Booking Conditions

These Booking Conditions are the contract between you and Sun & Safari Limited (referred to throughout as “we”, “us”, “our” or “the Company”) for any safari, coastal stay, or combined itinerary booked with us — whether through this website, by email, over the phone, or in person with a consultant.

“You” and “your” mean the lead traveller who makes the booking, together with every other traveller named on it. The lead traveller is responsible for the accuracy of every name, passport detail, and date submitted, and for making payments on time on behalf of the whole party, even where individual travellers intend to pay their own share directly.

A contract comes into existence the moment we receive your deposit and issue written confirmation of your itinerary — not when you first receive a quote, and not when you verbally agree dates with a consultant. Until that point, any itinerary or price sent to you is a proposal only, and it can change based on availability at the specific lodges, camps, and internal flights named in it. The version of these conditions in force on the date your deposit is received is the version that applies to your booking for its full duration, even if this page is updated later; keep a saved or printed copy alongside your other booking paperwork.

Whether you book one of the fixed packages listed on this site, one of the destination-specific tours on our shop page, or a fully bespoke itinerary built around your dates through the trip planner, the same Booking Conditions apply in full — a bespoke itinerary doesn’t carry different terms simply because it’s custom-built.

These conditions sit alongside, rather than replace, the terms of any third-party supplier involved in your trip. International and domestic airlines, lodges and camps, ground transport operators, and activity providers — from balloon safari operators to dhow captains — each have their own conditions of carriage or stay, which apply in addition to ours where relevant, particularly around baggage allowances, check-in times, and no-show policies at individual properties.

Every booking is confirmed with a deposit of 25% of the total trip cost per traveller, or USD 500 per traveller, whichever is greater, paid at the time you confirm your itinerary. If you’re booking within 70 days of departure, we ask for full payment upfront rather than a deposit, since there usually isn’t enough time left to collect a balance separately.

The remaining balance is due no later than 70 days before departure. We’ll email a reminder ahead of the due date, but the responsibility for paying on time sits with the lead traveller, regardless of how many people are named on the booking. If we haven’t received your balance within 7 days of the due date, we treat the booking as cancelled by you, and the cancellation charges described later on this page apply.

We accept payment by Visa or Mastercard through our secure payment portal, which carries a 2.9% card processing surcharge, or by direct bank transfer, which carries no surcharge from us, though your own bank may charge a transfer fee. All prices, deposits, and fees on this page and in your written quote are in US dollars (USD) unless we’ve told you otherwise in writing.

Every traveller named on a booking, including children and infants, is charged the same deposit percentage and is subject to the same balance due date as an adult traveller — there’s no reduced children’s deposit or family rate. See Group Bookings, Families & Solo Travellers below for how this applies to mixed-age bookings.

Most itineraries combine two modes of transport within Kenya: private 4×4 safari vehicle for road transfers, and light aircraft for longer legs or for connecting to the coast. Which mode applies to which leg is set out explicitly in your written itinerary rather than left to be arranged on arrival.

Road transfers are typical between destinations that sit relatively close together — Nairobi to the Rift Valley lakes, or between Lake Nakuru and the Masai Mara — and are driven by the same driver-guide who accompanies you on game drives, in the same vehicle, so there’s no separate transfer vehicle to coordinate. Road surfaces vary from tarmac to unsealed murram track once inside a reserve or conservancy, which is factored into the drive times your consultant quotes.

Light-aircraft transfers connect destinations too far apart to drive comfortably in a single day, or where flying saves the better part of a day of your trip — the Masai Mara to Diani, or Samburu to Nairobi, for example. These flights use scheduled or chartered light aircraft between the airstrips serving each park, not a commercial jet service, and carry the reduced baggage allowance described in the following section.

Where your itinerary crosses into Tanzania, such as on a combined Mara-Serengeti route, the border crossing itself is arranged as part of your itinerary, but is subject to that border post’s own opening hours and immigration procedures, which we’ll detail in your final documents.

You can request a change to a confirmed booking at any time before departure by contacting your consultant in writing. Whether we can accommodate it depends entirely on availability at the properties and with the suppliers involved — a change is never guaranteed until we confirm it in writing.

Most amendments carry a fee of USD 50 per request, in addition to any price difference the change itself creates — for example, moving from a family safari itinerary to a honeymoon safari format, upgrading to a higher-category room, or adding extra nights. Correcting a genuine spelling error in a traveller’s name is free of charge if you catch it within 7 days of booking; after that, it’s treated as a standard amendment.

Requests to change your travel dates less than 70 days before departure are treated differently: rather than an amendment, we treat this as a cancellation of your original booking, with the cancellation charges below applying, followed by a new booking at whatever rates are current for your new dates. This reflects how little notice suppliers themselves have to resell the space you’re vacating.

Adding or removing nights, activities, or destinations from an already-confirmed itinerary is treated as an amendment rather than a cancellation, provided your overall travel dates stay the same, and is subject to the same USD 50 fee plus any price difference.

Can’t travel yourself? You can transfer your booking to someone else who meets all the conditions of the trip — a valid passport, any age or fitness requirement a specific activity carries, and so on — provided you tell us in writing at least 14 days before departure and pay a transfer fee of USD 75. You and the new traveller are jointly responsible for any outstanding balance and for the transfer fee itself; if we’re notified with less than 14 days’ notice, we treat it as a cancellation and a new booking instead.

