35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Worst safari I had.
It was horrible and wasted money for crazy trip. Will never choose this ever again.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Classic Bait-and-Switch: Promised Northern Serengeti Migration, Altered Itinerary After Payment
Be very careful with this operator. They used a classic bait-and-switch on our group.
Before booking, we repeatedly confirmed that we wanted to see the Great Migration in Northern Serengeti. They charged us a migration upgrade surcharge, repeatedly confirmed in writing that we would go to Northern Serengeti/Mara River, and explicitly stated this in the formal quote.
Once we paid in full, they quietly sent an unagreed, downgraded itinerary (replacing Northern Serengeti with Central Serengeti) without our consent. During the actual trip, they never took us to Northern Serengeti at all. Furthermore, the driver arrived 1.5 hours late on Day 1, which caused us to spend the entire first day on the road with zero sightseeing, and he only spoke French despite the quote promising an English-speaking guide.
Do not trust their pre-booking promises or written quotes. They use the Great Migration to get your money, then unilaterally change the itinerary once paid. Avoid them at all costs!
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Avoid
I booked a great migration 3 night 4 days Masai Mara safari with Abbey of Lush African Safaris 15 months ago, paid $4700 in full 8 months ago. It is for my 50th birthday and our honeymoon.
Today, 7 days prior to travel, I’ve received an email from a lawyer in Uganda stating a 3rd party has disappeared with some of the money we have paid.
We have 4 options.
1-proceed with the original safari but pay an additional $3500
2-reschedule at no extra cost. Obviously not an option as we have international flights and a add on in Zanzibar booked
3-use an alternative tour operator at our own cost
4-request a refund but it states they are putting the company into bankruptcy so this process may involve delays
All options are unacceptable. Also as they haven’t actually filed for bankruptcy we can’t claim on our travel insurance. So we have lost £3500 and it’s ruined our honeymoon
UY
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
I do not recommend them. They don't have a proper structure
I do not recommend them. We had several issues with our accommodation, and they never responded or provided any help.
They put us in a different group with a different guide every day, making the whole experience disorganized and confusing.
SECURITY: The Land Rovers they use are very old and poorly maintained, which raised serious safety concerns.
The food wasn't good either.
BE
Unreliable and Left Me Stranded
I booked a 6‑day safari tour to Kruger and Mozambique with this company, and they never showed up for the pickup. No email, no call, no message — nothing. I was left standing alone at 6 AM at the airport, in a foreign country, with no information and no support.
They ignored every attempt to contact them: my emails, my calls, and even the messages sent through GetYourGuide. I received absolutely no communication or explanation.
Because of their negligence, I had to scramble to find another tour last minute, paying double the price, wasting precious time, energy, and experiencing an enormous amount of stress. As a solo traveler, this situation was not only frustrating but genuinely frightening.
This company is completely unreliable and should not be allowed to operate tours. No traveler should have to go through what I did. Avoid them at all costs.
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
untrustworthy!
This company lies that this is a fraudulent review, saying we never did a trip with them. We have shown proof and my review was reposted. Now it's been flagged it's fraudulent, again. They say we didn't travel with them, but they have responded to both my google review and review with safari bookings addressing my review in detail! That shows what kind of a safari company you will be dealing with if you book with them. Not trustworthy at all.
We booked a safari with this company, months ago. We communicated with Jose who put this trip together for us. This was our 5th safari, but our first, with Boost safari, and it turned out to be a disaster.
1. We were told, Steve was our guide, but Steve appears at the airport with Joseph and introduced him as our "guide" There was no communication whatsoever!
2. The accommodation we had confirmed at Sentrim Amboseli when we booked this trip, was changed without prior notice, and we were dumped in an awful hotel, which was a two hour round trip to the game park, and this was additional to the six and a half hours to get there! We were told by Jose that it was an upgrade, but later admitted they overbooked, hence the change. Again, no communication! This was the second change. The first, was our accommodation in Lake Nakuru Lodge because they overbooked. They changed our accommodation which we already paid a deposit for to a cheaper accommodation which we refused. They then changed it to a better lodge, which we agreed to. The accommodation in Amboseli was not an upgrade.
