One operator, an enormous area, and a number of beds written into a lease

What a concession is

An exclusive-use lease over a defined area, granted to a single operator. The land may be state land or held by a community trust; either way the operator holds it for a term and pays for it.

The lease sets the terms: how many beds may exist, what activities are permitted, what the operator must pay and on what basis. Those terms — not the camp’s own preferences — are what govern your week.

What the lease typically permits

• Off-road driving to a sighting, which the national parks and reserves do not allow.
• Night drives, opening a different set of animals and most of the hunting behaviour.
• Walking with an armed guide, which on concession land is real rather than nominal.
• Mokoro and boating, where the water and the concession allow it.
• Exclusive access. No day visitors, and no vehicles from other operators.

None of that is available in Chobe National Park or Moremi Game Reserve at any price, which is the single most useful distinction in Botswana planning.

Who gets paid

Concession fees and bed levies flow to government, and where land is held by a community trust, to that trust. Park entry charges go to the parks authority.

A significant part of a concession fee is payable on the lease rather than on occupancy, which is the clause that matters: somebody is being paid to keep the land as wilderness through a low season with no guests in it.

That is the same principle as a Kenyan community conservancy lease, operating at larger scale with the state as a more central party. Where a concession is community-held, the trust generally publishes its own arrangements, and we would rather point you at that than characterise it for you.

Why concession camps are small

Because the lease says so. A bed cap across an area makes a forty-room lodge impossible and a nine-tent camp the natural unit, and it forces the operator to earn the rent from very few guests.

The consequence for a traveller is a camp small enough to bend around you and a sighting that belongs to your vehicle. The consequence for the invoice is the nightly rate.

The question to ask about every camp

Is this camp on a concession, in a national park, or in a reserve — and where do its activities actually happen?

A one-sentence answer exists for every camp in Botswana. Some camps on the edge of the parks run their game drives into the park each morning, which returns the day to statutory rules however the bed was booked.

What a concession does not guarantee

Animals. A large empty lease is still subject to season, water and luck, and some concessions are genuinely better for game than others.

Emptiness is the reliable product; density is not. Anybody selling a concession on the promise of a particular sighting has moved from describing a lease to making a promise nobody can keep.