The sustainability certification built only for safari lodges, camps and reserves, on a shared, member-only data system. Members report their operations every month — rainfall, water, energy, fuel, waste, staff, guests — with evidence behind every figure. Each member gets their own record, their own trends, and an honest comparison with lodges like theirs. Recording and comparing is free; certification is optional.
Any safari lodge, camp or reserve in Africa. You apply, we run basic checks (members share sensitive operational data, so we check every application — for everyone's security), and your account unlocks fully once approved. You can start entering data straight away while you wait.
Yes, to record and compare. Certification is for lodges, camps and reserves.
The numbers from bills and logs you already keep: electricity, fuel, water, waste, food, staff and guest counts. Every box tells you exactly what goes in it and which document it comes from. Most lodges need under an hour a month once the habit is set.
Evidence is what makes a number worth something — to you first, and to anyone you ever need to show it to. Attach the invoice, meter photo or log behind each figure. Nothing is published from it; it simply stands behind your record.
Your Rating covers five areas, and each counts equally: Energy & diesel, Water, Waste, Food, and People & community. Each month your figures are turned into intensities — mostly per person-night, which counts guests and resident staff together — and each one is placed on a scale between a "best" and a "worst" value, giving a score out of 100. Each area's score is the average of its measures, and the five areas average into your Rating out of 100. Food is scored on food waste, with a bonus for food grown on site or bought nearby.
The scales are set for lodges, camps and reserves, from studies of lodges and camps rather than global hotel averages. They are deliberately marked provisional: once 20 lodges have reported a full year, the scales will be re-set from real African lodge data.
Your Rating is private, always. The number never appears on your badge or anywhere public; if you are certified, the public mark shows only your band.
Lodgemark is built for safari lodges, camps and reserves. The measurements are the same for all three: energy, water, waste and the rest are counted per person-night — every guest and every member of staff on site — so a figure means the same thing at a 30-room lodge as it does at an eight-tent camp. A standard that bends by lodge type isn't a standard.
Your Rating follows from that, and it isn't adjusted for what you are. A tented camp on solar will often rate higher than a lodge with a pool to run — not because it's better managed, but because it uses less. Curving the number by type would make it meaningless the first time anyone wanted to quote it.
The comparison is where the like-for-like happens. You're only ever measured against lodges of your own type — camps with camps, lodges with lodges, reserves with reserves — and against those in your country when enough of them are reporting. That's the number worth acting on: whether you use less than the camps around you.
Nothing is shown until at least three others in your group are reporting. Below that, a group average says more about the individuals in it than about the group, so we show nothing at all.
The same applies to anything Lodgemark suggests — advice for a camp on trucked water isn't advice for a lodge on a borehole.
Hotels can join and record too. They stay on the current Rating and are compared only with other hotels. Certification is for lodges, camps and reserves.
You. Other lodges see only protected comparisons: peer figures appear when at least three other lodges report, financial figures only as group medians with at least five contributors and no single lodge dominating. Your occupancy, guest-night and staff counts are never visible to anyone but you. Your data is never sold, licensed or passed on in any form that identifies your lodge.
The Reporting badge says one thing: that your lodge reports its operations, month after month, with evidence. It shows current or lapsed — never a number, never a claim beyond that. It's served live from Lodgemark, so it stays honest on its own.
Once you're certified, you can show the Certified mark beside it. It shows your band — Silver, Gold or Platinum — and never your score.
After two consecutive missed months your badge shows as lapsed and your figures leave the current peer comparisons — nothing is deleted, and submitting either of your two most recent completed months brings everything back. We'll nudge you once, remind you later, and otherwise leave you alone.
Some of them. Wildlife, Rainfall & Weather and Guest Transport are optional, and can be turned on or off any time. Turning one off tidies it out of your tasks; anything already entered is kept, and turning it back on picks up where you left off. They also count towards Platinum: it needs records in at least two of wildlife, rainfall, guest transport and local food.
Community and Garden & Farm are now part of every lodge's monthly report, because they feed the People & community and Food areas of your Rating.
Stories, not data — a member-only feed where lodges share what they're actually doing: a borehole fixed, a nursery planted, a conflict resolved. Posts are reviewed before they appear. Each post has a checkbox to let Lodgemark feature it publicly, credited to your lodge — entirely your choice, withdrawable any time.
It reads, so you don't have to type: drop a bill on the page and it suggests the figure, which you confirm or correct before anything is saved. It never verifies, never rates, and never sees anything you haven't uploaded yourself.
Nothing. Membership is free — data entry, your own record and trends, peer comparisons, the Reporting badge, all of it — and free things never become paid. There is no card to enter and no trial that expires. Paid services are new, optional things on top, never a wall in front of what you already have.
