Covid-19 Coronavirus: Chigo Tours Africa tour precautions, protocols and policy. Here is how we are conducting our tours during this pandemic.
For any of our customers that have had their tours postponed to 2021/22, we say thank you. We look forward to organizing your trip based on your preferred departure dates.
As we resume safari operations during this Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic, safety of our clients, staff and partners is top priority. This means any return will be done slowly and carefully. The risk of Covid-19 transmission to clients, staff, suppliers, partners and local communities along safari routes we visit, still exits. All our tour guides have received covid19 vaccinations. We encourage all our clients to get vaccinated.
On-trip incidents and safety issues are recorded. We will then produce a monthly report to study trends against the safety standards in the business and any associated issues.
Training on coivd19 safety was conducted on all Chigo Tours Africa staff, tour experts who are involved in any part of the product design and tour guides crew involved in delivery of safaris and tours. All local site guides contracted to provide a service or run a tour for Chigo Tours Africa have received appropriate training.
Our quality assurance operations staff have visited most of our local suppliers and partner hotels, lodges, restaurants and activity sites to ensure the highest standards of cleanliness and hygiene are maintained in line with government ministry of health advice and WHO and CDC guidelines.
We have increased our focus to custom made private tours and small guided tours to off-the-beaten path destinations away from crowds. On these tours you will only interact with few people and your web of interconnection will be extremely limited. We stay out of crowds as much as possible.
Though nothing is COVID19-proof, we are attempting to ensure that we will take every reasonable precaution to reduce exposure, such as:
If clients, tour/driver guide show symptoms of COVID-19 and are either unable to or unwilling to be tested, Chigo tours reserves the right to remove them from the safari tour to prevent any risk to others.
Where as being safe is partly a personal responsibility, we also urge you please to practice personal safety by:
To minimize, exposure to public, only Chigo Tours Africa drivers and selected drivers from partner lodges/hotels will conduct pickup and drop off transfers. Both visitors and guides must wash hands regularly to make your journey as safe as possible. These are very strange times. But we believe that if we take the precautions above together, that we can run small-size tours and safaris that practice good hygiene and do everything possible to be as safe as possible according WHO protocols and to the standards of safety as set out by Uganda’s Ministry of Health.
October to November and March to May are the two-low seasons in Uganda/Rwanda/Kenya/Tanzania. Despite the fact that East Africa experiences rains during this season, most tour activities still go on. Besides, because of Uganda’s location on the equator, it tends to rain late afternoon. So most safari activities take place in the morning hours and early afternoon. Therefore, proper planning limits inconveniences that may be caused by the rains. Again, during this low season, lodges and destinations have few tourists. Not many tourists travel during this period largely to avoid inconveniences caused by rains. Hence no crowding, which would otherwise affect our social distancing policy.
Until further notice we have reduced the deposit required for new tour bookings from 30% to 20%. Deposits are subject to our revised terms and conditions which can be found at https://www.chigotours.com/booking-terms-conditions/
In summary, in almost all circumstances your deposit is fully refundable (minus a small admin fee) should you decide to cancel up to 28 days before departure. There after our flexible booking policy terms & Conditions will apply. If there are still government restrictions causing us to be unable to run your safari tour, we will provide you with a credit note to the value of all of your payments valid for future tours.
Offer valid for bookings received from 01-July-2021 on all tours. Valid until further notice.
Screening for COVID-19 helps isolate anyone with COVID-19 symptoms and stops the spread of disease. It is likely to become more common for future travelers.
Pre-departure:
Any suspected/confirmed cases of COVID-19 to be recorded as an incident. And appropriate contacts made to local COVID-19 taskforce for urgent response. Any tour guide/safari driver suspected/confirmed case cannot continue with the tour until further notice. An alternative replacement to continue with safari will be chosen.
A client or guide with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 Coronavirus infection will be helped to access appropriate medical care as quickly as possible. We will help contact family and friends. We will also offer translation service for clients if required at hospitals or medical centres. Additionally, we will help in contacting insurance companies, travel agents and airlines to make arrangements to return home. We encourage all clients to get vaccinations and travel/medical insurance cover before tour.
Finally, as Chigo Tours Africa, we would like to thank all those in the medical and health services and associated organizations who selflessly put themselves at the frontline to look after humanity during these rough waters of Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic.