The luxury safari camp market in Kenya has registered a new surge in acquisition deals, buoyed by investor appetite for a share of the rebounding global tourism industry.
The niche market segment has witnessed at least five major acquisition deals between July 2024 and July 2025, a huge development in the Kenyan tourism industry that continues to shake off the vagaries of the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down travel less than five years ago.
In the latest deal that was sealed on July 30, 2025, Lemala Camps and Lodges, a member of South Africa’s Trouvest Integrated Tourism Group and a premier safari accommodation brand across East Africa, acquired Tulia Amboseli Safari Camp, a property located just outside Kenya’s Amboseli National Park and popular with the rich.
The acquisition marks the company’s first luxury safari camp in Kenya and adds to its portfolio in East Africa. Lemala Camps and Lodges runs luxury lodges, villas, and classic tented camps located across Tanzania’s Serengeti, Ngorongoro, and Tarangire regions, as well as along Uganda’s River Nile.
“We are thrilled to welcome Tulia Amboseli Safari Camp into the Lemala family…. This acquisition allows us to deepen our presence in the region while honouring our commitment to low-impact, community-integrated hospitality,” Leanne Haigh, CEO of Lemala Camps & Lodges, said, adding that Tulia Amboseli Safari Camp would retain its identity with no immediate plans for rebrand.
The Tulia Amboseli Safari Camp acquisition comes a week after family-owned hospitality and travel group Hemingways Hospitality acquired Richard’s River Camp, a luxury tented safari facility in the Masai Mara, marking a back-to-back acquisition of luxury camps in Kenya by the company in less than two years.
Richard’s River Camp is an exclusive, 18-bed safari lodge located in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, in the Mara North Conservancy. The camp was founded by conservationists Richard Roberts and Liz Fusco.
“Richard and Liz have been pioneers of wildlife conservation in the Mara, instrumental in the creation of community conservancies such as Mara North, as well as founding partners of vital conservation initiatives such as Mara Elephant Project. Their impact cannot be understated, and we greatly appreciate the history and importance of what Richard and Liz have achieved,” Ross Evans, chief executive officer of Hemingways Hospitality Group, said following the acquisition sealed on July 22, 2025.
In 2023, Hemingways added Ol Seki Hemingways Mara, a tented camp located in the 50,000-acre Naboisho Conservancy, home to one of the densest lion populations in the Mara ecosystem.
In another deal in the Kenyan luxury safari camp market segment, Basecamp Explorer, a long-operating accommodations firm with properties in Kenya’s Masai Mara region, in August 2024 acquired Saruni, a luxury safari company with properties in the Masai Mara and Samburu.
The acquisition resulted in a new luxury conservation-focused safari brand known as Saruni Basecamp, with a portfolio of 12 properties, including safari lodges and camps fashioned on community-based conservation and tourism.
Demand for hospitality services continues to grow in the East Africa region, propelled by tourism and business conferences.
Investors are angling to ride on the resurgent industry with new facilities or the acquisition of existing businesses in various segments of the market.
A recent market survey by Lagos-based advisory W Hospitality Group, for example, showed that 26 hotels with a combined 4,344 rooms are in the development pipeline in Kenya this year, compared to 25 hotels with 4,268 rooms in 2024, according to the Hotel Chain Development Pipeline in Africa 2025 report published.
W Hospitality Group compiles the data based on private disclosures by 50 leading hotel chains operating in Africa on deals made for either planned or ongoing construction of hotels in any of the 54 countries in Africa.
Apart from forays in the niche safari camp segment, Kenya is banking on the beach hotel business segment for growth after losing its edge as a safari destination to Tanzania. Kenya received 2.4 million visitors in 2024, representing a 14 percent increase. In 2023, the country had 2.09 million tourists, up from the 1.4million in 2022.
Kenya attributed a surge in tourist arrivals in 2024 to its visa-free travel policy backed by an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system.
An ETA is an online system that assesses the eligibility of visitors before they travel. The Tourism ministry also launched nine regional tourism circuits, each highlighting unique attractions, to drive visitor numbers. The circuits included the Nairobi Circuit, South Rift Circuit, Central Kenya Circuit, North Eastern Circuit, and Eastern Circuit.
