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“Picturesque, Non Flexible and Tiresome”

written by on 17/04/2018

The Good:-
Vegetarian Food, Great hotels for accommodation , Covers all mentioned in the brochure. Plenty of things crammed in 14 days journey within EU driver regulations, Good informative guide/tour Manager, mindblowing Swiss, Good Austrian and French Alps, Best italian and french cities. To be able to cater to all age brackets in single trip. More starting places than london etc.
The Average:-
Plenty of unwanted sales trips, very much possible trips like zurich city, Rome night tour etc were made optional (which more than 80% bought to) to rake in extra money to tour operators, instead lots of unwanted trips like cheese factory, outdated cuckoo clocks, glass factory, perfume factory etc were made mandatory where less than 20% people interested or bought any. This inflexibility is what brought the rating of the tour down. Another non flexibility is not moving Amsterdam to the end of trip for the best view of tulips fields.
Armed with weather reports, day trips should be flexibly organised with outdoor trips when sunny or cloudy and indoor trips when rainy etc.
Should either unload the toilet tank often or provide more free toilet breaks than paid toilets, instead trade this time from these unwanted sales trips.
Most trips are day time, some very long 6 hours drives etc cause it very tiresome. May be with extra driver all the time and including night drives for these long journeys if possible, and day time to be used much more for scenery and sight seeing would make it 5* rating to this trip.
The Ugly:-
Non punctual team, a set of people were consistently late upto 15 minutes in every possible stop that involves Tour bus, (they were never late when public transport is in operation.) Tie this with non assertive tour manager means they always got away. one poor soul was late only once in the whole trip and he paid dearly for it. Not able to nip it in early stages let the whole others who were mostly punctual let down. Star tours should include some penalty system of charging the persistent latecomers pay or reward disciplined people or simply just train their managers to be more assertive to avoid bitter experiences to the rest of trip. When choosing hotels may be separate toilet and more baths provisions should be better as that allows multitasking and save some time for larger families.
Lago verde accommodation is very average and should be off their list.
Tour Managers should also be more realistic/honest in advising about optionals than driving through the commission alone. for eg: Ice flyer in Mt titlis was a total money waste on that adverse weather day., where few other tour managers from other operators clearly advised against it to their members as it is waste in the weather.