GRAMMATICAS CONSULTING LTD
Briefing Note
By Dominic Grammaticas FCA
June 2026
High season is upon us. Camps are filling up. The focus is on guest experience, revenue, and delivering the product you have promised. But here is a question that deserves equal attention: if something goes seriously wrong tomorrow, are you ready?
Every safari operator should have an Emergency Response Plan. But do you? Is it fit for purpose? Has it been tested? Do your team even know it exists?
These are not abstract questions. Lives may be at stake. Reputations — yours, your brand’s, your destination’s — can be made or broken in the space of a few hours. A medical emergency in a remote camp. A vehicle incident on a night game drive. A fire. A security situation. A suspected disease case with 20 guests in residence. These things happen. When they do, the quality of your preparation determines the outcome.
In aviation, emergency preparedness is not discretionary. It is regulatory, drilled, tested, and audited. Roles and responsibilities are rehearsed until they are instinctive. When something goes wrong, the plan either works or it does not. There is no time to improvise. Safari tourism operates in an equally unforgiving environment and the same standards should apply.
High season is when the risks are greatest and your bandwidth to deal with them is at its lowest. Does your ERP reflect the current risk landscape, or was it written for the risks of three years ago? Does it cover a fuel shortage that grounds your vehicles or aircraft? An Ebola suspect presenting in camp? A medical evacuation when your usual route is disrupted? Is there a clear protocol for guest communication, next-of-kin notification, and coordination with your source market partners?
The good news is that there are excellent companies and well-established infrastructure in Kenya that can support you when it matters most. Medical evacuation services, crisis communications specialists, security advisors, insurance partners. But you need to know who they are, have the relationships in place, and be ready to deploy them in an instant. Not after you have spent three hours searching for a phone number while a guest is in distress.
Failing to plan is planning to fail. The best time to discover a weakness in your emergency response is before you need it.
If you would like help reviewing and strengthening your operational preparedness ahead of high season, I would welcome the conversation.
