Christmas at Luosto with Canterbury Travel Review

The credit crunch has caused Canterbury Travel to cut costs everywhere, but not their price to the customer. I worked for Canterbury travel for the past 2 christmasses, but not the upcoming one. The first year they had the correct number of staff to ensure that each customer was dealt with in a way that is befitting a top end company. But last year changed my opinion of the company. When I was out there the staff conditions had deteriorated drastically from the previous year. Now the staff meals were the previous day's customer left-overs, the staff accommodation also served a secondary purpose during the day as a customer dining hall and the number of staff had been cut by half (with everyone now expected to "chip in" and do extra jobs). After complaints about the food and accommodation, i was informed that canterbury travel were only expected to provide a meal and accomodation. Left overs counted as a meal, and as long as we could sleep and keep our clothes somewhere the accommodation could have been anything too. So i pointed out that MY contract was as an entertainer in the evenings and my contract was for 1 hour show every night, so cleaning, driving, delivering things etc etc was not in my contract and so they could find someone else.

But i'm a nice chap, and because of this I still ended up doing things that the previous year would have had a specific staff member accocated. I did them because i can't bear to see the upset faces of the kids and the disappointment from the parents. I went out of my way to fix customer's problems and to prevent other problems from occuring. Some of these problems were beyond my ability to fix (lost luggage, wrong accommodation, ill child) but sometimes just listening to a grievence can make a person feel like they are being cared for. Whenever I could I tried to make things work for the customers, as i realise that this is supposed to be a magical trip with memories that they will cherish for a lifetime.



This year Canterbury Travel have decided not to hire me because i'm "not what they're looking for". Basically i'm not a push over and i will stand up for myself if someone tries to take advantage of me.



However, i realise that this is a place for customers to air their problems as apposed to ex-staff. I feel I should point out that the number of problems i have read on here don't come close to scratching the surface. Canterbury travel market themselves as the premium product, but they're just an own brand with a big price tag. What you see as a once in a lifetime oppourtunity to visit lapland and see santa, canterbury travel see as an oppourtunity to take as much of your money as possible.



I implore you to not book a trip with canterbury travel, and to instead use a different company. If it's a once in a lifetime trip, then why risk using canterbury travel?