How reviews work on SafariPulse

Anyone with a SafariPulse account whose email address is confirmed. If we cannot match your review to a booking, we send a one-time code to your email address before the review is accepted, and a review of one or two stars also needs a code sent to your phone. That stops one person from posting under many made-up names, and it means a low rating comes from someone we can reach.

You can review each lodge, tour or company once. Guests whose stay was booked through SafariSync are also emailed a link to review it a couple of days after their check-out date.

Every new review starts unpublished. The SafariSync team reads it against the rules on this page and either publishes it or does not. If we do not publish it, we email you to say why.

We do not publish or hold back a review because it is positive or negative. A fair one-star review is published like a five-star one.

A review carries the Verified stay label when one of these is true:

• it was written from the review link we email after a booking made through SafariSync, and that stay had ended; or
• the email address on the reviewer’s account matches a SafariSync booking at that place whose guest has checked out.

No label does not mean a review is untrue. Many travellers book a lodge directly, through an agent or on another site, and we have no booking record to match. It only means we could not link that review to a stay.

• Reviews that are not about the reviewer’s own experience with that business.
• Reviews written by the business itself, its staff or its competitors.
• Reviews given in return for money, a discount or a free stay.
• Hate speech, threats, harassment or sexual content.
• Other people’s personal details, such as a guide’s phone number or another guest’s name.
• Advertising, links to other businesses, or the same text posted several times.

A business on SafariPulse can:

• reply to a published review, in public, under its own name;
• report a review to SafariSync with a reason, which we then look at.

A business cannot approve, edit, hide or delete a review, including one about itself. A business’s report never takes a review down by itself: SafariSync decides.

SafariSync also sells booking and operations software to safari businesses, some of which are listed here (see About SafariPulse). Being a SafariSync customer, or what a business pays, does not change which reviews are published or how its TrustScore is worked out.

If you think a published review breaks these rules, sign in and choose Report under it. Pick a reason and, if you like, tell us what is wrong. The report comes to SafariSync, not to the business.

When five different travellers have reported the same review and we have not yet looked at those reports, the review is taken down until we have. Reports from the business that was reviewed never count towards that.

Every business, lodge and tour gets its TrustScore (0 to 5) from its published reviews with the same formula: average rating 40%, number of reviews 20%, how recent they are 20%, share of verified stays 10%, and how often the business replies 10%. Each part is explained on the About page.