Mellivora African Travels

Very unprofessional and disruptive to mix different budgets (accommodations) in the same tour

So the feelings are mixed.
We did a 4 day safari with them, including Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Tarangire.

The driver David was very good and knowledgeable and we are really happy about him, his skills and the professionalism from his side. 10/10 for the driver himself.

Food was good (our chef was Richard). First night in a lodge was nice. Second night in Serengeti camp wasn't the best (facilities were super dirty and shower was only cold, but maybe also rain had something to do with it), but Ngorongoro camp was just lovely.

However, there were lot's of organizational issues that did significantly bother us.

What they did is they put 7 people from different companies and with different accomodations in the same vehicle - meaning that everytime everyone had to be delivered and picked up at a different location (sometimes literally 1 hour apart), so we lost a lot of time every single evening and then morning for pickups (things also didn't go so smooth with packing up) - very sadly on the account of our precious time for game drives (keep in mind that the best time to see animals is as early in the morning as possible). The 7th person was put in the last minute and so there wasn't any space left for our cook, which made it very inconvenient form him and us trying to find ways to get him to our destinations.

The driver wasn't really aware about plans of different people in our vehicle after the end of this trip - like that half of the group was supposed to continue the tour and that the rest were to go to the airport, and this wasn't communicated and caused some confusion, we also were not really sure about our luggage pickup (we were told to pack light and so we left half of the luggage at our hotel, to be delivered to the airport pickup on the last day).

So as said, the lack of organization did really bother us and we're not happy about this.

We've done many safaris elsewhere and nowhere in the world did "a sharing safari" mean different accomodations (but instead just a mixed random group of people, enjoying the same standard of the trip). I don't know how it seems to be the norm in Tanzania, as if everyone is doing it - we were joined by people from agencies like Serengeti African Tours and another company and they all said that they just share clients all the time.

Now I don't wanna be that "nothing was ok" person, but I just have to mention this -
we ran out of soda and wine on the second day (how can you promise wine, beer and soda with our meals and then provide only 1 bottle of wine for 7 people for 4 days?

The animals and the guide shed a nice light on the whole experience, but I have to say that organization-wise, this was by far the worst experience we've had in any safari. So my advice here seems to be - just take the cheapest tour as it obviously makes zero sense to pay more for a "preferably better company", or maybe make sure that people in your group will have the same standard or accommodations, to make things go smoothly.