An optional, independent check of a year of your data. You need 12 complete months, with evidence behind every figure; past bills count. HLB checks your figures remotely against the bills and records behind them, and you receive a Silver, Gold or Platinum certificate and a public mark that shows your band, never your score. The result is recorded on the BlockMark Registry. Certification is for lodges, camps and reserves, and it never affects your free membership.
From US$3,000 a year per lodge. That covers the independent check by HLB, your Silver, Gold or Platinum certificate, the public Certified mark, and the entry on the BlockMark Registry. There's no site visit, so there are no travel costs on top. Certification is optional: recording and comparing stay free.
Because the evidence is already in Lodgemark: a bill or record behind every figure, month by month. HLB checks it remotely. No inspector to host, no travel costs, and no waiting for someone to reach a remote lodge.
You'll know before you apply: your unverified Rating shows where you stand in each of the five areas. Every area must score at least 40, and Silver starts at an overall Rating of 60. If you're not there yet, keep recording, work on the areas that hold you back, and apply when you're ready. Your Rating stays private, so nobody else sees it.
Because the pressure on land is rising, and it will not fall. Africa's population is growing toward densities that transformed Asia during its boom decades — and that means more farms, more fences, more people at every boundary a lodge or reserve holds. Human–wildlife conflict, water competition and land disputes all intensify. In that world, a lodge that holds land has to be able to show what it gives back: the jobs, the community payments, the water it stewards, the conflict it manages, the wildlife it sustains. Accurate, continuous data is how a lodge proves it is the right use of its land — to neighbours, to authorities, and to itself. That's the reason both the free membership and the paid services exist.
Because some doors only open for independently checked figures. The common cases: investors and lenders doing due diligence; licence and concession applications or renewals, where authorities want evidence not assertions; government and regulatory reporting; and land and community negotiations — lease renewals, conservancy agreements, disputes with neighbouring farms — where a verified record of employment, payments and water use is worth more than any promise. Verification turns your record into something a third party has stood behind.
An optional paid step for members who want their figures independently verified by a third-party reviewer. Your reviewed months become a verified record: a verification report, a certificate, the distinct Verified badge in portable formats for your own use, and an independent registry entry. It's available from day one and never required — the free membership is complete on its own. Most lodges consider it when a parent group, investor or partner asks for independently checked figures.
It differs from certification: verification is on request and covers the months and figures you choose, for a purpose you name, such as a lender, a concession or group reporting. It doesn't award a band.
It's priced per engagement, because the work is real: an independent reviewer examines your figures and evidence, and the fee reflects the size and complexity of your property. Ask us for a quote — there's no obligation, and nothing in your free membership changes either way.
Verification is carried out by HLB International, a global network of independent accounting and advisory firms operating in more than 150 countries. Their role is to review your operational data, the records behind it, and the metric calculations against Lodgemark's published methodology.
The result is then recorded on the BlockMark Registry under its own Record ID. That keeps the issuing body and the recording layer apart: the record stands on its own, independently of Lodgemark's systems, and can be checked by anyone you show it to without going through us.
Whenever you want it. Verification isn't on a fixed cycle — you commission it for the months you need covered, and the pack states exactly which reporting periods it refers to. Most lodges do it when something prompts it: a lender's due diligence, a licence renewal, a group's annual reporting, a lease negotiation.
Only complete months can be verified — every required figure answered, with its evidence attached.
The reviewer needs to agree the scope, examine your figures and the evidence behind them, and produce the report. Your quote states the timeline for your own engagement.
One thing works in your favour: because Lodgemark holds your months and their evidence already, the reviewer starts from a complete record rather than asking you to assemble one. The gathering that usually takes the longest has already happened, month by month, as you reported.
The pack reflects what your operations actually are — strong, weak or ordinary. The point isn't a good result; it's a defensible one, and a clearer view of where effort or investment is worth putting.
A weak figure recorded honestly carries more weight with a lender, a procurement team or an auditor than a strong one nobody has checked. That's the whole reason the verified record is worth more than a claim.
Not from you — and never from anything that identifies your lodge. Membership is free and stays free. Revenue comes from optional paid services like certification and verification; from group-level reporting bought by companies that own or manage multiple properties, built from figures their own lodges already report; and from anonymised, aggregated statistics — always group medians, always at least five contributors with no single lodge dominant, never your property's own figures in any recognisable form. The shared picture is the valuable thing, and the rules that protect you are the same rules that make it credible.
Close your account from your own settings page — no call, no interview. Your badge comes down immediately, your data leaves all comparisons, and after 30 days (in case you change your mind) your data is deleted. Not kept "for benchmarking". Deleted.
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