Name: smarTours
Address: 500 7TH AVE, 8TH FL, NEW YORK, New York
Rating: 4.41

“The tour guide was a friendly one, but first time undertaking a Smartours group. There was no first day of booking the optional tours, thus we missed out on the waterfall and horse back riding tour optional tour. This was due to lack of planning on the tour guide. Also, there was no one page contacts list in case people in the tour wanted to share contact info., We have always had out Smartour guides provide this service and we have taken 9 or 10 Smartours trips now. The hotel in Tortoguerro was subpar. Nice locations but rooms were dark and dingy and since there were now windows you could hear conversations of your next door neighbors. The hotel in MonteVerde was a lovely place however there was no insulation around the doors on the back deck and so the winds slammed the doors all night so huge lack of any sleep. One suggestion is to have an optional 3-4 days in an all inclusive resort on the Pacific side at the end of the Costa Rica tour and utilize an experienced Smartours guide,”

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Posted 6 years ago

“We just came back from Egypt Tour. Our Guide Khaled was fabulous with so much knowledge of the history. He made sure our group was safe. over all experience was great. However the Egypt Air experience was horrible. The crew was very unhelpful. Bare minimum water was offered. Due to second security no personal water could be brought on board. we felt very dehydrated. The NY office was very incompetent. Lost my son's deposit check twice. we had to make several calls and emails exchanged to finally get things straightened out.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Did not receive the paper work on time, I had to call several time to get it send. this did not start the trip over very well.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Very disappointing experience with the tour guide! Felt she had a lot of favorite fellow travelers! She did not take into account that there were older travelers that actually needed a scheduled time for lunches due to certain health concerns.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“recently returned from trip to spain--w/smart tours Size of group 41 people was too large for 1 tour guide--David-- did his best but was over-whelmed to keep the group intact-- Other noticeable omission was an extremely short stay in Madrid--beginning the tour--didn't feel group had time to get a good over-view of the country's capitol city-- Rooms over-all were good with the exception of Hotel in Barcelona--Very small and crowded Previous 3 trips with Smart Tours were good--this tour of spain was average at best”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Both my wife and I totally enjoyed your trip to Africa although we did enjoy our trip to China a lot better because of the information we received first and the follow through of the information at the other end. There were two excursions I was looking forward to doing and I understand the disclosure that they're not guaranteed but on one of them we were told it's not the season for doing that. Also, when we stayed at one of the hotel Reserves they took us on a cat reserved where you would see lots of wild cats and it was extremely interesting. We found out afterwards there was a fee for this not before and if I recall I don't recall seeing a fee in your description. My wife and I can understand that on some of the days there were length Lee bus rides and to be prepared but it was not professional to let the customer, us, know that in the final documents. That would have been best to know when signing up for the trip. My life's dream was to go to Victoria Falls I am an adventure type of person. We have travel agents from over the years and we really like your services, but our other travel agents would have pointed out that this is not the best time of year to go see Victoria Falls, which was an expensive side Excursion trip of yours and not discluding that it was beautiful. It was extremely disappointing to me and I have all intentions of returning to Africa just to see Victoria Falls as 90% of the falls were dry. It was pointed out by the tour guides that this is not the time of the year to see Victoria Falls. Both my wife and I would have still gone on the trip but would have chosen a different season to do that. And that is where we depend on our travel agents to let us know that as the other two would have. A suggestion for your future long-distance travels and we do respect that some places are far away and our length Ali plane rides, but in the future you should provide supersonic transport making the trip only 2 to 3 hours, that would have been nice. Only kidding. Thank You for Your services and there is no doubt that we would not use you again. Martin Berger”

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Posted 6 years ago

“I travel with SmarTours to Croatia from 10/03 to 10/16. Here is my feedback: 1. I like the itinerary very much. It covers all the wonderful sites in the area 2. Except in Zargrab and Dubrovnik, I DO NOT like the hotels we stayed anywhere else. I remember I saw a spider in bed at one hotel. At another, there was a flood in the bathroom floor every time we took a shower. It turned out that the bathtub door wasn't sealed. 3. Rok is a very good tour director. But his mannerism is a little rough on the edges. r”

