Fes Oussaden Tours Reviews

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Good Points: Some of the accomadations, especially the Fes Riad (for which we paid extra) were very nice. Food was quite good in most of the hotels. Our main driver was nice.'

Bad Points: The agent at Oussaden Tours had assured me that the tour was all arranged and the hotels reserved months in advance of the vacation. However, they actually forgot to arrange the tour with the Moroccan agency, so we were stranded in the Cassablanca airport while I spent half a day trying to make phone calls in French to get the agency in Morocco to set up the hotels and the tour guides at the last minute. We did not get all of the promised services in that we had to pay for some of the attractions that were supposed to be included. The agency van was not properly registered so the police stopped us and wouldnot allow the van to be driven for two days until the agency arranged for the proper registration papers. This also took some time out of our scheduled tours. We wanted to resolve the discrepancies but we were never able to reach the New York Oussaden Tours staff while we were in Morocco. He was supposed to call us but never did. In Essouria, we were supposed to stay in a beautifully restored historic riad. We had also timed it so that we could see an international music festival while in Essouria. The agency had never booked us into Essouria at all. Since the whole hotel arrangment was made at the last minute, while we were sitting in the airport, they put us into a small inn in another town where there was no electricity. Thus we did not get to see much at all of the festival.
We were only able to contact the New York based Oussaden Tours when we got back to the US. He insisted that the whole tour had been arranged months in advance. (Like my family and I imagined sitting in the airport making all of those phone calls and arranging the tour at the last minute?) He had no explanation for why we did not stay at the riad in Essouria. He would not call the hotels to verify the registration dates, so I did it from the US. I had to use some French to do it, but of course the hotels I reached sent emails saying that the hotel reservations were made at the last minute. Oussaden Tours refused to send a reasonable refund.'

General comments: 'This agency has apparently re-organized and is not set up the same way it was in years past. The Moroccan Oussaden Tours is no longer affiliated with the New York Oussaden Tours. The actual hotel bookings, guides and drivers are arranged by a different agency based in Morocco, Scenic Voyages. The staff at Scenic Voyages cannot speak English very well, so communication was quite difficult. They claimed that we must have been given the "old brochure" and that they did not now offer all of the services that we had expected to get