History Tour & Trip Reviews

My daughter and I had a wonderful trip to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and India as well as Dubai through Ritz's tours. We went on a 3 1/2 week private tour and enjoyed each moment on the Safari's through Chobe National Parks, as well as Hoedspruit - Harmony. Karongwe Lodge was beautiful and the events scheduled were awesome! Lucas, Manager for Karongwe is superb and we all had a great time. Mandlah the Safari Ranger, and our tracker, Oriel were fantastic and they went out of their way to go deep into the woods so that we could spot the lions, zebras, cougars, elephants, giraffes, water buffalos, and impalas. The local tour guides, such as Michael in CapeTown, Bernard in Victoria Falls/ Zimbabwe as well as Richard in Botswana were exceptionally knowledgeable and a great time was had by all! Also, the Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls was breathtaking, and the sunsets were awesome! The safari in Botswana was just as good with Mitch as our ranger and tracker. There were a couple of small snafus in South Africa, with pickup at Hoedspruit airport by Buoya Buoya for Travel to Karongwe Lodge and the second transport drive from Johannesburg airport to the hotel; however Kavita from ERM Tours took care of it right away so we felt we were in excellent hands, and no longer worried in the end.
India and Dubai was also fantastic, and the service provided by the local tour company, Travel and Beyond in India was superb! Sanju and his team provides truly excellent service so we also enjoyed our stay in India. We were provided beautiful leis upon arrival and felt very welcomed in India. Our local guides in India were also fantastic, Poonam our guide in Delhi, went out of her way to be sure our stay was fantastic as well as Jay in Jaipur, Chancel in Agra. They were all helpful and made our stay so enjoyable! And of course our fantastic driver David whom we had for the week in India was superb! He always made us feel safe with his great driving, and his timeliness was more than excellent. Between cities before meeting with our local guides, David our driver gave us historical facts of the areas we drove by and we thoroughly enjoyed our drive with him. We couldn't have had a better time without them!
The hotels were top notch and we especially loved the service provided by the hotels, "Trident Jaipur, and Trident, Agra. Dubai was just as fantastic with the local guide Hamzah; and all the destinations within Dubai was fabulous, including the Louvre museum, the Tech museum, the Frame, "At the Top Burj Khalifa" as well as the desert Safari, and the camel rides. All in all, a "10" star rating for the service provided by Ritz tours, Lillian and Olga, as well as the local tour guides in the above mentioned destinations. Thanks!

Hotels in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka were great locations. Breakfasts were very good with enough variety. Other provided meals were sufficient for a group tour. Shabu Shabu dinner near Shibuya Crossing was the best meal, outstanding! Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, Bullet train ride, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka are the Japan highlights for first time visitors.

We were very excited to go on our cruise through the canals of The Netherlands for one week. We carefully read all the emails and mailings and watched the videos. We planned for each city we were going to visit around the Amsterdam area. Very disappointing that when we arrived to Vinkeveen we were told we couldn't go that route at all and were given a very different route. All our weeks of planning went out the window. Next, we were quickly told about a navigation app that we were not at all familiar with how to use. It's a good app, but very involved and if not for some other boaters that we met at a marina, we wouldn't have understood how to use it. Our orientation was supposed to be 1.5 hours, but instead it was 20 minutes. I looked at my watch and stated that we still had lots of questions and needed more time, but we were told that's all the time they had. My husband is familiar with driving our pontoon and ski boat, but this boat was very large and they only let him drive it with them for a few minutes. The orientation was far from adequate. Also the black water was full when we left the Vinkeveen marina (we found this out when the toilets didn't work well). We spent a lot of time and had to go to 8 different places to find someone who would take our black water. The oven didn't work and the seal on the one door was missing which made the boat very cold, no matter how high we set the heat. I couldn't really open the door very well, which made it a safety hazard when we were docking as I had a long walk around the outside of the boat in order to get off the boat on the bow to tie up or to toss the line to the person on the lock station. We have never had such a disappointing experience on a pricey vacation before. We know that boating is a step above camping and weren't expecting luxury, but we did expect to have a working boat that we didn't have to be spending time looking for pump stations and waiting for maintenance people who were not certified to fix the issues. We used le boat because friends of ours loved their time in France on their boat. We travel with this same group of people often and they are much more particular than us, so the organization must be better in France. Sadly, we would not rent from le boat again after our experience.

