Gate 1 Travel

GATE1 customer service is TERRIBLE.
Everyone should be aware that if you buy travel insurance on Gate1 site, they do not charge you for the coverage immediately, but place it as a charge on your final bill. So, for a while you are NOT insured, and if something goes wrong before your final charge, you lose your money.

I loved my trip to Spain and my experience with Gate1 was about as great as you can ask for. Particularly because of our tour guide, Carmen. She was phenomenal and I probably learned more from her in a week than if I studied there for a year. Carmen had plenty of entertaining stories and went above and beyond to ensure everyone was enjoying themselves. Give this woman a raise. The trip involved going to about five cities across Spain and the traveling was seamless. The driver picked us up and dropped us off right where we needed to be without ever having to wait. I saw a ton of cool things and had world class meals. The hotels we stayed at were very nice and well located. I feel like we got a great deal as well. Gate1 is a quality company with even better employees. Give them a chance and I’m sure you’ll keep coming back.

We have been on 14 Gate1 tours to date…with 3 more booked. They are an excellent tour company and their itineraries are interesting and well organized and the tour directors excellent. We only had one complaint about a tour director…after Covid. We would recommend them highly.

Tour Manager Beatrice Jakubowski

If God designs tour managers, Beatrice Jakubowski is His masterpiece. Or one of His elites.

She weaves her organized, efficient, on-top-of-things, profound historicity & current statistics knowledge skills into her great sense of natural charm & humor. Translates history and current events with some hilarity that kills travel fatigue. Skilled in calming stressed tourists w/ perma-pressed smile. Amazing polyglot, she excites long rides with a new language teach-in daily with appropriate accents! Daily acknowledges driver as part of tour team. Patient, genuinely kind, beautiful mind, character, beautiful person. Gate 1 is very blessed to have Beatrice put a 5 star on travel. Love our Christmas Markets Switzerland - France Dec 4-11 tour. Too short!

We just got back from our first tour with Gate 1 and I can honestly say we have absolutely NO COMPLAINTS whatsoever!! From booking to our travel paperwork, to every tiny detail, it was a wonderful experience! We went to Italy, started
In Venice and a gate 1 representative met us at the airport to get us to our water taxi to take us to our hotel.
Our tour guide, Ana, was waiting at our hotel for us as we arrived. She was amazing, well organized, and gave very good instructions, and tips as we traveled with our group! She is very knowledgeable about her country and you can really tell that she loves Italy and is proud to share it with her groups!
We had a great group and by the time our trip was over, we had all become friends. Every one of the local guides we had in Venice, Florence, Rome, Pompeii, Assisi and Almafi was fabulous as well.
The hotels were all very nice for a “value” trip. We were not expecting them to be so nice, but they were nicer than any hotels we have ever stayed in.
Having the bus, the driver, being dropped off at the front door of your hotel and at all our tours/excursions, Ana pre-checking us in and handing our our keys when we arrived at a new location, your luggage magically showing up at your hotel room— it was a dream.
They thought of everything, down to a box breakfast on our last day, to take in the car on our trip to the Naples airport because we had to leave before breakfast was served at our Sorrento hotel! Ana was in the lobby waiting for every person in our group on our last day to see us off to the airport regardless of how early we needed to leave. She made sure we had our boxed breakfast and explained where we needed to go to get to the check in area for our airline at the airport.
She was a blast! Many of the people in our group had taken SEVERAL gate 1 tours and were pleased with every experience.
The prices are very reasonable and you get to see a ton of stuff, but yet still had some free time to yourself to explore on your own.
This was an amazing experience and I still don’t know how they manage to do it so well without missing the tiniest detail.
We are already looking for our next trip to book with them!

Don and Dianna

Our experience with Gate 1 Travel was NOT positive. We booked our trip and flights about a year ahead to get the best pricing. When the airline canceled one leg of our trip about 6 months prior, Gate 1 basically said it was our problem and cancelled all our flights. We had to rebook through the airline itself through different cities, and as you might imagine, the flights were significantly more expensive by that point. Then because our flight was no longer with them, Gate 1 said we had to pay an additional $40 per person for airport transfers.

