Tanzania Safari Supremacy

Disappointing attitude

I wouldn't recommend TSS to anybody considering a safari in Tanzania - we didn't find them to be very professional at all and overall they handled our trip poorly. Firstly, their representative was late for our pre-safari briefing, and when we tried to call them their number was disconnected. As our hotel receptionist said she had never heard of them we found this a little worrying. When they did arrive we were told that due to reports back from Lake Manyara (where we were supposed to go on our first day) that there wasn't much wildlife being spotted, we would be going to Tarangire instead with a different group. This wasn't really a problem, but it would have been better to be told in advance rather than just before departure as we would have had more time to consider our options.

On the safari itself, our second day took us to Serengeti. As we were driving into the Serengeti the car had a fault, causing us to then be stuck at the gate there for 3 hours while it was looked at. This meant we missed a lot of game drive time, and arrived at camp having to set up our tents in the dark without any assistance after eventually being picked up by a different vehicle just before sunset. While we understand that faults like this happen, the way the situation dealt with was really not good enough - we repeatedly asked what was going on and were not given any information or any sense that there was a proper procedure to follow in incidents such as this.

After returning to Arusha at the end of our safari, two members of our group went to the operator's office in person to request a partial refund due to the time missed on safari, which they were given ($100 each). As we were leaving that day we didn't have chance to do so ourselves, so decided to email Elvice at TSS afterwards. The attitude we received when telling him what had happened and requesting the same refund as the others was appalling and completely unprofessional. He implied heavily that we were lying, and that the others had no such refund (they did, I maintained contact with them and checked this several times), then this changed to him telling us that the others had a refund because of problems in Kenya beforehand (they hadn't even been to Kenya).

The final straw was his attempt at emotional manipulation in telling us that they only offer group safaris to help people and they don't make a profit on them, so this refund would have to come out of his own pocket and would destroy years of hard work and that they'd have to consider stopping group safaris, that he'd have to beg to borrow it from a friend etc etc. At this point I gave up - I am not interesting in bankrupting anybody, and frankly found the whole thing ridiculously unprofessional.

There are plenty of other safari operators available and I would advise avoiding Tanzania Safari Supremacy if possible.