortunately, whenever we feel a bit run-down or disillusioned, we too are able to head out on safari to recharge.

Having established ourselves in Tanzania, our next task was to visit all of the other safari countries in Africa, to inspect and photograph every single property and to determine how best to combine them into epic trips.

This turned out to be a bit of a serious undertaking. In fact it took us almost seven years.

Although travelling around from one safari lodge to the next sounds like the best job in the world, in reality it proved to be one of the most draining of tasks. As we gradually wore ourselves out, we had to employ increasingly younger, fitter and more energetic photographers to take up the reins.

But we were determined and, eventually, we completed this initial pass, delivering the first (and still the only) website that shows what all the various safari camps and lodges are really like.

To this day we remain the only people who regularly visit, inspect and photograph all of the safari lodges in Africa. It’s at the heart of what we do.

expanding across Africa

our conservation mission

From the earliest days we realised that the only practical way to conserve and protect the wild parts of the world that we love is through sustainable tourism.

In developing countries, conservation is almost entirely funded by tourist revenues. Without tourism the whole thing would most likely fall apart.

As you will recall, one of the primary objectives of setting up our company was to do something “for the greater good”. From the outset we have always considered ourselves primarily to be conservationists.

From the earliest days, we realised that the most effective way to drive conservation would be to maximise our influence on the market as a whole. Getting only our guests to do the right thing would never be enough, we needed to influence the safari decisions of as many people as possible.

That’s why we renamed our company Africa Travel Resource.

In 2006, we carried out an informal survey amongst guests in safari lodges across Africa.

To our amazement, we discovered that around 60% of all safari travellers were choosing which lodges to include in their trip by looking at our website. We had achieved the position of primary influencer.

At the time, safari was coming under threat from global corporate hotel companies, which wanted to destroy the national parks by building hotel lodges with hundreds of rooms and flooding key areas with vehicles.

We deliberately used our high profile to steer visitors away from these sordid commercial companies and towards smaller safari operators, who we knew were primarily motivated by conservation.

Travellers were very responsive. Fortunately, the people agreed with us. Smaller, more intimate and more environmentally sensitive lodges were what they wanted.

Soon enough, other agencies around the world cottoned on and started to mimic our approach.

We do not claim to have single-handedly created the wonderful world of contemporary safari, but we are extremely proud to have played a significant part.

the deliberate promotion of intimacy and authenticity

a massive conservation success story

The dominant success story through these decades has been the tremendous rise in revenues from sustainable safari tourism.

In most of the countries where we operate, safari travel is now one of the top three industries.

Since 1999, we have seen tourism revenues increase at least five fold, we have seen the areas under conservation expand by around 40% and we have seen an end of trophy hunting in over half of the previously active areas.

In the old days, getting conservation on the agenda in these countries was really hard work to, but now every president and every finance minister is acutely aware of the positive steps they need to take in order to protect the environment and continue to encourage and expand tourism.

Having secured the future of almost all the major safari areas, in recent years we have started to turn our attention to the dozens of lesser-known and more peripheral locations, where conservation needs remain urgent. Hopefully, within another decade or so, we will have helped to establish tourist revenues in those areas too, providing them with long term security and protection.

It is very gratifying to know that we have played even a small part in this remarkable story. We are now confident that huge areas of wilderness will be protected through the present era of peak humanity, to the time of unending sustainability that will inevitably follow.

Since the earliest days of operation, our lovely guests have been asking us whether we know of companies like ours on other continents.

In 2019, after years of procrastination, we finally took the plunge and started to seriously consider expanding beyond Africa.

We were astounded to discover that, although most other continents have large and established tourism industries, there really isn’t another company like ours.

Whilst researching regions in South America and the Indian Subcontinent, we have managed to discover many wonderful conservation projects and make contact with some superbly passionate and knowledgeable naturalist guides. They were so relieved to hear from us, they felt so disconnected.

We are pleased to say that we have now established operations in many countries beyond Africa and, most importantly, that the revenues that drive conservation are starting to grow nicely.

building revenues for conservation

joining forces to forge the future

Like so many people, during Covid, we had plenty of time to peer into the abyss and contemplate the complete demise of everything we had worked for.

The big corporates were keen not to let a good crisis go to waste and we were approached by various vultures, looking to acquire our distressed assets.

But we did realise that teaming up with a larger organisation could provide us with greater financial security and peace of mind, so we remained open to conversations.

Fortunately, we were approached by The Nawiri Group, a conservation company which was forged by good friends from the safari world.

They too appreciate that tourism is an essential component of conservation. More specifically, that the guiding of guests into the right locations and to the right operators is mission critical.

The synergies could not have been greater.

In 2024, ATR Safari entered into a formal agreement with Nawiri. We are now officially partners, working together to achieve our shared conservation ambitions.

So far as our guests are concerned, this arrangement has no significant impact. ATR Safari continues to be owned and operated by the same team, including all of the original founders. We also continue to put trips together in exactly the same way, specifically with no bias towards using lodges owned by other companies in the same group.

In other words, we have managed to acquire all the benefits of being part of a larger entity, whilst retaining all the advantages of being a fully independent company.

Onwards and upwards!

Extraordinary tailor-made adventures,
from earthy and edgy to easy and extravagant

From around USD 2500 per person, you set the ceiling

Sample Trips

Here are some of our popular trip shapes