Melia Serengeti Lodge Hotel

Tanzania

The Maasai guards dotted around Meliá Serengeti, spears in hand, are the only thing standing between your suite – staggeringly beautiful and perfectly appointed, right down to the high-spec binos – and the Big Five roaming under the inky, star-studded sky just beyond. It’s impossible not to appear breathless when describing the place. From the (literally) song-and-dance welcome to the team’s unsurpassed local knowledge, this showstopper of the Spanish group’s luxury stable thrills at every turn. Here, in the beating heart of Serengeti National Park – 15,000sq km of wild wide-open space, and home to the greatest concentration of wildlife in Africa – bush game walks and drives and dawn hot-air balloon flights await. But first, dinner (pretty much anything your hungry heart might desire), which can be taken poolside, allowing ringside seats to view a family of elephants drinking from the watering hole below. And who wouldn’t raise a glass to that?

Doubles from £241. 00 255 746 810 810, melia.com

Words by Julie Alpine.

This review was taken from the May/June 2021 issue of Food and Travel.

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