Long-serving Ultimate Safaris staff reap the rewards.

Ten Ultimate Safaris Tribe Trust trustees were earlier this month paid their share of the almost N$ 140 000 Trust dividends, each of them walking away with almost the equivalent of a full month’s salary.
Dividend declarations are guided by
Ultimate Safaris conservative dividend policy, which dictates that 30% of
profits are declared as dividend and the remaining 70% reinvested into the
company and building resilience for future calamities, meaning the profit for
the Trust shareholding was in almost N$ 500,000. This conservative approach is
what enabled Ultimate Safaris to not only survive the Covid-19 pandemic, but
with all it’s 100 plus team intact.
In 2022 the shareholders of Ultimate
Safaris decided to reward long-serving employees, including Alfons Kaura,
Francis Vries and Adelina Mulongo, by gifting 2255 shares in the company to the
newly formed Ultimate Safaris Tribe Trust, which was designed to give long
serving staff members ownership in the company. These shares are currently
valued at over N$ 4 million.
Where Ultimate’s share ownership scheme
differs from those instituted by many other companies is that the shares were
given to the Trust free-of-charge, unlike other schemes where staff sacrifice
their early earnings to cover the cost of the shares. Also unlike many other
schemes, the Tribe Trust beneficiaries already received dividends in their very
first year of membership – in addition to the full bonus paid to all staff in
2023 – something Alfons, who worked his way up in the company from a sales
admin support position to Sales Manager, and who is currently the Chairperson
of the Tribe Trust, says “reconfirmed that hard work, dedication, and loyalty
pays off in the end”.
Designed in such a way as to promote long
term staff retention and promote safekeeping and protection of the company,
without the staff members having to carry any risk or liability themselves,
employees who have been with the company for 10 years automatically become a
beneficiary of the trust, and therefore a shareholder in the company. Membership
of the Tribe Trust is available to every single employee of Ultimate Safaris,
and, all things remaining equal, it is set to grow by almost 50% by 2025,
making almost 15% of Ultimate Safaris employees beneficiaries of the Ultimate
Safaris Tribe Trust, all of them previously disadvantaged Namibians.
Ultimate Safaris’ Managing Director,
Tristan Cowley, explains that the long-term plan is to add to the Tribe Trust’s
shareholding in the company, thereby increasing employee ownership, and to also
make the Tribe Trust a shareholder in any future businesses that Ultimate
Safaris may venture into.

Enriching Lives
Ultimate Safaris is privileged to be able to operate in pristine wilderness areas. We believe that the future of the environment and the natural inhabitants of these regions lies in the hands of the communities living there, and that this means they must be involved in the custodianship of their surroundings. The Conservation Travel Foundation is Ultimate Safaris’ registered non-profit organisation and it fully supports these ideals.

Giraffe Conservation Foundation
Preventing a silent extinction of one of Africa’s most threatened species!

Desert Lion Project
Protecting the world’s only growing lion population that lives outside of a National Park!

Rhino Ranger Programme
Empowering communities for conservation through rural employments and training!