It now has shopping centres, hotels and lodges as well as car hire services, although it retains a rural atmosphere and local tribesmen continue to bring their cattle to Maun to sell.

The community is distributed along the wide banks of the Thamalakane where red lechwe can still be seen grazing next to local donkeys, goats and cattle.

[3] The settlement was founded in 1915 as the tribal capital of the Batawana people,[4] and has had a reputation as a hard-living 'Wild West' town which was the economic center of local cattle ranching and hunting operations.

However, with the growth of the tourism industry and the completion of the tar road from Nata in the early 1990s, Maun has developed swiftly, losing much of its old town character.

[5] With the influx of tourism dollars, the typical traditional rondavels have been replaced by square, cinderblock homes roofed with tin and occasionally tiles.

Maun hosts the Sankoyo Bush Bucks, a football (soccer) team promoted to the Botswana Premier League in 2013-14.

[11] Maun was featured again in the series finale of The Grand Tour in 2024, during which Jeremy Clarkson's Lancia Beta and James May's Mercedes-Benz 230E from the special were present, having been found a few years earlier.