Rainbow Tours Reviews 

We had one of the best holidays we've ever had. Nikki Lynas was most helpful in ensuring we had what we asked for in a safari holiday. Her advice and organisation of our itinerary was excellent. We stayed at Sediba in the Waterberg area and the Lentaba lodge in the Lailbela area. Both were superb in accommodation, staff and safari experiences. However we must make a special mention of our guide Gerrard at
Lentaba, his enthusiasm and knowledge was second to none. We are already planning another visit.

Excellent customer service before we travelled. All arrangements went smoothly. Lodges were brilliant and guides/drivers superb

Wow what an amazing experience. 6 nights safari in Tanzania followed by 7 nights relaxation in Zanzibar was superb. Craig at Rainbow travel organised everything and it was all superb. As. first time safari experiencing 4 different safari parks and their different landscapes was amazing. The 3 different accommodations gave us a range of tented lodge, hotel type lodge and a semi tented lodge. All were outstanding. Our guide was extremely knowledgable and gave us the best experience of the animals. Our week in Zanzibar was just what we needed and the boutique hotel was amazing. Very intimate with only 6 rooms and outstanding service and food. We would defo recommend rainbow to anyone

We booked this vacation through Rainbow tours. Three nights in the Little Governors camp in the Masai Mara and 15 nights in various locations in Madagascar. As we dealt with 3 organizations, I have separated this review into 3 sections.
Rainbow
Rainbow's offerings typically cover the type of vacation that my wife and I are looking for, i.e. mainly wildlife. The communication between ourselves and Rainbow was timely, comprehensive and for the most part accurate (with one exception). The logistics in the two locations in Africa were handled by 2 companies, and were seamlessly executed. The one exception I mentioned above, is that we specifically asked for the Great Migration in the Kenya trip, which meant where the herds cross the River Mara. Unfortunately, although we saw herds of Wildebeest and Zebra, they were heading back to Tanzania because the river crossing had stopped approximately 1 month before we got there.
Kenya
We stayed in the Little Governors camp, which was excellent. We started and ended our short trip using their own airline to and from Nairobi. The "rooms" were well equipped, the service was outstanding and our personal guide (Koros) was very good. We felt very secure because they insisted on us being escorted on camp at all times. The Masai Mara is vast, and sparsely populated with animals. But we did see all the animals we expected.

Madagascar
Our tour manager, Fan, was very good throughout the tour. He had a helper (an assistant tour manager) who was with us for most of the time. Fan was very personable, professional, flexible and organized the group to maximize what we saw and our enjoyment. I think the group enjoyed the 3 sea based activities out of Eden Ecolodge (first time this has been attempted) the most and we also had a great lunch at the hotel. There was an unfortunate and unforeseen ending to the tour because of rioting, first in Tana and also Antsirabe. This meant that we drove for approximately 12 hours over the last 2 days and were unable to do the scheduled city tours out of fear for our safety. Fan handled it well. The hotels that we stayed in were very good, especially when you consider the extreme poverty of the country. But the distances traveled were extreme and the roads were disgustingly bad. Thank goodness we had one SUV per couple.

Tipping
At the start of the tour, our primary tour manager (Fan) suggested that we give him $580 per couple so that he could tip the drivers, porters, local guides, business owners etc during the tour. This really helped the group as he relieved us of the burden of appropriately tipping everyone that helped us, Fan was very good, but we did not expect 2 tour managers, which increased the tipping burden even at a reduced rate for the second tour manager. In fact, tipping was way past what we had budgeted for.

From the second we started planning they were attentive, helpful and always at hand. We had a major issue in Machu Pichu Peru, where the local agent was very poor, and we had to sort out the problems ourselves,(when I say major the agent did not put our names on the tour list and we were left stranded at the gate to Machu Pichu). When I contacted Rainbow, Kerry arranged a call with me. By then I had sorted it out. The local agents in Argentina and Brazil were excellent. If had not been for the issue at Machu Pichu, we would have given a 5 star rating.