I talked to Customer Service several times. You could tell they were reading from a script and were of absolutely no help. I would NOT book another trip through Gate 1.

I have experienced the worst and rudest customer service by Holly. I inquired about possible flight options for booking with my tour and after less than 1 min she started yelling at me when I dared asked about a different airline. Contrary to the options on their website, she kept raising her voice at me that there are no others but United, and that Gate1 is not a flight booking agency. I could not say a word because after her tirade she hung up on me...

My wife and I are moderate travelers and decided to book our first guided tour through Gate 1 based on the countries they covered. We booked the 13day Croatia, Slovenia, Venice tour and were very excited to visit all of these countries. Our initial flight into Europe from the U.S. was cancelled (not the fault of Gate 1) which put us behind 2 days into the tour. I will give Gate 1 credit in that they did everything possible to eventually reunite us with the our in progress tour.
On the 6th day of the tour my wife who was fully vaccinated and boosted tested positive for covid in Dubrovnik Croatia. We did the right thing and notified our local tour operator and as expected were told we couldn't continue with the group. What was not expected was the total abandonment from Gate 1 management of us and our stranded travel situation in Croatia. During my wife's 5 days of required isolation in Dubrovnik, we received one phone call from Gate 1 management inquiring into her health and well being! They offered no assistance in getting us home, only stating if you can get to Venice, you may still use your booked return flight home. Good luck arranging travel from Dubrovnik to Venice. To keep this review brief, I will end with saying, yes we did eventually safely make it home but without any assistance from Gate 1 management. They never called to check on my wife's recovery (she did), never called or checked to see if we did indeed make it home and have never followed up. Be aware if you get Covid while traveling with Gate 1, buckle up for the unknown as it could be a nightmare.
I can't end this review without taking the time to say how ever grateful we are to our local Gate 1 tour operator Ivona Ercegovic who went above and beyond to see that we not forgotten and left (literally) on the streets of Dubrovnick. Ivona called or texted everyday to check on Stacy's condition, found us a place to say while Stacy isolated and did her best to help in anyway to make the situation less difficult, all while continuing to lead the tour we had been on! She is a true asset for Gate 1 and we will forever be indebted to the assistance she provided. We would rate her a 5 out 5 on the short amount of time we got to enjoy her tour leadership and the assistance during our struggle to get home. Wish we could say the same for Gate 1 management.

UPDATE: I must give Gate 1 credit as the head of their Customer Service Department reached out to address the concerns I voiced above. They stated they had a process in place for when a passenger gets covid and that this process was not followed completely. They stated their goal was to learn from the mistake and improve the process so it doesn't occur again. They did inquire as to my wife's health and were apologetic. The Gate 1 tour itself, was very well managed and covered some of the most beautiful country we had ever visited!

Gate 1 travel company has been great to work with. This time what was disappointing was the un- professional attitude of our tour guide, Desire, in the 11 day S Africa tour. She seemed to take no responsibility as part of the company, more like it was ‘their’ company. It was very surprising that she also made up nicknames for the male guests inappropriately,which can be very taboo according to some cultures. Thank goodness, the countries ,and the wildlife we visited did not disappoint.

Hi fellow travelers, I normally do not write reviews unless something occurred that is of an extraordinary nature. This is one of those times I feel compelled to write about Gate 1 Travel, in particular one of its agents named Claudia Rodriguez who completely went out of her way to assist me with my upcoming Rhine River cruise. You see, at the time of booking, there was only one departure/arrival airport available (NYC) and since we live in Las Vegas, I spent much time trying to book/coordinate our flights to/from NYC so that we could connect with the international flights. Due to the international flights' early departure/late arrival times in NYC, we would need to spend a day (both ways) in a hotel in NYC as there was nothing early/late enough that would otherwise allow us to connect with the overseas flights.

