 
Gamewatchers Safaris is delighted to have been rated one of the Top Ten
African Safari Companies in the World by National Geographic Adventurer
Magazine, November 2007.
Below is an excerpt from the November 2007 issue of National Geographic
Adventurer which profiled Gamewatchers Safaris among the Best
Outfitters on Earth:
The ADVENTURE Ratings: Best Outfitters on Earth
When planning the adventure trip of a lifetime, the most important decision
you’ll make is not where to go, but who to go with. Think about the
stakes: weeks of your time, thousands of your dollars, even, potentially,
your own safety. If an outfitter fails to deliver on the dark side of
the moon, you don’t get a do-over. An expert tour company, on the
other hand, can give you access to remote lands, introduce you to those
who live there, and make sure you not only see the world, but also experience
it.
Today there are outfitters running trips in just about every country
on Earth. To help you pick the right one, we’ve conducted the world’s
first large-scale rating of adventure tour operators. It’s extensive.
It’s user-friendly.
As part of the National Geographic Society, we have a unique take on
travel. We appreciate fine meals and high thread counts, but we also want
to know who’s teaching their clients about the places they visit,
who’s pushing the frontiers of discovery and adventure, and who’s
giving back to the planet. So we surveyed over 200 outfitters and scored
them on the criteria that matter to us most: education, sustainability,
quality of service, and spirit of adventure. We evaluated gorilla-safari
specialists and Grand Canyon rafters, Napa Valley cyclists and Himalaya
trekkers. As expected, most of the top scorers excel in multiple areas.
But we were pleasantly surprised to find that almost all of them consider
their environmental impact a fundamental part of the trips they offer.
The Methodology: How We Did It
With assistance from the Adventure Council, Adventures in Travel Expo,
the Adventure Travel Trade Association, and other travel and tourism organizations,
we reached out to hundreds of tour companies around the world. The outfitters
were asked to complete a comprehensive 28-question survey and were scored
from 1 to 100 in each of the following categories:
- Education and Interpretation: This score reflects how effectively
a company provides educational and interpretative information to trip
participants about the geology, history, wildlife, cultures, etc., for
the places in which it operates.
- Sustainability: How a company runs its trips often means the
difference between tourism that safeguards a region’s cultural
and natural heritage and tourism that serves as a threat to the chosen
destination. This score indicates how engaged the company is with sustainable
tourism practices.
- Quality of Service: This score represents the level of customer
service that a company offers, from the nature of interactions with
each client to the quality of gear provided for sport-specific trips
and general amenities.
- Spirit of Adventure: From trying new food to visiting exotic
locations, there are many ways for today’s active traveler to experience
adventure. This score reflects how effectively a company brings the
“spirit of adventure” to each trip itinerary.
- Client References: Researchers contacted client references
for every company and generated a fifth score, also between 1 and 100,
based on their feedback.
 Each
outfitter’s overall score represents the average of these five scores.
A team of Adventure editors, travel writers, and experts vetted those
with overall scores of 80 and above and, from this pool of candidates,
chose the “Best Outfitters on Earth”.
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