The nuance you're missing
@mdwest is one of risk appetite. If you're talking about high-fence ranches in RSA, a total loss for an operator on one client is a "soft loss". They lost some game that is somewhat fungible, they lost some hospitality actual costs. Hard-money in such an example of say $40,000, the actual losses are maybe $4000.
Same scenario, but say its in Zimbabwe. The hard costs for that $40,000 hunt would be $30,000 cash outlay. Most of Africa is not high-fence ranches and most of Africa is operating on razor thin margins with large cash outlays.
I'm sure you realize that the risks associated with credit cards are incredibly high in the latter example just as the costs of accepting credit cards erode a sizable amount of the profit after expenses.
The OP didn't say where he was going, so I gave general answers that are truths of economics. In some areas of Africa he can use a card, in many areas he cannot, but can and ought are not the same thing. It's pretty rare to find a business that doesn't give a cash discount, or CC surcharge inversely, for all the reasons covered in this thread.
Risk appetite is definitely a factor.. and definitely going to vary from business to business and locale to locale..
When it comes to credit card risks, I believe there is a huge amount of variance between industries both in how much actual risk is present, and how much appetite is present as well..
For example my wife is an accounting executive for a fairly large hospitality management company.. they manage about 160 hotels (last count I heard), a few restaurants, a few golf courses, etc around the country..
Credit card charge backs are a HUGE issue for them.. all of their hotels deal with charge backs on at least a weekly basis.. sometimes on a daily basis.. guests will try to dispute charges and claim there were problems with the room, or that they were treated poorly, etc.. or will claim they didn't actually eat in a restaurant (even though their signature is on the bill), etc..etc.. knowing that hotels in particular get a TON of pressure from their flags (Marriott, Sheraton, etc..) to allow these sort of disputes to go unchecked and just give money back to the clients even in cases where the clients claims cant be proven or founded..
So the hotels bake in a certain value into their daily room rates to cover what they know is a very high risk for them (that they have very little appetite for).. at the end of the day, you, me, and other "honest" customers are paying a few bucks more per room per night to cover the cost of the lying turd that's going to drink every bottle in the mini bar, then swear the bar was never stocked and they didn't drink anything (even though there are a dozen empty bottles in the trash in the room)..
The hotel doesn't charge a CC use fee per se... but they do in fact cover the costs they know they're going to incur because of charge backs (by making the rest of us pay for it)...
My experience with outfitters has been the opposite though.. Most are still primarily getting paid by either check or wire.. they know they are going to be hit with a CC fee from their bank if a client uses a card, but they just eat that fee when it happens rather than ask for the client to cover it.. its worth it to them to keep the client happy, make the transaction easy, etc.. (they hope that the client will rave about them upon return to the US, that the client will come back and see them again in the future, etc.. and ultimately "losing" that 3% will make them a whole lot more money on the back end by providing that added value to the client...).. they don't necessarily have a huge appetite for risk (in the form of a chargeback), but they generally speaking don't see a high probability in the occurrence happening either.. so its worth the trade off...
The one and only exception Ive experienced so far is for an upcoming hunt I have in New Zealand in a few weeks..the contract does provide multiple ways the outfitter can be paid (check, wire, cash, etc) and does advise if a CC is used they will add a 3% fee..
This hasn't been the case on either hunting or fishing expeditions Ive been on anywhere else in the world.. (maybe Ive just been lucky so far)..
It also hasn't been common for other fairly large transactions Ive done anywhere in Africa (we use credit cards fairly often in the countries where we can to make fairly large purchases off the local economy... we've done everything from leasing B7 armored vehicles in Somalia to purchasing a couple of dozen computers in Ghana to paying for large meals (more than 100 attendees) in Togo all on the credit card, with no problem (no request for additional fees, etc) in just the last 12 months (among many other transactions)..
If you want to see a war, go to the politics thread right before another mandatory all-forum cooling off period. 
