The Go2Africa team, based in Cape Town.
Go2Africa
- Located In:
- Size:
- 100-250 employees (Founded in 1998)
- Member Of:
- ATTA, SATSA & CTT
- Tour Types:
- Custom mid-range & luxury tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $120 to $2,000 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
US
Email Anna | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Pros and Cons
Go2Africa rep who arranged our trip listened well to our specific needs/desires. We already had several camps in Botswana in mind, and he helped us locate two more, one each in S. Africa and Zimbabwe, both of which fitted well.
Once the initial arrangements for dates and locations were made, we were handed off to another company rep to arrange all of the details. This person was not as helpful as the first. It took us asking many, many questions to obtain the information that we needed. First, much of the information could easily have been posted to their web site, like we saw with other companies' web pages. G2A seems to hold back information and not make it easily available unless you ask. For instance, we were aware from our own research that we would need some vaccinations and some of them needed to start six months prior to travel, yet G2A provided no suggestions or guidance about this until mere weeks prior to our departure. Completely useless info when it was finally provided.
Second, being a "bespoke" trip planning travel agency, it was disturbing that when we did receive information, it was often very generic and didn't apply to us at all. But we still had to sort through the information and try to discern if we needed to do something, for example.
Finally, we were never invited to review our trip with a staff member, once we returned, so that we could provide feedback on what worked and what did not. We thought that was very odd. We did have some travel issues and would like to have reported them to G2A so that they might be able to talk with their various contractors and avoid similar issues for other G2A clients. But apparently they do not care to know what we liked or where there were problems.
We enjoyed most of our three weeks-plus trip, and appreciated some of the lodgings and guides suggested to us. It's surprising that G2A doesn't want to know the problems nor the good things.
Very Poor Service For Amount Paid
The below is my opinion based on my experience with Go2Africa.
Go2Africa was reasonably good at selling the trip to us - good communication and pitching of experiences. That said, I agree with reviewer Anna who mentioned that they withhold information unless you ask them specifically (and in writing) - items such as the specific location of a lodge, whether you need vaccinations, where your pickup will be from (inside airport or after baggage claim).
Once they took our money is where we felt they really fell short of what we feel we paid for. In my opinion, this was made even worse by a lack of care when we reached out to them - both during the trip and afterwards.
A number of issues were encountered, including:
- Hotels forgot to put enough towels for all of our party - we emailed Go2Africa the first time this happened but it kept happening
- We'd booked and paid for a private vehicle for certain safaris but a lodge we stayed at did not know this - we had to awkwardly "fight for it" after our arrival - we feel Go2Africa should have been "on top" of what we had paid for and ensured this didn't happen
- One of our airport pickups was late, and we were left waiting for 15+ minutes outside of the airport
- One of our lodges was over 50 minutes away from the "prime" safari grounds - this was something they never told us when we were booking
- We were told that Go2Africa is a co-owner, co-investor and/or shareholder in another tour operator, called Asilia, they used this provider for parts of our trip (many Asilia cars advertise Go2Africa on their signage). The Asilia representative in one city offered to us, free of charge, a city tour at our next destination. When we arrived in this next city the Asilia team on site had no idea of this offer and, after loading our luggage into their car started awkwardly asking us for money for the tour. This made us very uncomfortable and when we later commented to Go2Africa, all they said was that they would "investigate" - our experience and time was still spoiled
- Go2Africa claimed to have reserved a restaurant for us but when we arrived we found out that the restaurant was closed on the day they said they'd confirmed the reservation for - this cost us valuable time on our tour (they later said their subcontractor should have reconfirmed this when we pushed them for accountability on it)
- They refused to provide any compensation for the issues we encountered and instead were, in my opinion, very defensive about everything that happened (they chose to blame their subcontractors rather than own the issues we encountered)
I personally would not use Go2Africa again, I feel that we paid for a premium experience and service, only to be treated quite poorly once we had paid them. Having awkward moments in foreign countries with tour operators was frustrating.... When paying for a trip, I believe you're paying for an experience. You have limited time during your travel and want to make the most of it. Go2Africa was very unsympathetic to this. I recommend looking at other options before considering Go2Africa.