Where your money goes, and what protects it

Most safari websites either say nothing about this or say too much. Here is the plain version.

We are a small, owner-run company. When you book with us you are trusting people you have probably never met with a good deal of money, often a year before you travel. You are entitled to know exactly how that money is handled and what stands behind it if something goes wrong. So here it is, without the reassuring adjectives.

We are a SATSA member

Marula Hill is a member of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, membership number 3049. You can check that we are a member in good standing on the SATSA membership directory at any time, and we would rather you did than took our word for it.

Membership is not a badge you buy. The directory lists only members in good standing for the current financial year, which means SATSA has completed its annual review of our financial, insurance and regulatory compliance. Members are bound by SATSA's code of conduct, which gives travellers and buyers a route to recourse if a member breaches it, and members who fall out of compliance come off the directory.

The SATSA bond

Every SATSA member is automatically covered by the SATSA Bonding scheme. It is a fund, administered by Guardrisk Insurance Company, set up to deal with losses where money has been paid to a member that is then placed under involuntary liquidation.

We want to be accurate about what that means, because most sites are not.

The bond covers deposits and payments you have made to us for services we have booked on your behalf: lodge accommodation, transfers, flights arranged through us, and so on. It applies if Marula Hill were to cease trading through involuntary liquidation. It does not apply to a lodge or airline failing, and it does not cover anything you booked yourself.

It is a limited fund, not an insurance policy, and it does not guarantee a full refund. Claims are capped, both per incident and in total across all claims, and the caps are set by SATSA rather than by us. The bond is paid to the lawyer handling the liquidation and distributed as part of the formal creditor process, so it is not immediate, and each claim is assessed individually with payouts made proportionally from what is in the fund. Any loss already covered by another policy, such as your own travel insurance, is excluded. SATSA publishes the full terms on its bonding page, and we would encourage you to read them.

Is that as much protection as a UK ATOL or ABTA bond? No. ATOL is a statutory scheme run by the UK Civil Aviation Authority and ABTA is a trade association with its own arrangements, and neither applies to a company based in South Africa. SATSA bonding is the industry safeguard available to a South African inbound operator, and we hold it. We are telling you its limits because we would rather you knew them now than ran into them later.

How we handle your money

This is the part that matters most, and it is the simplest.

Your money does not sit with us. The moment your deposit arrives, we pay each supplier in your itinerary whatever their terms require to secure your booking: the lodges, the flights, the transfers, the guides. Your rooms and seats are then held in your name by the people providing them, not in our bank account. When the balance comes in it goes straight out again, and everything is settled with every supplier before you fly.

We do it this way for two reasons. It is how you keep the best rooms, because a lodge that has been paid does not release them to anyone else. And it means that at no point is a large sum of your money sitting with a small company waiting to be spent. The deposit and balance dates for your trip are set out in your quote and in our booking terms.

We accept card payments. The payment platform charges an admin fee, which we pass on at cost and show clearly before you pay, and we will always tell you if a bank transfer would work out better for a larger sum. Paying by card does give you a further layer of protection through your card issuer, independent of anything on this page, and for some travellers that is worth the fee.

Every payment is confirmed in writing with a statement showing exactly what has been paid and to whom.

If a lodge or airline fails

The SATSA bond protects you against us. It does not protect you against a supplier. In practice, because we live forty minutes from many of the lodges we book and know the people who run them, a lodge quietly getting into difficulty is something we tend to hear about early, and we would move you before it became your problem. Where a supplier did fail without warning, we would find you an equivalent property and pursue the recovery of funds on your behalf. If those funds could not be recovered, your travel insurance and, where you have paid by card, your card issuer are the routes that remain. That is one more reason we ask you to insure early.

Travel insurance

Please take out comprehensive travel insurance as soon as you pay a deposit, not the week before you fly. Nothing on this page covers you if you need to cancel, cut a trip short, fall ill in the bush, or lose luggage between three connecting flights. That is what insurance is for. Make sure the policy covers the full value of the trip and includes medical evacuation, which in remote safari areas is not a small item. If you would like a recommendation we will give you one, though we do not sell insurance and are not authorised to advise on it, so the choice of insurer is yours.

Questions

If any of this raises a question, write to us. We would far rather spend twenty minutes on the phone explaining how the bond works than have you wonder.