Booking your Kilimanjaro trek with an agency in Tanzania

The advantages of booking your Kilimanjaro trek in Tanzania

The main advantage of booking your Kilimanjaro trek in Tanzania is one of economy: simply put, you’re cutting out the middleman. Many foreign tour operators don’t actually use their own staff to take their Kilimanjaro treks. Instead, they use the services of a Tanzanian tour operator. By booking your climb up Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, therefore, you are dealing directly with the people who are going to take you up the mountain and not the Western agent.

So it can be quite a bit cheaper booking your Kilimanjaro trek after you’ve arrived in Tanzania, particularly if you are willing to shop around and especially if you are willing to haggle.

Other advantages with booking a Kilimanjaro trek in Tanzania

There are other advantages with booking a Kilimanjaro trek in Tanzania too:

If you ask, there should be no reason why you cannot meet the guides and porters who will lead your Kilimanjaro trek - and even your fellow trekkers, all of whom have a huge role to play in making your Kilimanjaro trek an enjoyable one.

You can also personally check the tents and camping equipment that you’ll be using on Kilimanjaro before booking.

Furthermore, the fact that you can often book a Kilimanjaro trek up to 24 hours beforehand gives you greater flexibility, allowing you to alter your plans so that you can pick a day that suits you - when booking a Kilimanjaro trek with an agency at home you often have to book months in advance, the tour is usually organized to a pretty tight schedule, and altering this schedule at a later date is often impossible.

Another point: while the money you spend on a Kilimanjaro trek may not be going to the most destitute and deserving of Tanzania’s population, at least you know that when booking a Kilimanjaro trek in Tanzania, all of the money is going to Tanzanians, with none going into the pockets of a Western tour company.

And finally, with the rise of the Internet, you don’t even need to wait until you arrive in Tanzania before booking your Kilimanjaro trek: most agencies in Moshi and Arusha now have Internet booking services and, while it may seem a little scary sending a deposit to people in East Africa you’ve never met, the bigger companies at least are used to receiving bookings this way and can be relied upon.

What’s more, if you’re planning to climb Kilimanjaro with an agency recommended in the book or by friends, then there’s no reason why it should be any more risky than if you were booking your Kilimanjaro trek at home; indeed, there’s a slim chance that you might even end up joining a group who did book their tour abroad, and paid more as a consequence.

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