What staff will support our group on Mount Kilimanjaro?

Your Kilimanjaro guides and porters are your greatest asset on the mountain. Quality guides and porters make for a wonderful time on the mountain, while a mediocre staff can put your life in danger and prevent you from getting to the roof of Africa. Make sure you book with a company with experienced guides who are licensed by the Kilimanjaro National Park, trained in acute mountain sickness (AMS) as well as basic mountain first aid and can speak fluent English. Typically, the ratio is one guide per two climbers, and each climber has three porters. Porters carry all gear, tents, cooking supplies and water. You will come to respect these guys greatly by the end of Day 1 of your climb – as each porter carries about 20 kg (44 lb.) of kit on their back up the mountain! Learn more about Kilimanjaro tipping and why this is such an important consideration before your climb.

Some Kilimanjaro tour operators do take care of their staff others do not. Resulting to a bad experience to you as a climber. The tour operators that take care of their staff will be very strict with the amount of weight that your luggage has. Also, will provide enough porters to share the luggage others provide few porters hence over-loading the porters to save salary money. For the best experience choose a tour operator that is playing fair with the staff. Because, if they are well treated, they in return treat you very well. The usual ratio is three or four local staff for each climber, although small groups may have four or five staff per climber. The staff usually consists of English-speaking guides, a professional cooker, and gear-carrying porters. We encourage you to interact with your staff. They are all trustworthy, local people who have grown up in the shadow of the mountain. Many of them have climbed the peak a hundred or more times.

There are a number of different roles and responsibilities that tour operator staff will have.

These include:
 Which destinations will sell best, how many holidays should they sell etc.
 Assessing suitability of accommodation, transfer and transport options
 Liaising with stakeholders
 Negotiating contracts
 Confirming reservations with airlines/hotels
 Managing and responding to customer feedback
 Undertaking market research
 Production of marketing material
 Providing pricing information
 Handling bookings, invoicing and issuing of tickets
 Working with travel consultants from different travel agencies to put holiday packages together.

Tour operators have a number of products and services that they sell, depending on their specific business model, business intentions and target market. A tour operator will typically package together two of more elements to form a packaged product, which is then sold at an inclusive price. Examples include:
 Package holidays
 Accommodation
 Transfers
 Excursions
 Information on destinations
 Representative service in resorts

No porter is allowed to carry more than 15 kg into the park. Every piece of equipment and all supplies carried by porters are weighed and tracked by the Park Service multiple times throughout the climb and upon exiting the park. Before entering Kilimanjaro National Park every porter’s bag is weighed, then again at the first campsite and again at the exit gate. Rangers in later camps will visually inspect porter loads and can require a weigh in at any time.

These restrictions have greatly reduced the incidence of injuries among porters, who previously might carry 30 or more kg on the difficult climb to Uhuru Peak. The tour operators, and the Porter’s and Guide’s Associations certain responsibilities were delegated to each group to ensure the safety and sustainability of the climb. One of these was the responsibility to ensure everyone on the mountain had the equipment needed to make the climb safely, which is shared between tour operators and porters. The maximum weight that a porter should carry is 20kg.

This is the official Kilimanjaro Park limit. Packs should be weighed at park entrance gates to ensure that porters are not carrying too much. Some of the weight will decrease over time as food supplies get used up.

For this reason, the standard Kilimanjaro trek includes not only a registered guide, but porters to carry tents, gas, food and a trekkers gear. Hence, without proper planning and permission it is not possible to climb Kilimanjaro without porters as well.

Kilimanjaro is not dangerous relative toto other high peaks, but there are about 10 deaths reported every year out of the approximately 30,000 people who climb, mostly due to acute mountain sickness (AMS). Having good guides who have the right medical training is very important for all climbers.

Mount Kilimanjaro is a unique travel experience and a once in a lifetime adventure for tens of thousands of climbers every year. When climbing Kilimanjaro, an extensive team of mountain crew guides, cooks and porters provides specially trained support throughout the climb to assist you in reaching the summit. The porters, who carry all of your food and gear, are the heart and soul of your mountain experience. Without their strength, dedication and hard work, you would not be able to enjoy the magnificence of Kilimanjaro. Remember if you want a safe and fun climb you need a support team of happy and well-trained guides and porters, and you only get them if you ensure the operator you book with looks after them really well. Tour Operators are involved in planning, development, promotion, administration and implementation of tourism products. They oversee all the day-to-day tasks and also supervise, motivate and train staff. They are employed by tour or transportation companies, resorts or attractions.

Handling bookings, invoicing and issuing of tickets. Predicting profits or number of bookings. Working with travel consultants from different travel agencies to put holiday packages together. Combining travel, accommodation and services such as sightseeing arrangements to create holiday packages. The tour guide's responsibilities include planning travel itineraries, familiarizing customers with the locality by vehicle or foot, and ensuring that the group remains safe at all times. You should also stay up-to-date with new attractions that may be of interest to customers. They provide customers with advice about where to travel as well as the best means of reaching such destinations. If customers already know where they want to travel to, tour operators may suggest an escorted tour or can help to devise a complex tailor-made itinerary, which will allow the separate elements of their trip to fit together.

A Tour Operator is a person or company that thinks up ideas for holidays, researches the ideas, designs the holiday itinerary and content, contracts the services needed for the holiday, accommodation, transport, guides, tour leaders or resort reps etc. and then markets the resultant package.