Bison Safaris
- Office In:
- Size:
- 1-5 employees (Founded in 2012)
- Tour Types:
- Budget tours with set start dates and a fixed itinerary
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $90 to $350 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
JP
Email Tom | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
4 days safari at Masai Mara and Nakuru
Maggie is very responsive and the tour is well organized. However, I gave three stars, because the guide/driver was not so professional. I did not feel his passion to entertain guests who came to Kenya from far away countries. He sped away through many interesting scenes, and he drove slowly in barren area without any animal. One day, he came back to the hotel at 4.30 pm from full day safari, while sunset is 6.30 pm. He can be more attentive to guests and communicate with them to confirm what guests want.
Reply from Bison Safaris
Posted on Jul 3, 2017Dear Tom .
Thanks for the review and we really appreciate and value your feedback on same as through this we always improve on our weak areas .
We asked the driver what happened and unfortunately he received bad news from home of a sick relative and he didn't inform the office as he was supposed to since we could have relieved him and send another driver . He is usually a very good driver guide and we were surprised and we made sure to make a follow up on same and this is the reason he didn't give it his best as he usually do. We have clearly reminded him of the procedures to follow should such an incidence occur again and am sure to the future clients he will handle the situation in a more sober way.
We really do apologize for the way he behaved and given a chance Bison Safaris would do it all in a different way.
Thanks again and Regards
Benjamin Barasa- Customer care and Complaints manager.
Good safari experience slightly damaged at the end
+Good contact with safari organiser prior to the safari who gave us plenty of useful information and answered promptly all the questions
+Good organisation during the safari, in line with the description
+ We were shown a great deal of game during the safari, good skills of the driver
-Our driver Richard was not extremely talkative, he could improve by speaking more about what we see during the safari and adding his own stories, experiences.
- The trunk of our minivan broke when we returned to Nairobi after the safari (it may happen to everyone) and although it was agreed that all the participants will be transported to their hotels within the agreed price for the entire safari, the driver stopped the van by the market in Nairobi and told everyone that they will be transported to their hotels by taxi for which they will need to pay themselves(!) - finally after a bit of discussion we did not have to pay, however it left us with a bit of a sour feeling - this behaviour is clearly not professional and in case of fault, it is still company responsibility to provide services which were agreed a priori
We paid for more days on safari than the days we actually went on game drives
Everithing was really good on the begining. Maggie was very attentive, explained everithing on e-mail and whatsapp, answered to all our doubts and sent us all the documents we nedded.
It seemed that they were absolutely trustful, untill we reached the end of our safari.
First stop was Masai Mara NP, and we were supposed to do 4 game drives on 3 days. We were trapped by our guide that told us that on second day we would do a "full day game drive" and on third day we would go to visit a Masai Village (which was supposed to be optional)
Actually, on the second day we left the park by 4:30pm and didn't go game driving on the last (3rd) day.
Then we found out that the park tickets are valid by 24 hours, and although we paid for 2 days (48h), we only took a 24h ticket.
When we confronted Maggie with this issue, she didn't gave us our menoy back and even ignored our messages, not responding to them anymore.
Since we talked about this to other tourists, we found out that this scam is used by many budget operators. Anyway, stay alert!