How to Book your Tanzanian Safaris and the process of arranging a good quality safari to Tanzania should be easy and fun.
In this section, we quickly walk you through what to expect from the process …
- Deciding who to work with
The quality and success of your trip will be very much dependent on the experts you choose to work with.
Virtually all quality safaris are booked through specialist safari agencies like our Galloping Safaris Ltd a locally owned and managed by Tanzanian. But even amongst these companies there is a vast range in quality.
There is such a vast raft of confusing and contradictory information out there on the internet and so many companies offering such a broad range of safari experiences, that it can be really tricky for the uninitiated to pick out the real safari people.
We believe very strongly that someone can only become truly expert in this field if they have considerable first-hand experience of living and working in the world of safari and have travelled extensively throughout many if not all of the key safari areas.
We believe that we are the best at what we do.
All of our safari experts have at least ten years safari experience, both working safari on the ground and building tailor-made trips.
- Research and inquiry
The approach that our guests take towards researching their trip varies enormously.
Some guests spend literally months and years going through every experience, every location and every lodge, slowly narrowing down the options. When they eventually contact us, they may already have a very good idea of what they want to do on their trip and we simply need to double check it for them, draw up some quotations. illustrate a few possible variants and chat through the final details.
The majority of our guests have a rather different approach, one which is usually much less time consuming. After a quick browse of the website, they get in touch, tell us a little bit about who they are and a very rough outline of what they have in mind, then leave it up to our safari experts to come up with some trip ideas.
If you were to ask our safari experts which method, they feel is more effective, they would universally say the latter. They much prefer to get involved early and help guests to find the best and most appropriate options more quickly and efficiently.
But really it comes down to whatever suits you the best. We are happy either way.
- Getting in touch
The best way to get in touch if you have a specific set of requests is usually to send an email with your various notes.
This will normally be received by Walter Tenga who is responsible for allocating your inquiry to a safari expert or work, coordinate himself who is suitable knowledgeable and experienced in the areas to which you want to travel.
If you can also make yourself available for a phone call, then your safari expert will be able to reach out to ask any questions before getting down to work.
If you are making a more vague inquiry, then the best way to get started is almost always to give us a call.
You can either call the team at Galloping Safaris or select a specific safari expert to chat with, or you can simply call and we will make sure that you get through to the person who is in the best position to help out.
You will be amazed how much clarity we can provide in just a few minutes on the phone.
- A few words about your budget
Safari can be a very expensive business, so we have to take special care when it comes to the price of trips.
We help our guests to build trips for a very wide range of budgets.
In an ideal world you will give us a target budget for us to work towards. Along the way we will suggest areas where you can cut back without adversely affecting the trip and other places where it might be worth splashing out.
Whatever your budget we will make sure that you get the best possible experience. You will never experience any pushy up-selling, we consider ourselves to be your representatives and want you to be comfortable with the amount of money that you are spending.
- Getting quotes
Once one of our safari experts has your initial information, they will look to create a range of fully priced and detailed tailor-made sample trips.
These trips will be designed to show you a range of options, varying in style, location and price, to give you an idea of the range of possibilities.
It is once you receive this first batch of samples that you will need to do a little bit of work, going through the various options. But you should find that things start to fall into place pretty fast from here.
On receiving your feedback, your safari expert will be able to start fine tuning, either working one trip up in more detail, or providing another more focused set of sample trip.
Sometimes we get your trip almost perfect first time, other times guests prefer to go through several iterations of sample trips before becoming really focused on one particular option.
We are happy to work either way, over the years we have a developed our own really efficient safari building system, so creating multiple options is easy.
The overriding priority is that we allow you to go at the pace at which you feel most comfortable and, of course, that we ultimately reach the right trip.
- Closing in on a trip
One of the biggest challenges of creating and booking a safari is getting availability at the various lodges and camps.
Throughout the quotation process your safari expert will have the availability situation in hand. As you start to close in on an actual trip, we will look to get the key elements on hold with the suppliers.
We actually have a specific department dedicated to getting trips on hold, which is a specialist job in its own right. There is quite an art to clearing space in apparently full lodges!
Getting a trip on hold typically gives us 2 to 7 days breathing space, during which time we can all relax and spend time fine tuning the trip, safe in the knowledge that it will actually be bookable if and when the time comes.
Please do bear in mind that during the early part of the quoting process, we do not hold all the various versions of a trip, so please do not assume that everything is available. That only usually becomes clear during the later stages of the process.
