Only One Safaris is a boutique safari specialist built on two decades of on-the-ground experience across East and Southern Africa. Here is who we are and why we work the way we do.
Only One Safaris is not a travel agency that sells Africa. It is a small, deliberately boutique operation built by two people who came to this work through Africa itself, who spent decades learning the industry from the inside, and who built this company specifically to offer individual travellers the kind of safari that their combined knowledge makes possible.
That distinction matters. Most safari operators start with a catalogue of camps and destinations and work outward toward clients who might book them. We start with the traveller, with a detailed understanding of who they are, what they need, and what the trip is actually for, and work inward toward the right combination of destination, ecosystem, guide, and pacing. The itinerary is the last thing we produce, not the first. The conversation that leads to it is where the real work happens.
This page explains who we are, how we work, and what we believe about safari travel. For the full version of any of these things, the dedicated pages below go considerably deeper.
Neither of the people behind this company planned to end up here. Both came to Africa the way many of our clients do: through exhaustion, through a need to find something that the life they had built was not providing, and through a first experience in the bush that changed the direction of everything that followed.
Mark Donnelly spent eight years building a career in specialist sports travel in England before a short safari in Tanzania in 2004 shifted something in him that he could not ignore. Within two years he had left the UK, moved to the foothills of Kilimanjaro, and begun building what would become one of the most respected safari operations in East Africa. Over the following fourteen years he owned and operated camps in the Serengeti and Lake Natron, managed a luxury Kilimanjaro climbing operation, and handled the African logistics for leading tour operators from the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. He planned thousands of journeys. He watched thousands of clients arrive stressed and leave transformed. When 2020 changed the world, he used the quiet that followed to build something different: a company designed not for scale but for the individual traveller who wanted everything he had learned applied directly to their specific trip.
Martina Hirschberg climbed Kilimanjaro in 2003 and came down knowing that Africa was going to be central to her professional life. By 2007 she had built her own specialist safari business, designing individual itineraries across East and Southern Africa. Over the following seventeen years she worked across twelve countries and completed more than forty personal safaris across the same terrain she plans for clients. Not to accumulate credentials, but to keep her knowledge genuinely current. Her particular depth lies in Southern Africa, where her direct relationships with guides, operators, and conservancy partners across Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa span nearly two decades of sustained engagement.
For the full stories of how Mark and Martina came to this work, and what their combined experience means for the safaris they design, read About the Only One Safaris Team.
We believe that the difference between a good safari and a transformative one is almost never about which camps appear on the itinerary. It is about whether the itinerary was designed around the specific person taking it, by someone who understands both the person and the destination well enough to make that design meaningful.
We believe that curation and selection are not the same thing. Selecting from a catalogue of available camps is administration. Curation is the application of deep direct knowledge to a specific brief, knowing which guide changed recently, which conservancy has quietly become exceptional, which format suits this particular traveller and which will leave them feeling exposed. That kind of knowledge does not live in a database. It lives in the accumulated experience of people who have spent years on the ground.
We believe that honest advice at the planning stage is worth more than reassuring advice. If a budget cannot deliver the experience a client is imagining, we say so before they commit, not after. If a destination is wrong for the group, we explain why rather than accommodate the preference. If an itinerary is overpacked, we simplify it even when the client initially wants more. The safaris that produce the results we are in this business to produce are almost always the ones where the planning conversation was honest rather than agreeable.
For the full account of what we believe and why, read The Only One Philosophy.
Every client works with either Mark or Martina directly, from the first conversation through to their return. There is no call centre, no junior consultant, no handoff between departments. The person who understands your brief builds your itinerary and remains your point of contact throughout the trip. That continuity is not a premium feature. It is the only way we know how to do this properly.
We limit the number of clients we work with at any time specifically to ensure that every safari receives the attention it requires. When you contact us, you will hear back from one of us personally, usually within twenty-four hours. The conversation that follows will be about you and your trip, not about our available inventory.
We work across a full range of budgets, but we will always tell you honestly what a given budget can and cannot deliver in a specific destination. Some destinations require a higher base spend to work properly. Others offer exceptional value across a wide range. Our job is to match your budget to the experience it can genuinely deliver, not to the experience you would have at twice the price.
We are not a large operator. We are not a booking platform. We are not a company that processes a high volume of itineraries through a system and calls the output personalised service. We do not recommend camps we have not vetted. We do not build itineraries around what is available rather than what is right. We do not add destinations because more sounds like better value.
These are not policies written for a website. They are the practical conclusions of two decades of watching what produces extraordinary safaris and what produces expensive disappointments. The distinction almost always comes down to whether the planning was honest, specific, and built around the traveller, or whether it was fast, convenient, and built around the inventory.
Every safari Only One Safaris designs comes with direct personal access to the people who planned it, throughout the trip. We maintain relationships with the operators, camp managers, and guides in every itinerary we build, and we can intervene directly if something is not as it should be. We work with every client in advance to ensure appropriate health preparation, travel insurance, and evacuation cover are in place before departure.
For the full details of our guest support structure and what we do when things go wrong, the Only One Safaris Guarantee page covers this in full.
The best way to understand what Only One Safaris offers is to have the conversation. Not a quote request, not a form submission, but a real conversation about who is travelling, what the trip is for, and what success looks like when you come home. From that conversation, we build something specific to you rather than something assembled from available parts.
No, deliberately. We limit the number of clients we work with at any time to ensure every safari receives the attention it requires. The boutique model is not a constraint we are working around. It is the point. When you work with us you work with Mark or Martina directly, not with a system that processes your booking and passes it along.
Only One Safaris in its current form is a recently established boutique operation, but the experience behind it is not recent. Mark has been operating on the ground in East Africa since 2005. Martina has been designing individual safari itineraries since 2007. The company is new. The knowledge it is built on represents more than four decades of combined direct experience across Africa’s major safari destinations.
We cover the full range of Africa’s major safari destinations across East and Southern Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, and Mozambique. Mark’s deepest expertise is in East Africa. Martina’s particular depth is in Southern Africa. Together we cover both regions with direct on-the-ground knowledge rather than delegated expertise.
Because we have been there. A camp recommended by Only One Safaris has been visited, assessed, and in most cases used repeatedly over years of client placements. Guide quality, operational standards, and conservation practices are known personally rather than assumed from online ratings. When something changes at a property, our network of on-the-ground relationships tells us before it affects a client booking.
You have direct access to Mark or Martina throughout your trip. We maintain active relationships with every operator and camp manager in your itinerary and can intervene directly if something is not as it should be. For medical emergencies, we work with clients before departure to ensure evacuation cover is in place and understood. Full details of our guest support structure are covered on the Guarantee and Guest Support page.
The person who understands your brief is the person who builds your itinerary, not a consultant who passes it to a booking department. Our recommendations are based on direct knowledge rather than commission structures. Our itineraries are designed around the specific traveller rather than assembled from standard templates. And when something needs to be fixed during the trip, you reach a person who knows your itinerary personally rather than a call centre that needs to find your file.
