Dragoman - East Africa
Category: Dragoman | February 24, 2008 By ClairHI went on my first ever overland trip to East Africa in July 2006. The trip was from Nairobi to Dar es Salam for 16 nights.
My usual holidays were beach and pools so I was nervous about doing a trip of this type.The communication beforehand with Dragoman was excellent, any query I had was answered professionally and I was never made to feel like I was asking a ’stupid question’.
The trip itself was great, a real trip of a lifetime - in my day job I have to organise everything so it was really refreshing to know that my trip was pre-organised and I could just sit back and read up on where we were heading next.
I enjoyed the fact that we all had to chip in and cook, clean, shop etc although some people on the trip pulled their weight more than others which did lead to some resentment by the end of the trip.
The crew were very friendly and our camp cook was amazing. The work these guys did for very low wages was great - they are never off duty! From my personal experience I had no issues with how the trip was run although I know that some of my fellow travellers were not quite as satisfied.
Advice I can give to anyone contemplating an overland trip similar to mine:
* be very flexible - not everyone is the same as you and not everyone wants to know everything about you in the first 24 hours.
* read the joining instructions carefully, if there is a requirement for a piece of kit, it is usually on the list becuase its necessary.
* white clothes, hairdryers, strighteners and full make up are not normally a necessity in Africa.
* respect your surroundings and the culture, this may be the only time you have to see this beautiful country - enjoy it and take it all in.
Overall I have no complaints about my trip to East Africa or Dragoman although they are slightly more expensive than other tour companies. I would use them again on my next Africa trip which will hopefully be Vic Falls to Cape Town.
Excellent post! Although I am from African Trails, I would like to thank you for the advice you put up and hope that everybody reads it and takes it in, as it is all spot on.
Hope you enjoy your next trip too!
Sure it was an excellent post and Drago is a good company but come on guys this report was not written by a punter but straight fom an ad ex. Read it again, it really is a broucher
Hi Big Tony,
I thank you for your compliment on my penmanship but I can assure you my post is entirely my own work. I am a project manager for an investment bank and I bought the trip for to celebrate turning 30!
Cheers
Clair
Hi Jason/Sarah your comments have been removed as possible spam.
This is a community website and unfortunately there is little we can do to ensure a post or comment is 100% genuine so readers have to use their common sense about what they should or should not believe. We have used some detective work and these comments appear highly suspect, we can only remain vigilant.
Hey I am thinking of a trip with Dragoman to East Africa in August, I have heard though that they may be winding up buisness, Anyone know if this is true..more importantly though if I book now will my deposit be returned if they do go bust?
Dragoman going out of buisness. No surley not? Better watch that one then, Wiered because I have just been on a trip with them, mind you the truck and equipment was a bit ropey. Still shame though.
I am a director of Drago so I can confirm a couple of things categorically!
1. Clair does not work for Drago tho’ of course we thank her for her positive words. I’m glad to say the vast majority of customer comments match Clairs and when they do not we look into the problems and rectify them as quickly as possible.
2. There is no way Dragoman is winding up it’s business! Bookings are very strong at the moment and we are starting to build new trucks again for the first time in 8 years. Our first new truck is scheduled to join our Africa fleet during this summer.
3. If anyone is thinking of booking an overland trip it is important to check that the operating company is ‘bonded’. This means that even if the company did cease trading your money is protected and you would get your money back. Dragoman is bonded by both AITO and ATOL, meaning your money is save when booking a Drago trip. Not all overlanding companies have this insurance so it’s worth checking.
Drago to go….Hey interesting news regarding not closing down. But I also heard that there was a problem my mate in kenya said he had been talking to a driver OF drago who reakond that it was in big trouble. Dont know if your real or a spoof but i gonna go where the trips a sure thing. cheers.
dragoman have been making people redundant, i was dealing with a guy great fun but when i rang to speak to him again i was told he had left. then i found out from someone who had done a trip that the head office were making people redundant so reading the other comments makes sense. i was really looking forward to the possible trip but have now booked with another company just in case. shame.
This is very sad news if true. I worked for Drago a few years ago. It was a point of concern among crew back then that the trucks and equipment were a bit long in the tooth and in need of replacement/updating, if Dragoman were to stay competitive. Passenger numbers were pretty low at the time and complaints about equipment were the single biggest issue.
