NWR Takes No Money After Hours

AS a tourist who is enjoying the beauty of Namibia as well as the kindness of its people, I wish to comment on a bureaucracy that I have run into that is the most self-defeating example of revenue generation in your country.

My wife and I wanted to visit Etosha National Park for three days. and we visited the Namibia Wildlife Resorts central reservations office in Windhoek last Friday at 16h00 to make our reservations.A woman there took our details and provided us with an unconfirmed booking number.However, she refused to take our credit card number because it was after 15h00.She said Wildlife Resorts does not handle money after that hour.This is madness.You dial into a credit card office and transmit the card number electronically, plus the amount being charged to my account.There is no cash changing hands so this transaction could be handled in the middle of the night, at dawn, at noon or at 16h00 on any day.The reservation clerk gave me a printout of my provisional reservation and told me I should fax her office on Monday with my credit card details.The office would in turn fax me a confirmation of my booking.I drove to Oshakati to visit friends in the north.I had to work hard to find a fax machine so I could send in this information.The confirming fax never came, of course.So I had to make three phone calls before I received the confirming fax.Why would this agency consider this to be good business practice? Why would it not try to make it easy to provide service to visitors who pay money? Why would they not immediately take my $1 260 for the three nights of accommodation in Etosha? I ask this because stories about this agency’s insolvency and inability to pay its bills as well as poor management practices have appeared in the local newspapers.This is such a simple thing to fix.One administrator could make this happen by simply telling the staff to take credit cards anytime they are offered.Robert S Mellis Windhoekand we visited the Namibia Wildlife Resorts central reservations office in Windhoek last Friday at 16h00 to make our reservations.A woman there took our details and provided us with an unconfirmed booking number.However, she refused to take our credit card number because it was after 15h00.She said Wildlife Resorts does not handle money after that hour.This is madness.You dial into a credit card office and transmit the card number electronically, plus the amount being charged to my account.There is no cash changing hands so this transaction could be handled in the middle of the night, at dawn, at noon or at 16h00 on any day.The reservation clerk gave me a printout of my provisional reservation and told me I should fax her office on Monday with my credit card details.The office would in turn fax me a confirmation of my booking.I drove to Oshakati to visit friends in the north.I had to work hard to find a fax machine so I could send in this information.The confirming fax never came, of course.So I had to make three phone calls before I received the confirming fax.Why would this agency consider this to be good business practice? Why would it not try to make it easy to provide service to visitors who pay money? Why would they not immediately take my $1 260 for the three nights of accommodation in Etosha? I ask this because stories about this agency’s insolvency and inability to pay its bills as well as poor management practices have appeared in the local newspapers.This is such a simple thing to fix.One administrator could make this happen by simply telling the staff to take credit cards anytime they are offered.Robert S Mellis Windhoek

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