3. We were not given a "guide" He had no knowledge of the animals and never made an effort to look for or track the animals. There was a Masai guide in our safari in Masai Mara for two days, which was not planned, and Joseph admitted he didnt have much experience. His CB radio was broken, and looked like it wasnt working for a long time. The animals we saw were spotted in plain sight. He didn't even know how to get to planned destinations. He stopped and picked up a local for directions. A three and a half hour trip took more than five hours and we missed lunch completely. There was no time management or communication. He was on his phone all the time, even whilst driving, which made us feel unsafe. He had no interest In providing the service he was hired for. The safari vehicle was not well maintained. It was hard to open the doors from inside. At one stage he was driving so fast, the boot opened and was banging so hard, he didn't even realise it until we alerted him. That's how rough he drove!
There was no communication, transparency or professionalism from this company! We were given the shorthand of the stick again and again. Jose for a period of time, didn't answer our messages. He never checked to see how we were doing and Steve never showed up as promised after the safari.
Integrity is a great moral attribute. If you are deciding on who to go with on a safari, think carefully before parting with your hard-earned
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
No respect for there staff.
The place is dirty, bed bugs. The food is terrible terrible and the safari vehicles are falling apart.
KR
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Respond to customer inquiries quickly. But it's hard to communicate when there's a conflict.
I wouldn’t recommend this company
1. Guide
Our guide was a very nice person, but honestly, in our experience, he was more like a driver than a guide. He mostly drove and gave us almost no information. he said “giraff”, “elephant” when we saw animals.
As the days went by, the explanation increased a little, but overall I was not satisfied.
and We found it difficult to communicate with him in English. On the first day, we asked Ngao company to change our guide, but he told us to try to communicate better with him.
2. Vehicle
During the safari,
We had to sit in the car for many hours, but our car was almost the only one without a headrest cushion among the 30–40 cars I saw. It was very uncomfortable.
One window could not be opened, so when we took photos, I had to take them through the dirty window. The window stains were also visible in my photos.
Other cars had their own company logo on the back. Our car had another company’s logo, so we wondered if they had rented the car from somewhere else.
3. Food and accommodation
We chose government-run accommodation to save money. However, the breakfast was like the one in the photo.(before)
We paid more than $1,000 for the safari, but we were given a meal like this. After I complained, they improved the breakfast. (after)
The lunch was also almost the same every day.
Was this because we chose a cheaper option? If they had told us that the service would be like this, we would not have booked with this company.
4. They did not understand what we wanted
I booked this safari because I wanted to see the Great Migration.
Before the trip, I was told that we would see the Great Migration on the first day and the Big Five on the second day.
But on the first day, our guide saw about 10 wildebeest and told us this was the Great Migration.
At the end of the day, he told us that the migration was over and that we would see the Big Five the next day.
We were very confused. I explained that we wanted to see hundreds or thousands of wildebeest moving together, not just 10 wildebeest.
Only after I explained this did they change the plan for the second day so we could see the Great migration.
If I had not said anything, I might have finished the whole safari without seeing the Great Migration that I came to see.
TW
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Willing to agree to a refund on paper, but extremely slow to actually deliver on it.
We agreed on a full refund with Meektrails Safaris after cancelling our trip, but nearly three months later we still have not received it, despite repeated promises of "next week" or "soon." Please think carefully and consider this before booking.
IT
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Incompetent people
Absolutely not recommended, I think the positive reviews are fake, he made us pay a hefty deposit and then asked for the balance every week before the tour, the package also included the internal flight (which would have saved us a lot of time to live the safari experience more, obviously we paid it in advance) and instead only upon arrival at the Arusha airport he informed us that he would take us by car making us waste 7 hours of safari on the first day and 7 hours on the third day just to reach the entrance of the park, basically out of 3 days we only did one day of safari, he did not refund us either the flight money or the lost safari days, I believe he is a real scammer, do not take tours with him
(automatic translation from Italian)