The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a protected area and a World Heritage Site located 180 km west of Arusha in the Crater Highlands area of Tanzania. The area is named after Ngorongoro Crater, a large volcanic caldera within the area. The conservation area is administered by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority.

The 2009 Ngorongoro Wildlife Conservation Act placed new restrictions on human settlement and subsidence farming in the Crater, displacing Maasai pastoralists, most of whom had been relocated to Ngorongoro from their ancestral lands to the north when the British colonial government established Serengeti National Park in 1959. The construction of luxury tourist hotels in the Conservation Area allows people to access “the unparalleled beauty of one of the world’s most unchanged wildlife sanctuaries”.

The Airstrips used are Lake Manyara and Arusha.