How we estimate prices and times

We place both ends of the journey on the map: the airport's arrivals forecourt, the hotel, the town centre, or the park gate when the destination is a national park or reserve. Then we ask a routing engine for the fastest drivable road between them, the same way a driver's navigation app would, and keep its distance to a tenth of a kilometre.

For parks and reserves we measure to the gate the road actually reaches, because that is where a transfer ends and a game drive begins. The gate is named on the journey page and in the index.

The routing engine returns a drive time for a clear road. We check it against the kind of road the route runs on, city streets, a paved highway between towns, a park track, an unpaved last stretch, and the speeds that are realistic on each, then round to the minute. The result is a typical daytime drive without stops.

It does not include traffic jams, rain damage, time at a park gate or a lunch stop, so every page says so. The road surface we print comes from the map's own record of each stretch: how many kilometres are paved and how many are not.

Each country has its own rate card, built from local operator price lists and kept in its own currency. For a one-way transfer the middle estimate is:

middle = max(base + distance × per‑km + minutes × per‑minute + airport pickup fee, minimum fare) × timing

• Base, per-km and per-minute depend on the service: an airport transfer, a chauffeur-driven car, a 4x4 safari transfer, a minibus or a coach each have their own line on the rate card.
• Airport pickup fee applies only when the journey starts or ends at an airport; it covers parking and meeting you in arrivals.
• Minimum fare stops a very short hop from being priced below what any driver would accept.
• Long journeys get a discount on the kilometres beyond a threshold, because fuel and time, not pickups, dominate a long safari leg.
• Timing raises the price for very early or late pickups, public holidays and high season, within a cap. Most pages use 1.0.

The page then shows a low–high range around that middle figure, rather than one number, because fuel prices, the exact vehicle and the day of travel all move the final quote. For hire by the hour the middle is simply hours × hourly rate × timing, with a minimum number of hours.

On every journey page the “At a glance” table also prices the other vehicle types that can run that road, using the same formula, so you can compare a sedan with a van or a 4x4 before you ask.

An estimate is not a quote and not an offer. It does not know your flight time, your luggage, whether you want a child seat or a stop on the way, or what fuel costs this week. When you enquire we confirm the vehicle, the price and the pickup point before anything is booked, and the quote you receive is the price you pay.

Distances and times are measured on the map, not driven for every page. Where a road has changed, tell us and we will re-measure it.

Routes are re-measured and rate cards reviewed every quarter, and the per-country index pages carry the edition they were built in. Whenever a rate card or a route changes between quarters, every page that depends on it is rebuilt at the same time, so a journey page, its country index and this methodology never disagree.

You are welcome to quote, chart or republish the figures with a link to the index page you took them from.