We took a 2 1/2 week tour of Vietnam and Cambodia. I worked with Lillian of Ritz Tours. She was easy to work with and responsive to our planning needs. The trip was wonderful and went on with no glitches. The airport pickups and transfers were all good and all the hotels were excellent properties providing good value. All the private touring was excellent and accurately reflected in the itinerary. All the guides were outstanding, extremely knowledgeable and courteous. They were all passionate about their work and did a great job in educating us about their country and culture. They were very accommodating and also very flexible adjusting some minor details in our itinerary. The selection of restaurants and variety of meals was very good. We would not hesitate to use Ritz Tours again.

Brand new stylish luxury boat with all the extras, this is what made me choose this company to hire my boat, so many companies online offer 20 years or more old tired looking river boats and I was really happy subscribing to LE Boat rental in the south of France, near Montpellier. i'm travelling in July 23 for 4 nights and cant wait to travel.

We had a fantastic time. Our boat was massive but easy to operate. And it was very comfy. My wife hates camping but loved sleeping in the nice cabins and cruising down the river. Mooring opposite Windsor castle was a highlight. Thank you 'le boat' in Chertsey. We will be back soon!

Fabulous staff, great and comfy boat, amazing sceneries... really nice moment with friend and family ! to be done again

The itinerary was great, but we didn’t really have guides. Neither of the two women filled the role in an acceptable manner, but the group worked together to pull things off!! There were too many restaurant experiences in a day. We’d have a great meal for lunch and a great meal for dinner and go to bed stuffed. There was A LOT OF WALKING—don’t take this if you have bad knees! Again, though, I want to repeat the trip’s geographical coverage was great!!

PROVIDED BY FEEFO: feefo.com/en-US/reviews/luxury-gold

We have taken a total of seven trips with Tauck and A&K, we wanted to see Sakura and others were full, pricing wise you were slightly cheaper and we decided to try. II have never had 24 people on a luxury tour, there were no local guides, tour director was very poor at making even slight adjustments to the schedule, meals were horrible and took far too much time, Nirth of Japan was a total waste of time. Every single person in the group was disappointed with the entire arrangement. I think you took the money as a luxury trip and subcontracted with a mediocre operator in Japan and pocketed the difference. I am in a business and have no problem with profits, but it should be earned and deserved. What you provided, I could have done in less than half the money with a private tour for two or four. Most daylight hours were spent on a train or at lunch which gave very little time for any sightseeing. The hotels you provided were excellent. Your tour director was not aware that most of these folks were in their late 60s and 70s and she made them do a lot of unnecessary walking which could have been covered by smaller vans. In any case, if you really want some detailed and constructive feedback, I will be happy to chat with you. I know that no one will follow-up, but at least the offer is out there. Good luck with your future endeavors Read less

Das Boot wurde gegen 15.00 Uhr nach einer rudimentären Einweisung übergeben…es ist 30 Jahre alt, kostet aber für 3 Tage 1100 EUR mit Sprit, Betriebskosten werden nach Stunden abgerechnet und nicht nach Verbrauch…das Wasser in der Dusche ist bei kalt ein Rinnsal, bei heiss kochend…warm wird das Wasser nur im Hafen….Heizung ist unzureichend…bei Regen gibt es bei Caprice (Komfortboot) keinen Regenschutz, statt dessen ein Sonnenschirmfuss ohne Sonnenschirm….das Boot pendelt von links nach rechts, obwohl man das Steuer nicht bewegt….das Internet funktioniert nur in den Häfen…

We were already exhausted after the long flight and met the tour guide (Keiko). We have to stay an additional 3 hours at the airport and was told to wait for additional passengers with us. We were surprised to see our tour guide putting up the sign Peony besides Ritz tour. We all got confused. We had her for 2 days and then we were informed she’ll be replaced with another guide on the third day. The second guide Patricia though an English spoken doesn’t seem to have any experience as a guide at all. Besides the fact that she can’t answer our questions, she mentioned that she’s never been to the areas we were assigned to visit (Kyoto and Osaka). The bus driver was noticeably frustrated with her too. The food was so bad that was part of that tour. The last meal ( Benihana style) was the only one we appreciated. We never had Sushi. We were told fish is too expensive when we asked Patricia. Japan is a beautiful country. Tourists would greatly appreciate to see Japan with a knowledgeable guide who knows the history of the country and its culture and sites. Hotels assigned were ok. Please! enough of the tofus next time. Hope my next experience will be better than this one. Thank you for listening.