However, instead of investing in newer equipment they decided to rebrand ‘Dragoman’ to ‘Dragoman Overland’, on the advice of a marketing company that told them that customers don’t know what Dragoman stands for, so you need to rename the company so people know what it does, i.e. overlanding. The rebranding exercise entailed redesigning the company logo/literature and repainting all the trucks in a slightly different colour scheme.
I know the marketing company in question were handsomely paid for this simplistic and largely erroneous advice, because the whole exercise cost in the region of 300k, borrowed from the bank I understand. I was told by Ops that this debt meant that money wasn’t available to replace the truck fleet until it was repaid.
My feeling at the time was that Drago were fed some classic marketing bull and had bought it for a handsome price. No point rebranding your product if you don’t fix the underlying issues that are actually losing you customers in the first place. As someone else commented on the Drago thread, new paint doesn’t make old trucks work better.
I can unfortunately believe that Dragoman could be in trouble, in light of the fact that they borrowed and spent all this money on rebranding only 2 years before world economy went pop. Holidays are a luxury item and one of the first thing to be cut back on in hard times. I imagine that not addressing underlying equipment issues and falling consumer demand in the travel industry could potentially be a killer combination for Dragoman.
There is a duel irony in all that money Dragoman spent pointlessly (in my opinion) rebranding. Firstly I see they have returned to using the original ‘Dragoman’ brand recently, so much for the costly rebranding exercise. But the real irony is that the Dragoman director who has posted a response above, adixons, used to work for the marketing company that gave Drago the rebranding advice! However, once Drago had paid his company for its great rebranding advice, they took him on as a fully fledged Dragoman director. Wouldn’t like to be in his shoes right now if the rumours are true
However, hopefully it’s all just rumour and Dragoman will be with us for many years to come.
don,t worry dragoman are doing just fine,they have partnered with intrepid now and are getting full trucks in east and south africa,but the chances of you getting an experienced crew is very slim since tour leaders are dropping like flies with drago,either getting sacked or quitting!!
Why are dragoman leaders dropping like flies? I’ve been thinking of getting into the business of overlanding for a while. I’ve done some guiding and driving in Europe and would love to continue that in a more exciting environment. I’ve been offered an interview with dragoman and it seemed like I was already chosen n my ablity from my application and I only have to prove my personality. I not a big fan of working for companies that turn over staff very quickly. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
don’t worry potential Drago leader, from all accounts the Dragoman leaders that have either quit or been sacked recently were either not good at the job or had not staying power. Alot of the old crew that are still around reckon the new generation are too soft!
Whilst I’ve never posted before, I check these boards out on a regular basis, and I was interested to see “Anon’s” post from back in November. Fortunately for all of us who are lucky enough work in the industry, overlanding tends to inspire a lot of passion in people, you only have to look at how many ex-crew hang around on these forums to see that. We all have our opinions, often very strongly held - and unfortunately that does sometimes seem to send the rumour-mill in to over-drive.
As Anon states, they themselves have not worked for Drago for a few years, so as a current employee, I’d just like to set out the facts as they are right now. As a company, we are trading profitably and hitting all our financial targets. Our partnership with Intrepid is working really successfully, and 90% of our trips are operating with really good group sizes – in fact we’re so confident in the fact that our trips will run, we’ve just started guaranteeing departures, something we’ll be rolling our further in 2010. We have also started a programme to regenerate some of the older trucks in our fleet, and the first new generation Drago truck will be out running trips in Africa within the next few months.
And as for the comment about crew “dropping like flies”, like with any job, whilst some crew stay on for years and years, others decide it’s not for them and move on to other things. Typically our crew work for us for 2-3 years, but there will always be those who don’t stay as long. We are really proud of our crew, they work really hard to ensure everyone on our trips have an awesome time – and whilst we know we’re not perfect, we’d like to think we’re pretty good at what we do, and the feedback we get from our passengers doesn’t seem to contradict this.
Finally, I’m sure someone will come along and discount everything I’ve written as a PR exercise, given that I work for Drago. That’s fair enough – but there are always 2 sides to every story and I just wanted to make sure this side was told as well.
Cheers, and Merry Christmas!
Great news re the trucks lets see if they appear, it will make a change for something they say to come true.