A year on since Expert Africa, the UK’s leading specialist to southern Africa, started listing Independent Traveller Reviews on its website, it has received several thousand reviews from its travellers after their trips. And, extraordinarily, this feedback is completely uncut – good or bad, in brilliant or broken English, it’s displayed in black and white on www.expertafrica.com.
This feedback is intended to help to provide future travellers with reasonable expectations.
For instance, seasoned explorers of the rare and remote will often love locations where the accommodation is basic at best. Places where infrastructure is embryonic are surrounds to be savoured for some; to others, they’re best circumvented. Expert Africa’s aim is not to persuade or be pushy, but rather to pay attention, and provide potential travellers with the knowledge needed to make their own decisions.
Chris McIntyre, MD of Expert Africa and author of four Bradt Travel Guides (Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zanzibar), comments: “Expert Africa has always listened and learnt from its travellers; now we have an archive of this collective recent experience which prospective clients can access directly. Our brochure and website provide candid descriptions of everywhere we feature, but the client reviews build on this – offering a variety of different points of view about the camps, lodges and hotels from travellers who we have sent to stay there. Simply, our philosophy is the more information we can display, the better.”
Expert Africa prides itself on being straight-forward, hence it has even published a review entitled ‘The Holiday from Hell’. The clients in question had real problems with their trip, but later observed in their comments that “this was the wrong holiday at the wrong time” for them, attributing their dissatisfaction largely to the stress and tiredness they suffered immediately prior to their trip. In a happy turnaround, they are intending to travel with Expert Africa to the Cape this year!
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