MAY ’11 – SEPT 2011

I trust this Newsletter finds all our past clients in good health and enjoying life? I have decided to resuscitate “Dean’s Diary” which was very popular in the past, but due to very limited time I had with enormous workloads, I had to stop publishing it. I will try my best to write up “Dean’s Diary’ a few times a year – with newsworthy information about our company and what has happened in our lives – enjoy.

If you unfortunately however do not wish to receive your personal copy of “Dean’s Diary”, then please remove yourself from the mailing list – click on the button at the end of this newsletter, and you can visit our website http://www.absafaris.co.za and read the latest or any past editions from the website – (no hard feelings if you unsubscribe – link at the bottom of this newsletter.)

Since I formed African Bundu Safaris in 1996, we have had a number of changes over the years – including moving from the big city of Durban to the small mountain village of Clarens, changing Internet service providers and thus email address, change of staff members and change of some of the services we provide. What has remained consistent as far as I know – we still offer a fast, friendly and efficient service. I had set that as our ‘motto’ way back in 1996, and can proudly say that we still receive comments like “Thank you so much for your fantastic service and when we go to Botswana I will definitely use your great services.” Or “Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly.“

Over the years – our business has grown and I think the years of 2007 to 2009 were probably our busiest ever and my grateful thanks for all the bookings during those years. From 2009 onwards, the recession has affected our company as well as hundreds of other companies, but luckily I have a dozen fantastic regular clients who either have the ‘African Bug’ or who have family/friends in Southern Africa and they have supported us through these difficult times. My sincere gratitude to these folks – you know who you are. I can also say a big thanks to those folks who kindly refer African Bundu Safaris to their family, friends and colleagues for their holidays to Southern and East Africa. We can probably say that over 70% of our business over the last 5 years has been repeat and referral clients, so that is a very clear sign to me, that we are still providing an excellent service and at a great price. DISCOUNTS to you on your next trip, if your friends who book with us, do tell us that you had referred them. Sometimes I get an email just saying “a friend referred your company”, but they do not say which friend – so if you want a discount, tell them to mention your name, my memory is still good! I have tried to receive feedback from all our clients and then I upload their comments into our guestbook on our website: http://www.absafaris.co.za/guestbook.php

Where there are Special Offers, we pass them on. When clients have long stays at one establishment (5 or more nights) then I try my best to negotiate a discounted rate for them. At a recent lunch function at my church, a person asked me if I still passed on discounts and special offers to my clients, even though it thus meant I earned less as our only income was on commission – to which I replied, “yes, I try and reduce the overall cost for our clients and that I am sure is what has made our business sustainable over these past few difficult years.” Admittedly I have battled and some months we have had no bookings at all and I have dug into my own savings to keep the company going, however, I am trying to be positive and envisage that the recession will end shortly and the bookings will increase in quantity and quality again. So, referrals and repeat visits are more than welcome J

We have also, over the past decade, created additional websites, dedicated to select Southern & East Africa countries and mainly the accommodation that is found in those countries. Towards the end of last year, we created a Safari Website, that has over 150 scheduled safari tours run by various colleagues of ours – for the same price as anyone would pay if booking direct with them (as the prices all include a small commission for us to process the bookings). Some of our new clients have used this website to get ideas for a customised safari (that we design for them) as the detailed itineraries are downloadable from this website: www.2safari.info

Earlier this year, we had a great new website developed and it shall be listing nearly all the accommodation establishments that we support between Cape Town in the south and Nairobi in the north. We are still uploading the photos and text. Once we have finished uploading the 2011 rates, then we have to upload the 2012 rates…..never a quiet moment in our office. This website’s address is: www.africanbundusafaris.co.za There is a lot more detail and lots more photos, than our older Accommodation websites – and it has a lovely fresh and exciting look, at least I think so!? This website shall be replacing a number of our older accommodation websites, to cut down on the admin work-load we face every year.

Another exciting development that I have done a few months ago, is to create a Blog-site. On this site, I try and upload weekly, any specials that we are sent by the various lodges. We seem to get 2 to 4 new Special Offers per week and so we encourage you to become a Follower on this website, so when there is a new Special, I believe you could be one of the first to know about this. Our SPECIALS website is: http://safari-accommodation-african-bundu.blogspot.com/ Sometimes the specials are for Local country residents only, but many times they are open to everyone. All the Specials include a small commission for us, so we really appreciate all bookings from you all.

We have also joined the Social Media Network – with both a Facebook and a Twitter account. I occasionally post some updates and comments on either or both of these – and I believe that one of the biggest advantages of having such accounts for us – when you become a Friend, then your friends will see you are a Friend of African Bundu Safaris and that is a bit more exposure of our company and a better chance of getting new clients – and so, I ask you to become a friend on our Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bundu.safaris and especially if you would like me to upload some of your photos of your safari, send me a few of them – labelling them to where they were taken and then I can upload them for our Facebook Friends to enjoy them as well. Then for Twitter, our account is: http://twitter.com/#!/deanbundu and I have a few followers at the moment, and it would be great to have you one as well. Rest assured, I do not play on-line games and very seldom am bored, so you shall not get requests or comments relating to such.

