Many in the industry were up in arms about a controversial opinion by frequent US traveller, Tom Nolle. He had contacted Tourism Update to highlight his perspective that operators and suppliers were not as supportive to travellers as they could be.

His statements elicited a lot of comments, many strongly refuting his opinion, and Tourism Update will do a follow up story.

Here are some of the key comments in reaction to the story:

Bod Bowdey said: “Could not agree more, information has been almost impossible to come by, the situation changes without warning. We have planned two entire trips, both cancelled, planning a third now and still are not sure we will get to come. I realise that this has been hard to deal with, but moving from level 1 to level 4 with no warning is hard to plan for, especially when, from a distance, everything seems fine.”

Chobe C noted that it would be interesting to hear the other side of the argument. “Everyone on the supply side has their work cut out for them and needs to go, well I would say the extra mile, but it's more like the extra marathon these days. To keep up we simply have to be able to cover the bases that he complains about.”

Gillian Maskell, added: “I am raring to go and am trying to make every possible effort to clients and adhere to the obstacles/minefield of open borders, closed borders, vaccinations, COVID tests etc to make my clients’ trip as free-flowing as possible under the conditions.

I think he needs to be put in the place of us operators to see what a minefield it is. I have had situations where six COVID tests or more were needed with multi-country safaris. And try and get a COVID test in the middle of the bush.

Clients need to be flexible to changes now to accommodate these obstacles, and understanding. WE ARE TRYING OUR BEST.

Sadly Americans do not seem to comprehend the rulings we have to adhere to as they did not seem to have many over there and, if they did, many folks just ignored them.”