This translates to a huge range of variations to meet individuals taste and budgets. In this section, we will run through the best ways to manage and trim cost implications from a trip without compromising the overall quality of the holiday experience.
Do you have any concerns? Please, ask us about cost saving options and tips while considering a luxury safari to Africa. Once you are ready to start talking about your African safari safari, the best way to find out more on how you can get it for less is simply to ask our luxury safari experts to come up and share with you any available cost saving options.
At Oluokos Signature, we are always very happy to take you through this process. We have a really capable team that allows us to easily provide you with multiple sample trips, so this really is not a bother to us..
One of the biggest cost elements on any African safari are your international flights. It is essential to buy these well in advance, making sure that they connect with the trip in the most convenient and cost effective manner possible. The last thing we want is for the flights to be eating into your overall African luxury safari cost itself.
If you are able to book your African luxury safari years in advance, as many of guests do, we are often able to confirm your trip at this year’s prices, thereby avoiding the relentless inflationary damages. Any early booking 2-3 years in advance could save you as much as 30% for the same African luxury safari.
For those who are looking for bookings, within two weeks of travel, then we are often able to find significantly discounted rates on certain accommodation facilities. This is preferably effective during the off-peak periods when offers are available.
Be reminded that during the busy July-September and December-Janaury periods the offers are often still there, but we rarely get availability. However, it’s worth a try. Late booking discounts can lead to savings on trips of up to 20%.
This would be highly effective if you will give time to have the flexibility to travel at different times of year. By taking advantage of this wide gap between the most preferred time and the less preferred time to travel that will reward you with incredible savings.
The main price shifts tend to be when the weather and safari conditions are less than optimum by conventional measures, although in reality the green season can be the best moment to travel to Africa.
Africa is a vast continent and even what looks like a small country could have multiple safari locations that are over 400 km apart. This means that transport costs of getting between the various locations can be very significant when it comes to your safari cost.
One of the best ways to save money on a safari is to reduce the number of multiple spots and stay longer in each spot thus reducing other additional costs that are attributed to your safari. This can even, by some measures, improve the overall quality of your African luxury safari.
In Africa, most luxury safaris include stays in 3 to 12 different locations with an average of about 1 to 4 nights in every location. At Oluokos Signature, our luxury safari experts recommend taking safari itineraries that have fewer spots per location. Learn more about Low-impact Travel
It’s worth to note that that it’s the safari nights in your African luxury safari which are most likely to take up the lion’s share of your holiday cost.
For those who are keen to keep managing costs, they may consider limiting the luxury safari to just a few nights and spread the remainder of your safari with much less expensive nights in rural, beach and urban locations.
This is the biggest single cost variable on any safari is your choice of lodges. It is not uncommon for the most expensive accommodation in an area to be two to ten times the price of the lowest cost option in the same locality. While we agree on that, on the flipside, the better lodges offer higher levels of overall experience, the optimum accommodation for your trip depends very much on your tastes, interests, travel style and, of course, your budget. This kind of shift can lead to savings on trips of up to 45%.
If you are not already talking to one of our safari experts about your trip, but are instead talking to a competitive company, then we have a few additional tips for your consideration.
In the safari industry, competition is real and we will never cease to be amazed at the range of prices that we see from other suppliers. It is not uncommon for major respected travel companies to quote identical trips at prices, which are 5-15% higher than us.
We are widely consider ourselves one of the reliable players in the world of tailor-made and niche safaris. We know that the levels of service and expertise that we offer are at least as good and in most cases a great deal higher than the bottom-end competitors. We won’t promise you what isn’t achievable even if it means loosing you to our cheaper competitors. Sticking with us may well represent both an upgrade in service levels and a considerable saving when it comes to value for money.
If you already have a luxury trip quotation from another company, then do feel free to send it over to us. We guarantee to match or beat any legitimate and correct competitive quotation.
We will try to price up an identical trip (although obviously we can only quote for product that we maintain on our inventory). That should help you to establish that we are in a good place on costs.
At the same time we will also usually provide you with a critique of the trip that you have been quoted by our competitor and offer a range of alternative trips which demonstrate ways in which the original could possibly be upgraded in quality and/or reduced in price.
The worst thing that you can do is take a quotation and simply farm it around to a number of different companies.
The result of the auction simply determines which company is prepared to sell you the luxury safari at the lowest price. In other words, which company is prepared to cut the most corners when delivering your African luxury safari or conceal hidden costs in the most devious ways. The very real risk is that you end up travelling with the worst company rather than the best.
Final issue that we MUST bring to your attention is hidden charges. These are very common cons in the safari market world and can make it very difficult for you to properly compare African luxury safari quotes from different suppliers. Whatever path you take while planning for your African luxury safari, let it be a well-known path that will offer you value and peace of mind.
At Oluokos Signature, our policy and the position that we have always taken is that we would rather not have any hidden charges. We work extra hard to clearly explain everything in full as we go along your African safari planning path.
Arranging for an African luxury safari is a complicated process, without the additional hassle of having to speak with multiple suppliers to get competitive safari quotations.
At Oluokos Signature, we offer an extensive price guarantee measures in order to provide you with confidence that the safari itineraries we build for you always include good value for money.