PAST SAFARIS

One of our more popular safari lodges that numerous clients have really been enjoying over the last 2 years that we have been supporting it, is Rhino Safari Camp, located on the shores of Lake Kariba, in the Matusadona National Park, Zimbabwe. It is a rustic-style camp where the two main activities are fishing and game-viewing. Apart from these two exciting and enjoyable activities, what makes the camp is the owner-manager, Jenny and her loving & friendly Zimbabwean staff, who despite facing many hardships, deliver an excellent personal service. Also on the water, but much lower downstream, is the Royal Zambezi Lodge in the Lower Zambezi Valley, Zambia. We have been using this lodge for the past 4 years now and everyone has raved about what a fantastic time they have enjoyed there – from boat safaris, canoeing, fishing and 4x4 game drives, whilst enjoying luxurious accommodation. Over the past year we have organised some awesome safaris for our regular as well as new clients – and I have included their feedback on our main websites, GUESTBOOK. Namibia has been a popular destination especially for those adventurous folks who want to self-drive around NAMIBIA. I plan the route with them and then for most South Africans, they drive their own cars from SA or for our international clients, we rent them a vehicle – and then they follow my detailed route description from the one area to the next. Some folks prefer to include 4x4 routes and others prefer to remain on 2-wheel drive roads. Typical highlights would include Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert, Swakopmund town on the coast, then exploring the Skeleton Coast and Damaraland and Etosha Game Reserve for excellent wildlife. MalaMala Game Reserve in the Sabi Sands is still a firm favourite for some of the best wildlife viewing in a private game reserve in South Africa. One of the up and coming popular safari routes that our past clients are enjoying is including the best wildlife areas in KENYA and TANZANIA. We have a super safari that visits Lake Nakuru, Masai Mara, then across into Tanzania to explore the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, before descending into the Great Rift Valley to enjoy Lake Manyara and after returning into Kenya, spending a couple of nights at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro in the Amboseli National Park. Our east African Guides make this a trip-of-a-lifetime with stunning scenery, cultural experience and awesome wildlife photographs.

FUTURE SAFARIS

Our bookings over the next few months include a guided safari through some of the best private game reserves in the Timbavati, Sabi Sands and Kruger Park area, Jim & Judith returning to Lake Kariba and also Okavango Delta, Dana & Michael returning for an overland Botswana safari and even a referral client trekking up Mount Kilimanjaro with our Tanzanian Guides.

OUR OFFICE

We have had some changes to our office of the last 6 months with Mat emigrating to the UK with his British-born wife in May. Mat had been with us for almost 2 years and spent many dedicated hours creating hundreds of PDF documents on the various lodges we book our clients into plus maintaining our numerous websites. Ilze replaced Mat, for a two month period, then had to return to Pretoria for medical reasons and then the lovely Niki, one of my neighbours, took over the admin job in June and has done a sterling job in learning all the tasks of updating websites, creating PDF’s and collecting the 2012 rates very quickly and efficiently. Luckily the office is located a very short distance from my house and this suits my dogs fine, especially Rory, as he loves being ‘near his Dad’. When I have been away for whatever reason, Mat or Niki have told me that Rory hibernates in his kennel for the first few days that I am away and only after 5 or 6 days does he build up the courage to venture back into the office to snooze under my desk.

FAMILY & FRIENDS

My mother still lives in her same house in Durban and a couple of times a year, I go down to visit her – including the annual Tourism Indaba Tradeshow in May. She has just returned from a lovely two month holiday in New Zealand, where my brother lives. I went over to NZ for the month of July and for two weeks, I toured South Island and the lower half of North Island with my mother and niece – a great time was had by all! We enjoyed the snow, the Franz Josef Glacier, Milford Sound and there were many other great places we visited. My brother, Sean, is doing reasonably well with his fencing and gate company in Auckland – and he visits Australia occasionally to check on his distributors there and then goes to China a few times a year to check on production in the factory there. My older sister, Gail, is enjoying life on the farm she and her family are renting, just over an hours drive away from my home, however with recent snow falls and bad weather, there have been period of 3 to 5 days where they have had no electricity, which means no water as the borehole pump will not work then! My younger sister, Lynn, seems to still be doing ‘mom’s taxi’ for her kids, as they are all still very active and successful in the numerous sports they excel in, mainly Water Polo. My one Durban friend, Karsten, has done well with his web development company, KWD, and has been the brains and fingers behind our most recent websites. Thanks Karsten. I still visit my friends in Kestell every now and again – and these times are great to have a break from away from home.

Well, that is all my news. As mentioned above, be sure to check on our SPECIALS every so often, or join our Blog site to be notified of when there are additions.

Thanks for your support over the past few years.

All the best

DEAN

RETURN to Dean’s Diary Page: http://www.absafaris.co.za/diary.php