So I’ve known about Intrepid for a while. I traveled with Contiki last year and loved it. Tried Intrepid this year because I liked the trip they were offering and thought both companies were about the same. Huge mistake. Intrepid is such a scam. They put you in the nastiest accommodation possible so they can gain large profits from you. The pictures of the hotels online were clearly taken decades ago because none of them were up to standard. Our hotel in Casablanca literally smelled of mildew and the towels in the bathroom were dirty. In our hotel room in Fes, we had a cockroach and a mouse. There have been bugs flying around in all our hotel lobbies. With how frequently Intrepid holds these trips, I know they know for sure that these hotels are awful, yet they keep people there. Barely anything was included in the trip so how and why did they make us pay $1100 for these rooms?? Where did the rest of the money go?? Especially in a country as affordable as Morocco?? This is borderline unethical. I will never book a trip with Intrepid ever again. If this is what their Classic package is like, I wonder what conditions they have the Basix travelers living under.

We booked a two week canal vacation in southern France in April, because we heard summers could be hot. We cruised from Les Mas d’Agenais to Buzet, up the Baise River to Nerac, back to Buzet and on to Castelnaudary on the Canal du Midi. Everything was perfect. The boat, Elegance was a dream and easy to handle. The base sent out a van with 15 gallons of fuel to Buzet, just to make sure we had no problems. We paid a wee bit extra for one-way travel, but it was very worth it. We will cruise with LeBoat again.

What a sad outfit
We selected ‘Le Boat’ to travel the ‘Canal du Midi’ based on a pre-Covid recommendation from an acquaintance, but we regret not having researched their competitors before making our overpriced reservation. Our boat, a 2012 Bavaria, was a relic of a long ago past. Chipped gelcoat throughout, broken side bumpers (the ones attached to the hull), faulty doors and hatches, badly done renovation (the upholstery was crudely redone). Cheap kitchenware, including useless knives. Faulty Bimini (no shade), faulty BBQ (could not open it), clogged kitchen sink (we had to become our own plumbers), reversed refrigerator door (I know, too much effort to swing them around…). Zero supplies of any kind, not even dish soap. Plastic ropes (dock lines) that will chew into your bare hands and you must use them constantly at every lock. A few euros more and they could have bought soft ones. The most blatant shortcoming is the absence of a rudder indicator, so you will have to guess if you have it right (as in straight) or not. You will also have to guess your speed, or install an app on your phone, as we did.
Our boat had a forward cabin that was smaller than the aft one, and the shower – separate from the head (bathroom) – was a joke. The door opened indoor leaving minimal space to step in and then close it. The height inside the shower was, perhaps, 5’8’’ (1.7 meters), so if you are a tall person, you are out of luck. The shower is in the main cabin area; if you are prudish, that will not do for you.
The Le Boat facilities, especially Port Cassafieres, are in a state of abandonment. Broken down docks with loose planking, broken water faucets, garbage, dust and dirt everywhere. It gives an indication of a company that is going through hard times. Employees are all nice, and they probably all need their job, so they do their best despite the situation. When, upon our return, we were asked how the cruise had gone, I could sense the whole office screaming ‘incoming’ and waiting for a barrage of complaints to follow. I spared them. What is the point of harassing the poor employees who have almost no control over this sad state of affairs?
We went aboard boats from some of their competitors and they were much better. My recommendation would be to shop around before you make your reservation with ‘Le Boat’. Especially consider that Port Cassafieres is literally in the middle of nowhere with no shopping facilities nearby. Avoid the side trip to Narbonne because the port is closed and there is no water nor power anywhere along the way. Le Boat will only tell you just before leaving that the port is closed, not when you are making a reservation.
The glossy brochures (call it a sort of canal guide) provided by Le Boat are out of date and indicate water, power, and facilities no longer there. In essence, you need to assume that the water you have on board needs to last you for at least 3 to 4 days. Some of the small ports along the way will make you pay and will not give you more than a few hundred liters.
A final consideration. I had years of boating experience and I found handling this boat, the locks and the canals challenging, especially when the wind was fierce, as it often is in Narbonne. I have no idea how anyone without any prior experience may be able to enjoy it. We witnessed boats hitting docks, bridges, and locks just like bumper cars. Nothing dramatic, but I’m sure the various company made the captain pay for the damages (get insurance!). Moreover, it takes some advanced level of physical strength to handle the ropes. Did I mention that all the sewage is dumped straight into the canal and that often, while handling the ropes, that filthy water gets on you?

PROVIDED BY FEEFO: feefo.com/en-US/reviews/luxury-gold

I had the most amazing vacation in Egypt with Luxury Gold. Absolutely everything was fantastic… all employees were wonderful, the food was good, the rooms were clean, I felt safe in a foreign country, our guide Mohamed Youssef was so knowledgeable and organized. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect vacation. Thank you!