South America.Travel - www.southamerica.travel

We utilized SouthAmerica Travel for our four week trip to Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador in March of 2011. We had located SouthAmerica Travel on the Internet as we were interested in a comfortable and private tour. Our dealings were with Vera Wenzel who was stationed in Buenos Aires. Vera was very pleasant and extremely helpful and knowledgeable in planning our trip. She booked our hotels, arranged our tours, booked our internal flights and purchased tickets for us for a soccer match in Buenos Aires and tickets to Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.

We did not realize when making these arrangements that SouthAmerica Travel did not itself provide any touring services. They acted as a contractor and utilized other travel agencies for the actual tours, even though SouthAmerica Travel had an office in Buenos Aires.

We encountered a number of difficulties on our trip. We found that hotel which we had been booked into in Rio de Janeiro was not the four or five star hotel for which we had paid and arranged with the SouthAmerica Travel. For anyone interested please read our review on TripAdvisor under “Hotel Praia Ipanema - at best a good 2 star hotel”. We also found that the hotel in Uguazu was disappointing considering that we had paid for four or five star hotels for the entire journey.

We had also arranged with South America travel and paid for vans for all of our touring and transfers as there were four of us traveling together. We were met at the airport Puerto Madryn by the local tour company who transported the four of us in a sedan with our luggage transported in another sedan to the tour office where we had to telephone the SouthAmerica Travel emergency number to remind them that our arrangements had included all tranportation in vans. We were given the City Tour of Puerto Madryn in a cramped sedan as it was impossible to make alternative arrangements in time. We had also made arrangements with SouthAmerica Travel and paid for transportation in the evenings to restaurants from our hotel as the hotel was some distance from the downtown area. The local guides were tardy in picking us up from the hotel and in one case we waited in the hotel lobby for almost an hour for the driver to appear.

SouthAmerica Travel had also booked our internal flights in South America. For our trip to Quito we encountered a flight delay in which caused us to miss our connection and we were required to spend the night in São Paulo. As a result of the flight delay, we spent a night in a seedy hotel in that city instead of the luxurious Hotel which was awaiting us in Quito. Again, for anyone interested, our review of that hotel is on TripAdvisor is under “Hotel Matiz Guarulhos: The airline put us here - we did not, and would not, choose it ourselves”. We also missed a full day's touring. Our dealings with the airlines in attempting to resolve alternative flights can only be described as a nightmare.

The problems which we encountered on our tour could have happened anywhere to anyone. However, we found that in attempting to resolve the problems, we had to telephone a "emergency" telephone number provided to us by SouthAmerican Travel. Often, there was no one at the telephone number which became a serious problem with our flight delay. The requirement to use his telephone number also caused delays in responding to the various problems which we encountered.

However, our biggest surprise came when we raised these various problems with SouthAmerican Travel on our return home and pointed out to them that in certain instances, we were entitled to compensation for the deficiencies in services which they had promised and failed to provide as well extra expenses which we had incurred in resolving those difficulties. We also asked SouthAmerica Travel to represent us in seeking compensation from the airline for the delayed flight as they had booked our flights and had a language advantage. After a delay of 9 weeks, our request for compensation was refused.

We would not recommend utilizing SouthAmerican Travel as they do not appear to back up the services of their contractors and consider their services completed with final payment to them. We would have been better off by negotiating our various travel arrangements directly with local companies. Undoubtedly we would have saved a significant amount of funds. We also would have found it easier to communicate with the local companies who would have been responsible to us directly rather than utilizing an “emergency” telephone number which was at times unmanned and always slow to respond. SouthAmerican Travel seemed to consider their services completed once they had made the bookings and accepted our final payment.