Derek and Jules Shenton, Owners.
Shenton Safaris
- Located In:
- Size:
- 20-50 employees (Founded in 1992)
- Member Of:
- Association for Promotion of Tourism to Africa
- Tour Types:
- Luxury tours that, when possible, use accommodations owned and operated by them
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $706 to $874 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Your request will be sent directly to the operator
If preferred, you can contact the operator directly
Reviews
FR
Email Hanna | 65+ years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Very disappointing
As always, we enjoyed being in Africa but this was certainly not my best memory.
I’ve done 7 safaris in Africa, including North and South Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia and Botswana. And Zambia is my biggest disappointment. The walking safaris are much over-hyped in marketing publications and are better in Tanzania.
But if you are determined to go to Zambia, choose the lodges very carefully!
We spent 7 nights at Shenton Safaris Camps, 3 in Kaingo, (a special mention for Catherine, the talented, enthusiastic and thoughtful chef); and 4 in Mwamba Bush Camp, a very disenchanting experience. The day following our arrival, a famous wildlife photographer came with her guests, and “required” (as we were told by the camp manager) private brunches with her team. We were required to eat alone at our chalet. Despite our protests, we were excluded from the communal meal for the rest of our stay. We were treated as second class customers, at $2K+ per day!
We also prepaid for a remote sleepout, alone, a 15/20 minute drive from the camp. We were provided a radio transmitter to summon help for any nighttime emergency. When we attempted to use it, we discovered the battery was dead, confirmed by the guide the following morning; very disconcerting.
The owners were aware of our dissatisfaction during our visit. Later they had much to say via email but never visited the camp and never called to discuss any of our concerns. Back in France, in an exchange of emails, it became frustratingly clear that they were either very misinformed or very disingenuous (or both) about the facts surrounding our stay. They offered no apology for their actions…..but a bottle of wine. Ludicrous!
Reply from Shenton Safaris
Posted on Oct 4, 2022We have had extensive communications with this guest regarding their stay and in fact have already responded to this post on two other forums they have posted on. Sadly, we suspect this will not be the last of it as public forums are abused with repeated, altered and increasingly spurious remarks.
Whilst there is much more we could say about the new additions to this post below and indeed this party’s time in camp, further engagement runs the risk of becoming undignified and out of sync with our communication values. In 30 years of running life-changing safaris we have only had the misfortune of having to send warnings to agents and ban 1 guest from returning. Sadly, this couple have become the second. All future responses from Shenton Safaris to future posts will be a cut and paste of this message. Below follows our original reply.
This response is not to our guest, but rather as “right of reply”. We do suggest that potential guests read the many glowing reviews of Mwamba Bush Camp and their current management that are available on public forums.
This party stayed at Mwamba Bush Camp for three nights, arriving late on the first night.
Day 1 – guests arrived in the evening and were the only party in Camp, they dined at the Chitenge (alfresco dining room under the stars)
Day 2 – these guests were they only group in camp at brunch and dined at the chitenge. Night 2 they enjoyed dinner communally at the chitenge with a group who had arrived earlier in the day.
Day 3 - Morning they were offered and accepted a special, private dining experience for brunch at their chalet. Night 3 this party had pre-booked our Numbu starbed sleep-out experience, which includes dinner. Numbu Star Bed is approximately a 15-20 minute drive from camp and is always a private experience.
Day 4 – depart, this party journeyed across to our sister camp Kaingo Camp were they dined communally with guests and professed in their feedback to thoroughly enjoy the management there.
Mwamba Bush Camp is an eco-operation run in the middle of the Zambian bush. We are powered by a solar farm, which is wonderfully low impact. The limitation of this power solution is it cannot cope with high voltage equipment with heating elements such as hair dryers and hair straighteners. As such guests are briefed on this on arrival. Midway through day 2 when the solar farm had tripped for the second time (a very rare occurrence), our manager journeyed room by room to enquire whether anyone might be unintentionally using a high voltage device. These guests replied that they were not. At afternoon tea they mentioned to our manager there had been some damage in the room and requested it be rectified. At the room our Mwamba manager found a smouldering, charred bedside table, burnt paper which had caught fire and in the bin a burnt-out water heating device the guests had brought with them. Mwamba Bush Camp is built from reed and thatch and the winds in August are always high. This created a very precarious situation.
In the year following the devastation COVID has wrought upon our industry, particularly in Africa where it was left to operations to look after their staff and ensure they and their families were fed, the potential loss of the entire camp to a fire had rendered our manager quite emotional. She did not handle the first interaction about the fire with our guests as well as she might have. A situation she recognised and upscaled to the Shentons immediately. They counselled her to apologise immediately after dinner and to spoil this party as much as possible with special experiences during the remainder of their stay with her. In private communications with these guests, the Shentons have also apologised for the initial communication around the fire their use of their water immersion device caused. They have also apologised for their perception they had been segregated from the group for the brunch when the manager tried to set up a special experience for them.
We find it so hard to fathom this conciliatory gesture of the private brunch was conceived of as segregation and can only imagine that these guests were still feeling defensive about the fire their use of this device had caused at their room. However, we do once again apologise that this was their perception. We would never have one guest’s experience guided by the needs or demands of another guest – whether the guest is a group or a party of repeat guests. Each and every guest who comes to us becomes a valued member of our Shenton Safaris family and 70% of our guests return to us.