I called this morning and was connected to Ms. Rodriguez. This lady absolutely made our day by patiently going through her system and taking much more time than necessary but ultimately finding an option for us to fly from Las Vegas to/from Amsterdam and Basil. Moreover, she was able to find us a fare that upgraded us to premium economy which is cheaper than the cost of our round-trip flights to/from NYC. Additionally, we would not need to spend time and money for two extra days in a hotel in NYC!! Imagine this...more comfortable flying in premium economy, less hassle in checking in/out of hotels, saved two days and much more economical overall!! This does not happen often!

Ms. Rodriguez helped us tirelessly, patiently, compassionately and with an upmost professional attitude! Because of her, Gate 1 absolutely and unequivocally earned my trust and continued business. This company is lucky to have someone like Ms. Rodriguez working for them. Cudos to Gate 1 and Ms. Rodriguez!! Thank you so much.

I booked the trip from Chicago to UK with Gate 1 travel on 5/12/22 as a reward for my graduation. I paid $3859.25 for the whole package including airline ticket (Chicago to London), hotels and other additional activities. Since then, I received several emails from Gate 1 informing me everything was confirmed. In early June (less than 1 month before departure), I logged onto Gate 1 site to check all the items included in the itinerary, and I found a credit of $1300 posted on my account. I called customer service and was told “everything’s alright, just some final details need to be finalized, then you are good to go.” Several days later, the $1300 credit was still there and Gate 1 kept sending me pre departure documentations in the meantime. Absolutely nothing suggested that things went wrong with my trip. However, I still decided to call the customer service to double check. This time was a different representative, who informed me that, hotels and everything else were confirmed and paid. However, they DID NOT BOOK MY AIR TICKET from Chicago to London. That’s where the $1300 credit was from!!! They suggested me to either buy a ticket myself, or just cancel the trip. At that time, it was only 2 weeks from the departure, the international flight ticket was over 5000 dollars. Apparently I could not afford that. They then told me the only option I had was to cancel the trip and get 10% of refund (which is only $255.92) because the cancellation occurred within 1 month from the departure. So I requested a full refund, which they rejected. From the time I booked the trip till the moment I had to cancel my trip, no one ever called me informing me that they did not book the ticket. Even when I called them to specially inquire that $1300 credit, they told me everything looked fine. If they had told me that over 1 month prior to the departure, I can get more refund. THIS IS TOTALLY GATE 1’s fault but they refused to refund the remaining $2303.33. They took that money from me and I was not able to go anywhere for my graduation trip. I have phone recording with their customer service, which was horrible. They kept telling me the manager/supervisor would call me back, but they never did. Gate 1 is totally horrible! Totally unorganized!! Totally irresponsible for their customers. This was the worst experience ever!!!

Although we saw some fabulous sites we did have some issues with our 17 day trip to Egypt and Jordan. Our first guide was wonderful and had an unbelievable storehouse of knowledge, but perhaps too much as he frequently talked so long at a site that we had almost no time to explore on our own. Secondly we had 3 intermal flights that we had to get up at 4 am to catch and therefore were tired all that day. Our second tour guide did not carry a flag and it was very difficult to keep track of him when we were in large crowds. Finally we had an issue with lost luggage where our guide made us all wait for over 2 hours even though our hotel was only 10 minutes away.

Excellent itinerary for reasonable price. Good trip leaders. They give customers opportunity for independent experiences with guidence for good outcomes. They do not schedule every minute of every day. 16 time Gate 1 traveler

Their advertisement says full refund but we paid in full 2 months ago and they dropped the ball didn’t buy the airline tickets, now they want us to pay double to have same itinerary. Waiting for a manager to call hoping he/she won’t be as rude as the last person I talked to. She said Can only refund 50% but they haven’t paid for airline or hotel????

Gate1 Travel canceled our trip.
We planned for months, spending on getting visas, and taking personal time off work, Gate1 took our money and pulled the plug! It became greedy and put profits before people. No one in the company is ready to talk to us, they do not have a corporate office but a handful of scattered agents.