South Africa honeymoon - travel agent/specialist or self book?

gaillimh

Hi.
One of the options I am looking into for my honeymoon in February (not far away I know) is going to South Africa for 12 nights.
Most likely sticking to Cape Town and the wine lands for 10 of those and finishing with 2 days safari somewhere (maybe even just a single day as this would really be fine with us).
Would there be any saving to be made booking with some kind of specialist travel agent or would it be cheaper to self book do you think?

I have no problem researching and organising everything online myself as this is what I usually do for holidays but maybe for this kind of trip packages may work out cheaper?
Anybody any experience of this or could recommend any good company?
Thanks

sillysocks

We did it a few years ago with Trailfinders. It was great! They organised everything bar about 3/4 nights where we found nicer accommodation in the areas and booked our own. But overall I tried to put the full package together myself and the Trailfinders one came in cheaper, plus it was great not to have to worry about any details while we were there.

Would definitely say to try somewhere like Trailfinders first anyway and see how you get on. I think Feb might be pretty much peak season in SA so might be quite expensive.

oconnoao

We just booked our honeymoon to Tanzania. We went to Trailfinders and the quote they gave us was huge so we did some research into other options. The TripAdvisor forums were great - many regular travellers to Tanzania recommended local travel agents to use. We contacted some of these through email after checking out lots of reviews and booked with one that was well priced and offered us the package we wanted. They've arranged everything for us bar our flights and first nights accommodation which we booked ourselves. It's saving us about 1/3 of the cost.

Lainey15

oconnoao wrote: »

We just booked our honeymoon to Tanzania. We went to Trailfinders and the quote they gave us was huge so we did some research into other options. The TripAdvisor forums were great - many regular travellers to Tanzania recommended local travel agents to use. We contacted some of these through email after checking out lots of reviews and booked with one that was well priced and offered us the package we wanted. They've arranged everything for us bar our flights and first nights accommodation which we booked ourselves. It's saving us about 1/3 of the cost.

Hi - would you mind sharing the name of the travel agent you used? We are looking at Tanzania or Zanzibar too. Thanks!

oconnoao

Sure, we booked with Swala Safaris. They've arranged the safari (a private 7 day safari) and the Zanzibar part for us too. We also contacted Roy Safaris, Kanuth Safari, Alpha Travel and Transkibo for quotes and they were all reasonable and helpful but in the end went with Swala as we were happy with the options they offered and they were always quick at getting back to us.

They were really flexible - we can start whatever day we want as it's a private safari and we could upgrade accommodation if we wanted to whatever we preferred. I can't wait now!

pwurple

Oh you are going to love south africa. What an amazing place place.

We booked through Southern Destinations, which is a south african travel agent. Found them really really good to be honest. www.southerndestinations.com

They organised a 5 day safari for us (full board, and I would highly recommend doing as much safari as you can afford, it was favourite part of our trip), rental car, all accommodation, a driver for taking us around the vineyards and did a very detailed personalised itinerary.