Field notes9 May 202610 min
Field notes: selling the Serengeti shoulder season
Three weeks with ground handlers in Arusha, and what it taught us about pricing a season most operators skip.
April and May are wet, and the standard advice is to sell around them. Spend three weeks with the people who actually run the vehicles, though, and a more interesting picture appears: fewer vehicles at every sighting, resident game undisturbed, and camps willing to contract properly rather than hold out for peak.
What the ground handlers said
“Everyone wants July. In April I can give you the same guide, the same vehicle, and a river crossing with two cars instead of forty.”
Ground handler, Arusha
The mistake is selling that as a cheaper July. It is not — it is a slower, quieter, more photographic trip, and the traveller who wants it is a different traveller, usually a returning one.
How to price it
- Contract the camps early, in writing, with release dates you can actually hold.
- Sell it to your own past travellers first — the list already contains the buyer.
- Do not lead with the discount. Lead with the two cars at the crossing.
