Safari Operators -> Kenya -> Tropical Vacations Inc

Tropical Vacations Inc

Homepage: http://www.vacationsquest.com

International Phone: +254721261674

1 Review

2017-02-19 11:49:40 - BALAFREJ
Date:	September 2016
Duration:	4 days

Service:
Organisation:
Guide Qualification:
Guide Friendliness:
Vehicle:
Accomodation:
Food:
Ecological Awareness:
Expectations met:
Value for Money:

Comment:
Avoid Tropical vacations Inc ( http://tropicalvacationsinc.com/), and avoid as well his Tanzanian partner, World Tour Tanzania. Here is the story in brief:
We booked a 4d/3n safari in Serengeti/Ngorongoro with this Kenyan based company. The detailed program has been comunicated to us, we have received photos of the cars we were supposed to use, the price and terms of payment has been agreed, everything seemed perfect.

The day of departure the pick up time was planned at 8h30 by people from the "Tropical vacations "ground office" Mathew wrote to us. At 9h30, no news from anybody, we started calling Mathew Adams, that we could not reach, and later our Landlord in Arusha ( we gave her phone number for more convenience) told us that she received a call from a guy in Arusha, saying that the safary was cancelled (....). After again many sms and attempts to speak with Mathew adams, he sent us an sms saying that things has been solved(...). We indeed were picked up and ended up at 11h30 am in a far away offices of a company called World Tour Tanzania, from which we have not heard about before. They told us that we were going with them in Safari, but they asked us to pay more than what has been agreed and under different payment terms than the ones agreed in written with Tropical vacations.
We refused and asked the Tanzanian guy to call Tropical vacations to solve this problem. The guy said he does not want to spend money calling Kenya from Tanzania, and told us that we have to call ( !!!).

We went back to downtown and again tried to call/sms ( at our expenses of course) Tropical Vacations. At 5 pm, World Tour tanzanian called us again , the price he asked was finally the one agreed with Tropical vacations, but still not the tems of payment. So after loosing one full day of our holidays trying to reach Tropical Vacations and solve the problem, as we coudl not get the terms which has been agreed in written with Tropical Inc and as we had now little confidence in this company, we decided not to go with this company. So Tropical vacations Inc did not respect the terms of its written commitments + was hiding to us the fact that it was just a simple intermediary company + lying to us on the service rendered : we have indeed not seen in the office of this World Tour Tanzania any of the nice cars that we have seen on the fotos sent to us by Mathew Adams. Later Mathew told us that the kenyan cars he showed us were not allowed to go to tanzania ( !!!). And regarding the non respect of the agreed terms he told us that a new regulation has been enacted in Tanzania 6 months earlier, that he was not aware of... while he is claiming to have, I quote " +14 years experience in Safari Tour Operations".
Last lie, back in Europe we proposed to Tropical Inc to reimburse us the paid money and we would forget about this sad story, Mathew Adams proposed to reimburse us 75% of the money we paid, we agreed on that. He was supposed to reimburse us before the end of last year, then he said he would pay us after the 26th of January... we are at the end of February and we still did not get our money back, and now he is no longer answering the mails. Maybe this comment will make him respect at least this last commitment ?

As a conclusion, avoid Tropical vacations Inc, and generallly speaking, I would advise you to use local companies, ie for Kenya kenyan based companies, and for Northern Tanzania, Arusha based companies.