Africa Wild

Maybe I'm naive or stupid (I suspect both :D ) but how could Sanparks benefit from Corruption in the Booking System?
What is going on?
Many thanks

Have you read the whole thread, Marula?

Maybe corruption is the wrong word, but SanParks are certainly not playing by their own rules and refuse to give us a straight answer. One of the answers I read from them somewhere was along the lines of "will not divulge this information to the public" (certainly not the exact words, but same meaning). Their booking system is definately not working the way it is supposed to and they are hiding something.

I do not want to be banned from this forum or any other forum that I belong to BUT I would like to state that there is definately something "fishy" going on with bookings/reservations, last year my boss was very undecided as to when I could take leave so to cut a long story short by the time we phoned central reservations we could not get into the camp which we wanted to go to. I then called a well known "tour operating company" and they gave me a booking in the exact same camp that we tried to get into via central reservations and at the same cost that SANparks was going to charge us. My opinion is that certain "tour operators" get sections of camps to allocate to their clients and whatever is left is available to the public via central reservations. This is just my opinion.

Something that crossed my mind....

If I was a tour operator I would book an amount of space - maybe paying the deposit. There is very little chance that I won't be able to sell them - and even if I don't, I won't loose money, just cancel before d-date and carry the funds over to the confirmed bookings.

I am not siding with SANparks, just thinking that such a booking has nothing to do with the reservations department

What I would like to see, if above was a certainty, is a limit to the amount of bookings per Touring Company.

Hello Tent dweller!

What you describe is a different matter from the above mentioned

Buscraft was wondering about some camps/units being booked before the official opening of bookings, as stated by SANParks ("All booking requests are only accepted 11 months or less in advance. Bookings for the 11th month are opened on the 1st working day of each new month.")

The problem is that although Sanparks says that all bookings open 11 months before the required date, it is an out and out untruth. It is a well known fact that tour operators get a shot at the bookings before the opening date and SanParks will not own up to the fact that they are being less than honest on this issue.

Why do they have to lie about these issues , the truth will eventually come out and then they will look like mamparas

I mean tell the truth from the start so people can grow trust in you

If they were just honest and said it was standard policy to open bookings to tour operators first, we would probably all accept it, and leave it at that!!

I perfectly agree with Flutterby! Just tell the truth, we can live with it; what we cannot live with is the continuos hiding of EVERYTHING, even when normal procedure