Rainbow put together a tour at three Botswana Desert & Delta camps. We relied on Rainbow to book the camps based on our initial discussions. Their choice of locations was nothing short of brilliant providing a good mix of the Okavango and surrounding environments. Rainbow's knowledge of the camps, their locations and the smooth timing of flights and transfers meant our holiday exceeded our expectations. Thank you Rainbow

We had the best time in Brazil (Rio - Amazon - Pantanal - Iguaçu) and Kerry made organising our itinerary super easy. Everything worked seamlessly during our travels and we would recommend booking with Rainbow wholeheartedly.

Issue with representatives off ill and no stand in.
Didn't offer upgrade suggestions, e.g. Private driver.
Confusion in Africa regarding hotel and level of food and drink inclusion in package.
Great disappointment regarding the tidal movement in the Zanzibar hotel so swimming in the sea was not possible most of the time. We really should have been warned.
The Tanzania information sheet was way out of date.
On a positive note we were meeted and greeted on time everywhere with mostly welcoming people.

The safari as a whole was brilliant.

We have just returned home from a fabulous safari, put together by Craig at Rainbow Tours. I cannot praise him enough for all the thought and time he put in.

Firstly for our planned 12 day trip to Tanzania, which we had spent many months planning, only for it to be cancelled three weeks before departure, due to problems with Tanzanian registered airlines. Craig then, in less than a week, came up with an alternative safari in Kenya !!

All three camps were excellent in their own unique way. He intuitively seemed to know exactly what accommodation would suit us, even finding two camps at such short notice that had swimming pools, which Craig knew would be "icing on the cake" for me. Throughout the whole organising of our trip, when we had questions and queries, he got pretty much straight back to us, never leaving us hanging on. The service at each camp was professional and friendly and they couldn't do enough for us. The food was delicious throughout. The safaris at all three camps were excellent, as were the guides.

At our first camp, Elsa's Kopje, Mohamed was our excellent guide and we saw all the Big 5 in one day !! I must also mention Charles, who makes a perfect Classic Margarita !! Our second camp was Loisaba, very different from the very romantic and intimate Elsa's. It is situated at around 5,500ft and had an amazing infinity pool overlooking the plains. "Big" John was our guide and again was excellent. We saw pretty much everything, including the more rare Black Rhino. Our third camp was Little Enkewa, which was almost brand new. It had just five very beautiful luxury tents and a very beautiful "mess" tent. Isaac was an excellent guide too and we saw the Great Migration, which was amazing. Jose the owner was a perfect host and Jully looked after us perfectly.

All I can say is, thank you Craig for everything you did for us. We are already recommending Rainbow Tours to all our friends.

Botswana Letaka Camping Safari Sept 2025

We had the most incredible time and the holiday was so well organised. The team that looked after us was brilliant. Food was amazing and there was a good supply of cold drinks both in the jeep and in camp, which were needed as temperatures went above 40C.

Our guide Vincent was very knowledgable and had a wonderful sense of humour. He was able to spot, track and identify wildlife whilst negotiating bumpy tracks. Not only did he find the animals but he gave us time to observe their behaviour, which was truly amazing. We saw leopards, lions, cheetahs, hippos, elephants, zebra, wild dogs, hyenas, giraffes, various antelopes, reptiles and many other species, including over a hundred different birds eg secretary bird, Kori bustard, raptors, owls - the list goes on.

The rest of the camp team were brilliant, very well organised and cheerful. Chef was fantastic and produced amazing meals on the campfire, including bread and daily cake for afternoon tea.

We appreciated the lodge at the end particularly the air conditioning and pool and were pleased we booked an extra night. We are in our 70s and wild camping was well out of our comfort zone but we rose to the challenge and actually enjoyed it.

This has been a holiday to remember for ever.

Thank you Rainbow for your organisation and Vincent and his Letaka team for looking after us so well - up there with the best.

