If you believe there is a reason why the quote request you receive is invalid, you can request permission from the SafariBookings Support Team to decline it. Specific criteria must apply before a quote decline request will be considered.
How to decline a quote request
Approval can be requested by selecting the ‘Ask to Decline’ button in the quote request email we’ve sent you. Then you will be directed to a form where you can fill out the details of your request.
Necessary requirements for declining a quote request
Please note that approval to decline a quote request will only be given if:
- The mismatch can be concluded directly from the quote request itself AND
- The mismatch is completely clear AND
- The mismatch could not have been prevented by using one of our system settings
You cannot decline for these reasons
- You cannot decline a quote request just because it is too expensive. If you have a valid reason for why you believe the cost of the quote request is too high, you could ask us to adjust the cost using this form. Examples of valid reasons are: the client mentioned in their quote request that they want to travel for fewer days, with fewer people or they mentioned a specific budget that is lower than the price for this tour.
How to lower the cost of future quote requests:
- Lower the payment you offer for quote requests. You can do so on your dashboard page. The minimum payment is 1% of the value of the quote request.
- In the form used to edit tours you can indicate that your tour is not available to groups larger than four travelers. As a result, you will only receive quote requests for four or fewer travelers. This also means that you will miss out on business from clients who want to travel with five or more people. And in general, you will make more profit on those quote requests. -
At the time the client requested a quote the start date was marked as ‘available’. You cannot decline quote requests for ‘available’ start dates if it turns out that you haven’t got availability.
How to prevent availability issues for future quote requests:
- You can change the availability status of start dates in the form used to edit your tours or directly from your dashboard page. From your dashboard page you can edit availability for multiple tours at the same time.
- Mark start dates as ‘availability uncertain’ when availability becomes an issue and you might not be able to fix it by using a different lodge or camp (that does have availability). If a start date is marked ‘uncertain’, clients are still able to request quotes for those dates and if it turns out that you haven’t got availability, you are allowed to decline their quote request. The downside, however, is that we won’t show your tour (or we will rank it lower) on start dates where we have sufficient ‘available’ tours.
- Mark start dates as ‘not available’ when the chance of being not available is substantially greater than being available. Clients won’t be able to request quotes for ‘not available’ start dates.
- Furthermore, the forms used to edit your tours and company profile also contain a setting that enables you to block quote requests if clients want to start at short notice. You can indicate the number of days or weeks you want to block (from the day the quote request is made). -
We openly communicate the name of the tour operators who offer tours on SafariBookings. We know that some clients, who requested a quote on SafariBookings, also decide to Google your company name, visit your website and contact you directly.
Our platform is used by more than four million people per year. Therefore, we believe that the majority of these clients first found you on SafariBookings. It also doesn’t make sense that clients would contact you through SafariBookings if they have already contacted you through your website.
Furthermore, when you advertise tours on SafariBookings, you will also receive free quote requests from clients who found you on SafariBookings, but bypass our platform and only request a quote directly through your website.
However, there is one exception: when the client clearly indicates in their quote request that they have contacted you a while ago (not on the same day as the quote request). In that exceptional situation, you can use this form and ask for approval to decline the quote request.
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If a client asks for a discount, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not willing to pay the advertised price for your tour. It just means that they are trying to negotiate and that is perfectly normal for larger purchases, such as a safari tour. We have seen that if clients request a discount, the chance that they will eventually book is just as high as for other clients. Therefore, we don’t consider that asking for a discount is a valid reason to decline a quote request.
There is, however, an exception. You can use this form and ask for approval to decline a quote request if a client clearly states in their request that they cannot pay the advertised price or that they have a maximum budget and that this budget is significantly lower than the advertised price.
- Not all clients have special requests or extra questions. Because it is not mandatory for clients to input a comment in their quote request, sometimes this will be left blank. This doesn't mean it has any less chance of converting into a booking; they usually just want to see the quote before they ask any questions.
- If, at the time the client requested a quote, you indicated that solo travelers are supported, then you will not be able to decline. You can avoid this for future quote requests by changing your tour settings to indicate that solo travelers are not supported. We recommend NOT accepting solo travelers until you have at least 2 clients willing to go on this tour. You can then accept solo travelers to fill up the shared tour.
- At the time the client requested a quote you indicated in your company profile that you allow travel agents to request quotes. If wanted, you can change this for future quote requests in the form used to edit your company profile and indicate that you want to block quote requests from travel agents.
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As per our partnership agreement (section 3.3) we only accept tour operators on SafariBookings who can offer tours to clients from any country. We only offer to block quote requests from clients that are from the country the tour is visiting. We do not offer an option to block clients from any other country, but we do offer an option to offer a lower payment per country or group of countries. The ‘payment per country’ settings can be found in the section where you set your payment per quote request.
If clients of certain countries are less interesting to you, you could decide to offer a lower payment so that you get fewer quote requests from these countries, and the quote requests that you do receive will be cheaper. If certain countries are more interesting to you, you could decide to offer a higher payment to get more quote requests from these countries.
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If a client asks for a tour guide who speaks a language other than English, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will not book a tour if you can only provide a tour guide who speaks English. It just indicates that they have a preference for a tour guide who speaks their language.
There is, however, an exception. You can use this form and ask for approval to decline a quote request if a client indicates that they will only book a tour if you can provide a tour guide who speaks their language.
Please note that this is not a complete list and we might turn down your request even if your reason is not listed here.