The review below is the personal opinion of Daniela and Adrian and not that of SafariBookings.
Poor communication
Unfortunately our experience with Habitat and especially Goodluck Kombe was not as positive as everyone here describes it. This has certainly spoilt our once in a lifetime Safari experience and here is why…
We enquired about a safari itinerary in May 2025, based on a recommendation of someone who went on Safari with Goodluck as a guide. This was a special trip for my husband 65th birthday.
After receiving 2 quotes (one for mid range and one for high end), we decided on the high end itinerary, this included Habitat organising the internal flights for us. We had no changes/special requests for the initial quote. We paid the deposit and we have not heard anything from Habitat until August when they followed up on the 2nd payment. Again, we paid and we have not heard anything more. A week before our scheduled safari started, Goodluck followed up on the last payment and I requested if we can pay by card on arrival (due to the high amount), and he agreed.
This is where it all started to go wrong:
Upon arrival in Arusha, I was ready to pay the balance by card, as agreed with Goodluck before travelling. I got greeted by one of his employees but he did not have a POS and said that he’d send me a link to pay online. We headed to our first destination and that evening I received an email from Goodluck telling me he was expecting cash on arrival and that I put other people’s dream holidays at risk by not paying Habitat. After pointing out that he agreed for me to pay by card on arrival, I paid the remaining balance online that evening.
The next morning I received another email from Goodluck telling me that I only paid 50% and I still owed them $5k. You can imagine the panic, stressing out where the money disappeared. Finally, later that day he confirmed that he received the full amount but I still owed them $18 for his bank fees (if he wanted the client to pay his bank fees, he should have included it in the quote) – I passed $18 cash to our designated guide.
He also mentioned that their sales manager underquoted me by about 10% of the total cost (!!!) and initially asked if I can contribute anything towards this amount, the next day he said Habitat will absorb this cost. It is not very nice to ask a client, on their first day of the trip, to pay for your employee’s mistakes.
Initially (in May) we were told our internal flights were with Auric. We made arrangements based on the times of these flights. The week before travelling, we received tickets for Flightlink for different times and even different days!!! This unfortunately had a negative impact on our plans travelling back to Dar Es Salaam at the end of the safari.
The initial (May) itinerary included 4 different hotels. During the safari we realised that 3 out of the 4 hotels were changed and we were never informed about these changes. I am sure that the hotels were same quality as the initially communicated ones but it was not nice not to know where you’ll be staying and only find out when you pull up at the hotel.
On the positive note is that our guide was amazing and made the rest of the trip enjoyable.
Goodluck never asked how was our safari experience at the end of the trip…