Jack put together the holiday of a lifetime to Guatemala & Belize with 6 weeks notice. The ability to tweek and personalise the experience was great and the actual trip was amazing from start to finish. Accomodation ranged from really lovely to exceptional, every activity was action packed and/or fun and the guides were extremely knowledgeable and friendly. Despite multiple locations, activities and countries, the logisitics were flawless - we loved every minute of it!

Having just returned from the most amazing trip to Kenya, I wanted to highlight the fabulous service we received from Craig.
Not only was he patient beyond words with the never ending questions we kept asking of him, but the itinerary he put together for us gave the perfect balance between safari and beach. One of our group was unwell during the holiday, and he'd heard from a representative at the hotel that a doctor had been called; he even made contact with us to check everything was ok.
As a traveller with reduced mobility, he'd even briefed the local teams of my needs, so everything was effortless.
Five stars are not enough to represent the customer care and attention to detail we have experienced from Rainbow and especially Craig, and will not hesitate to book with them again.

I’m so pleased that we decided to book our holiday of a lifetime with Rainbow Tours. Craig listened to our wants and needs and created the perfect itinerary for our family of 6. He remained in contact with us from the moment we booked the trip right up until we left for Kenya! He answered every question we had promptly and even assisted us when we were unable to get one of our jabs. He really did go above and beyond! We spent two nights in Nairobi, 4 nights on Safari & 5 nights on the beach and every element exceeded our expectations. The whole trip was effortless thanks to the efforts of Rainbow. If I could give them 6 stars I would! I will not hesitate to use this company again and have already recommended them to friends.

Great guides , lodges, treks. Everything from being greeted by our guide to saying goodbye to him was effortless.
The guides taking us to the gorillas very knowledgeable and helpful. 10 out of 10 all round.

The trip more than exceeded our expectations. So many wow moments in a fascinating country. The arrangements went smoothly. We felt well supported throughout. The local guides were first class as was the accommodation. I would not hesitate in recommending a holiday using Rainbow.

Fantastic holiday overall, but service from Rainbow varied.

We booked with Rainbow because we'd had the 'best holiday ever' with them previously - tailored perfectly to what suited us. This time our original consultant put together an itinerary which was 'okay' but didn't feel in any way tailored to us. Our consultant changed not long before our trip and consequently we felt well supported and I suspect we might have had a more tailored and imaginative itinerary from them too.

ChatGPT etc means anyone can create a generic itinerary these days. That human level of engagement, experience and enthusiasm is a must.

Rainbow have now arranged two trips for us - Madagascar in 2024 and South Tanzania in 2025. THis review reports on the TZ trip. We have been to SOuth Tanzania previously (Ruaha NP and then called Selous NP, now Julius Nyerere NP) because the South is less busy. We stayed at Jongomero and Siwandu, both part of the Laba laba group. Both camps were exceptional, the accomodation and staff were superb.We had visited these two campls in 2014, and there have been some changes - for the better - Trips out by LandRover or by boat (in Jongomero) gave use good wildlife experience, but when you are particulary interested in birds it is hard to be disappointed! Elephants, giraffe, lions, hyena, jackals, crocs. All logisitics were perfect.. the hotel in Dar was superb and makes for a useful buffer on both sides of the holiday between international and internal bush hopper flights into the camps.

Throughout, we were kept fully in the loop with Rainbow's specialists who worked wit us to create a fantastic trip. Highly recommended.

Kate arranged the perfect itinerary to Kenya for us. I was nervous of using an agency like this but thier services were second to none. We had a magical holiday in Kenya and the care both in the UK and locally in Kenya meant that I could really relax and enjoy it as everything was taken care of at every step of the way. I will be booking our next adventure with Rainbow

We have just come back from an amazing two weeks in Madagascar organised by Rainbow Tours in conjunction with the local agency ZA Tours. It is a beautiful country and the local guides were all excellent. The wildlife (in particular lemurs and chameleons) were the highlight. I would thoroughly recommend both Rainbow Tours and ZA Tours.

The trip Rainbow Tours put together for Rwanda and Uganda was incredible. Fantastic knowledge of all the lodges and the local guide we had for 10 days was amazing.