Any refund due under these Booking Conditions — whether from a cancellation scale above, a force majeure cancellation, or a shared group departure that didn’t reach its minimum numbers — is returned to the original payment method used. We don’t issue refunds in cash, or to a different bank account or card than the one the payment was made from.

Bank transfer refunds typically clear within 10 business days of us confirming the amount due. Card refunds are processed on our side within the same window, but can take a further billing cycle or two to appear on your statement, depending on your card issuer — this part of the timeline is outside our control.

Where a refund is only partial — for example, under the cancellation scale, or where a force majeure event affects only part of a multi-destination itinerary — we’ll send a written breakdown showing exactly what’s being retained and why, alongside the refund itself.

The 2.9% card processing surcharge charged on the original payment, where applicable, is not refundable, since it’s a cost incurred with the payment processor at the time of the original transaction rather than something we hold on your behalf. Full detail on refund eligibility for specific circumstances sits in our Refund & Returns Policy, which applies alongside this page.

Comprehensive travel insurance is a mandatory condition of travelling with Sun & Safari, not an optional extra. We won’t issue your final travel documents without confirmed proof of cover, and we reserve the right to treat an unconfirmed policy as grounds to withhold departure documents until it’s provided.

Your policy needs to cover, at minimum, emergency medical treatment, emergency medical evacuation — including light-aircraft or air-ambulance evacuation from remote safari areas such as Samburu or the Mara conservancies, which can be needed with little warning — repatriation, and trip cancellation or curtailment. Standard domestic health cover, and many credit-card travel policies, don’t meet this bar on their own; check the specific inclusions before relying on either.

We need to see proof of your policy, including your insurer’s name and an emergency contact number, no later than 14 days before departure. We don’t sell travel insurance ourselves, so we’d suggest sourcing a policy as soon as your booking is confirmed, both to satisfy this condition in good time and because cancellation cover is generally more useful the earlier it’s in place relative to any reason you might need to cancel.

An annual multi-trip policy is fine, provided it meets the minimum cover above for the full duration of your safari — check this specifically rather than assuming, since some annual policies cap evacuation cover lower than a dedicated single-trip safari policy would.

If you travel without adequate cover in breach of this condition, you do so at your own risk, and Sun & Safari accepts no liability for costs that appropriate insurance would otherwise have covered.

Most of our itineraries are comfortably suited to travellers of average fitness, since the majority of time is spent seated in a safari vehicle rather than on foot. A small number of activities set their own requirements, which we’ll flag clearly at the time of booking: a hot air balloon safari typically carries a minimum age of around 7, and a walking safari, such as the Crescent Island walk at Lake Naivasha or the Hell’s Gate hiking and cycling route, is generally not recommended for children under 12, at the guide’s discretion on the day.

Please raise any dietary requirements, mobility needs, or other special requests separately — see Special Requests, Dietary Needs & Accessibility below for how we handle these. If you take regular medication, bring more than enough to cover your entire trip plus a reasonable buffer for delays, in your hand luggage rather than checked baggage, since pharmacies are scarce once you’re away from Nairobi or the coast.

Once on safari, you’re required to follow the reasonable instructions of your driver-guide and any park ranger — this includes staying inside the vehicle in areas where it’s required, respecting posted speed limits and off-road restrictions, and following the specific rules of the reserve or conservancy you’re visiting, which vary from park to park. Please also treat the communities you encounter, including a Maasai cultural village visit or a Swahili Coast walking tour on your itinerary, with the same courtesy and respect your guide models — this is someone’s home, not a photo backdrop. Drone use is prohibited in essentially all Kenyan national parks and reserves without prior written permission from the relevant authority.

Sun & Safari or any supplier involved in your trip may refuse to continue carrying or hosting a traveller whose behaviour endangers themselves, other guests, staff, or wildlife, or who acts illegally, without any refund for the unused portion of the trip. Alcohol is served responsibly at our partner lodges and camps, and travellers remain responsible for their own conduct regardless of what’s been consumed.

If anything about your trip falls short, tell your guide, driver, or on-ground representative straight away. Most issues — a room mix-up, an itinerary mismatch, a supplier misunderstanding — are far easier to put right in real time, while you’re still in Kenya, than after the fact.

If a concern isn’t resolved on the ground, or only becomes clear once you’re home, submit a written complaint to us within 28 days of your return date through our contact page, ideally by email, with as much detail as you can — dates, locations, and who you spoke to at the time, if applicable.

We aim to send a full written response within 14 business days of receiving your complaint. Where your concern involves a specific third-party supplier, we may need to raise it with them directly as part of investigating it properly, which can occasionally extend this timeline; we’ll tell you if that’s the case.

Complaints about matters entirely outside our control — such as a flight delay caused by an airline, or a park closure ordered by the relevant wildlife authority — are things we’ll help you navigate, but the outcome ultimately rests with the relevant third party. General questions that aren’t complaints are usually quickest to resolve through our FAQ page before contacting us directly.

If you’re happy to share a photo, video, or a few words about your trip with us, we may occasionally ask permission to feature it on our website, in our marketing, or on social media. We’ll always ask first, credit you if you’d like to be credited, and you’re entirely free to decline without it affecting your booking in any way.

Personal, non-commercial photography and filming for your own use is welcome throughout your trip, subject to the specific rules of each park, reserve, or conservancy you visit, and the reasonable requests of your guide around wildlife safety and other guests’ privacy.

Commercial filming, professional photography shoots, or drone use for any purpose require prior written permission from both Sun & Safari and the relevant park or conservancy authority, arranged well in advance of your trip — tell your consultant at the time of booking if this applies to you.