North-eastern Chief’s Island, in the Moremi Game Reserve of Botswana’s Okavango Delta, about 130 km north of Maun. Wilderness was awarded the tender for the lease of the Mombo Concession in 1999 and rebuilt the camp for the fourth time between April 2017 and late January 2018 at a stated BWP 110 million, to drawings by Nick Plewman Architects and Associates with interiors by Caline Williams-Wynn of Artichoke. Mombo is this register’s case of a house whose tenure is a government lease rather than a title deed.
The house
Wilderness “had been operating out of Maun, at first only mobile safaris, since 1983”, and names Colin Bell and Chris McIntyre as its co-founders. A hunting camp “of simple reed and canvas structures” stood on the ground, “the old hunting camp known then as simply ‘the place of plenty’”, in the north-eastern corner of Chief’s Island, “once a tribal leader’s hunting ground”, about 130 km north of Maun. The company says “Mombo was first built in 1990”, that it was offered the site that year, and that “In 1999, Wilderness was awarded the tender for the lease of the Mombo Concession”.
What followed is a sequence of four camps on one site. The 1999 tender brought “its first upgrade to becoming a really upmarket camp in 1999, plus the addition at that point of Little Mombo”; the camp was then “relocated in 2000 to a site with better views of the floodplains” and, Wilderness says, “It opened in June 2000.” With “the expiry of the Mombo concession in April 2014” the camp came due for renovation. Construction of the fourth Mombo “commenced in April 2017” and “was completed late in January 2018”, with guests housed meanwhile at a temporary Mombo Trails Camp whose tents were afterwards taken to build Magashi Camp in Rwanda.
What distinguishes it
The land is leased, and the lease has an expiry date Mombo is not owned. Wilderness was awarded the tender for the lease of the Mombo Concession in 1999, and records “the expiry of the Mombo concession in April 2014” as the point at which the camp fell due for renovation. The rebuild that followed was put up on ground the state can re-tender, which is the opposite of the freehold case this register records elsewhere in the category.
Four camps on one footprint, and the fourth published its own audit Wilderness calls the present buildings “the fourth Wilderness Mombo” and says the 2018 camp was “refurbished in 2018, maintaining the original footprint and recycling many of the original materials”. It states that “The total cost of this project amounted to BWP 110 million”, that “Approximately 3 250 tonnes of assorted materials were transported from Maun to site”, and that the transport used some “195 000 litres of fuel” for “512 tonnes CO2e”. Few houses in this register publish the carbon cost of their own construction.
The camp left diesel six years before it was rebuilt Wilderness says “Mombo has been 100% solar powered by a 110 kW system installed in 2012.” The trade press reported the conversion on 16 March 2012 at BWP 6 million, with the camp expecting a 97% fall in carbon emissions that year — about 6.5 tonnes against 215 tonnes the year before — and quoted Wilderness’s sustainability director saying the company “will not build another camp without incorporating a major element of renewable energy”.
Rhino were part of the bid, not an afterthought Wilderness says its approach to the concession included a proposal “to release rhino back into the wilds of the Okavango at Mombo”. The company records the population as “augmented in the early 2000s with the introduction of both white and black rhino”, with “further introductions in 2014 and 2015”. The conservation argument therefore predates three of the four camps that have stood on the site.
The camp’s own figures do not agree with each other Wilderness calls Mombo “a nine-tent luxury tented camp” in one place and “eight double tented suites, plus an additional family unit that can accommodate four” in another, for up to 18 guests. It gives the ground as “over 45,000 hectares of exclusive private wilderness” in one section and “a 35,000-hectare private concession” in another, and its FAQ says “Mombo was completely rebuilt in 2019” while its own project record ends construction in January 2018 and the trade press reported the reopening on 1 February 2018. The register quotes each twice rather than averaging.
Mombo is reached by light aircraft over water, roughly 130 km from Maun, and takes at most 18 guests served by 107 staff. The fully inclusive rate covers accommodation, all meals, twice-daily activities, park fees and laundry but not premium imported spirits or champagne, and children under 13 cannot join a game drive unless the party books a private vehicle. A guest who wants a town, a choice of restaurants, or a camp large enough to be anonymous in should not come here.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.