Safari vs Private Island
Two ways to run a company offsite, side by side — group size, budget, where each concentrates, and the estates worth booking.
Plan a RetreatSafari
Big-game conservancies — game drives and once-in-a-career awe.
- Venues
- 20 exclusive-buyout estates
- Typical group
- 10–450 guests
- Indicative budget
- $1,200–$2,000 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Africa & Middle East
- Best for
- leadership, celebration, team building
Private Island
Whole-island buyout — total privacy and a captive company.
- Venues
- 18 exclusive-buyout estates
- Typical group
- 10–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $1,200–$2,350 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Caribbean & Latin America · Australasia · Southeast Asia
- Best for
- leadership, celebration, team building
Anantara The Royal Livingstone Victoria Falls Hotel
173 colonial-luxe rooms strung along the Zambezi, with private lawn access to the lip of Victoria Falls and conference space for up to ~450 delegates. This is the rare safari-adjacent property that hosts a full company at one address — plenary, gala under the spray, then sundowner cruises and game drives in Mosi-oa-Tunya as breakouts.
Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve
Four distinct lodges on one of the Big Five's most reliable traversing areas, owner-operated since 1979. Bush Lodge (the flagship, ~25 suites + conference facility) anchors the plenary while Earth Lodge, Selati Camp and Little Bush Camp absorb breakout groups — a coordinated full-reserve buyout that scales past the single-camp ceiling without losing the genuine wilderness feel.
MalaMala Game Reserve
The largest private big-five reserve bordering Kruger, MalaMala shares a 19-kilometre unfenced boundary with the national park and runs three camps — Main Camp, Sable Camp and Rattray's Camp. Taken together they host a full company on one of the highest-density wildlife tracts in Africa.
Atlantis Paradise Island
The Caribbean's only true large-conference campus that still feels like a holiday: 500,000+ sq ft of meeting space, a 50,000-sq-ft Imperial Ballroom that seats 4,000, plus 11-acre Aquaventure waterscape, an open-air marine habitat, a Tom Weiskopf golf course and a 63-slip mega-yacht marina. This is the one tropical basecamp that genuinely absorbs even several-hundred-strong companies — and well beyond — without partner overflow.
InterContinental Hayman Great Barrier Reef
The northernmost private island in the Whitsundays, taken whole, with 182 rooms, suites and villas and 15 indoor/outdoor event venues across the property. Guests arrive by a 50-minute yacht transfer from Hamilton Island, which makes the whole offsite feel like an expedition the moment it begins. Whitehaven Beach and the outer Great Barrier Reef are day-trips by tender.
Petit St. Vincent
A 115-acre private island resort in the southern Grenadines with 22 one- and two-bedroom cottages spread across the hillsides and beaches, holding up to 56 guests. No phones or TVs in the cottages, seven beaches and a whole island for an executive group.