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Posted 6 years ago

“who ever booked the airline reservations for the return flight should be fired, we had only one hour between the arrival of our flight from Dubrovnik on air croatia and the departure of our American flight from Frankfort to philadelphia, when we landed in frank ford, we were told one hour is never enough to make a connection in the Frankfort airport, the airline people put us on a lufthansa flight which left serval hour later so naturally we all missed our flight from Philadelphia to chicago, of course we know smart tours was not responsible for that flight, but smart tours was totally incompetent in serving up an itinerary to allow only one hour between flights in frankfort. a terrible ending for a nice trip”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Accommodations were great, including the Movenpick Royal Lily. Especially enjoyed our time on the Nile. Randa, our “tour manager” was less effective than the tour managers we had on our prior two smarTours trips. She is very personable - would be good to share drinks or a meal with, however, she was virtually unable to keep to a schedule & was not very good at communicating needed info in a timely manner. Finally, we found the Egyptians we met to be very friendly but the country itself is dirty & trashy. The “great monuments” were vastly overrated, in our opinion, and Randa’s explanations at the various key sites were very uninspired and “canned” without any interesting contextual basis - the exact opposite of our experience when we went to South Africa with smarTours. Also, we appreciate that we had such good security protection - but, had we known the security situation was that fragile & dicey we would not have gone (e.g. day after we left, terrorists attacked a bus of Egyptian Christians several miles south of Cairo, killed 7 & wounded 19!!). Glad we got out alive. Finally, the folks in our tour group were very nice and enjoyable to travel with.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Usually my Smartours experiences are a five. The tour to Egypt was a great experience. We had the best tour director Soha and assistant Mohamed. However, the tour organization was done wrong. Almost every morning we had to be up by either one o’clock am or three o’clock am to either go through a flight or a sight seeing. Soha did a marvelous job to accommodate all 40 people. But waking up every morning that early and going through a very heavy loaded day was very tiring. The hotels were great and the boat was great. I believe the tour has to be rearranged and maybe add one more day to the tour to make it less exhausting for the travelers. Needed at least one more day in Cairo at the end. Soha took us to the Cairo museum and she has a vast knowledge of history. She explained every article and statue and item so well. However, we were so tired from the early morning wake up. Afterwards went to Bazar and spend only one hour in the restaurant. No time for looking around and shopping. As I said, the whole trip has to be rearranged and rescheduled. I would rate it a three and a half because it was so exhausting.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Overall 3 stars. The guide was very good. 5 stars The hotels were comfortable. 4 stars The attractions were well chosen. 5 stars. 1 star for the following: There was too much time spent on the bus. It was uncomfortable to be seated for so long (two days!) The return air trip was AWFUL. The trip took 31 hours from Chiang Mai to LAX due to poor connections and long layovers arranged by Smartours! The long layovers in Bangkok and Beijing were simply not acceptable. They were excessive and stressful. Leaving Bangkok at 1:05am was very bad planning by ST. We arrived from Chiang Mai at @6pm and left for Beijing after a 7 hour layover! It is almost a week after the return flight and I am still exhausted due to the bad flight planning. The NY office staff was disorganized and non-communicative for long periods of time. I had to contact them for information that should have been sent but wasn't. They seemed unaware of problems even when explanation was given repeatedly. They required a doctor's letter for a seat request which Air China repeatedly told me they did not receive or require. The ST staff refused any other help with the matter, not even supplying a contact number at Air China, which was extremely difficult to contact. Help finally came from another airline giving a number at AC that was actually answered. This trip's travel plans were in stark contrast to the wonderful previous trip I made to Africa with ST.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“We have traveled with Smartours before and had good memorable experiences. This Egypt tour, however, fell short of expectation. The Egypt air flight from JFK was held up on the tarmac for 1-1/2 hours and no updates or announcements were ever made. The Aswan- Abu Salem flights were disastrous! The outgoing flight was delayed an hour and the return flight was most chaotic ever with multiple repetitive screenings with associated lost/misplaced items. The whole Abu Salem tour was poorly planned. The original schedule allowed barely enough time [2 hours] and the delay reduced it further making it the most expensive and unwise investment of time and resources. Other groups traveled by cruise ship and spend a night there. Smartours could schedule a night there in the ship instead of an idle day at Luxor. While the Tour Director was a scholarly person and very supportive, same cannot be said about the other ground staff. The Manager provided some inaccurate, contradictory info. on optional tours and fees and failed to offer any regrets. The farewell dinner at Marriott was mismanaged, especially for the vegetarians. The cruise ship was average, but services fell short of expectations. Wifi was unavailable even in the reception area for Smartours clients and food services were very restricted. No tea or snacks were available in-between meal times. Too many early flights, midnight wakeup calls and crowded scheduling [too many commercial store visits] made it a strenuous trip even to many of our seasoned travelers in the group. Overall while it was an educational and valuable trip for us it could have been made more enjoyable with better itinerary scheduling and improved local services. Hope this would be treated by Smartours as constructive criticism from a loyal customer.”

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Posted 6 years ago

“Our SmarTours group was 10 people, which made it a pleasure. Our guides went from good (Patricia in Chile) to very good (Mariano in Argentina) to pretty bad (Natalia in Buenos Aires). Food was occasionally good (two Estancias and all hotel breakfasts) and occasionally bad (hotel in Puerto Natale) or nonexistent (early breakfast in Santiago before a flight to Punta Arenas with no food available). The excursions were all very good, especially the penguins and the sheep shearing/lunch). We were very fortunate to see glaciers in excellent weather, plus glimpses of the splendid mountains between the clouds. Our guides should certainly have known that Argentina limits the amount of local cash we could get from the ATMs. Many of us walked from bank to bank, wasting a lot of time, only to learn online, later, that cash would not be forthcoming. Advance warning would have helped a lot. Having limited cash severely cut into tips for our guides, our drivers, hotel staff, and servers in restaurants.”

smarTours 3 star review on 4th March 2019

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Posted 6 years ago

“recently returned from trip to spain--w/smart tours Size of group 41 people was too large for 1 tour guide--David-- did his best but was over-whelmed to keep the group intact-- Other noticeable omission was an extremely short stay in Madrid--beginning the tour--didn't feel group had time to get a good over-view of the country's capitol city-- Rooms over-all were good with the exception of Hotel in Barcelona--Very small and crowded Previous 3 trips with Smart Tours were good--this tour of spain was average at best”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“recently returned from trip to spain--w/smart tours Size of group 41 people was too large for 1 tour guide--David-- did his best but was over-whelmed to keep the group intact-- Other noticeable omission was an extremely short stay in Madrid--beginning the tour--didn't feel group had time to get a good over-view of the country's capitol city-- Rooms over-all were good with the exception of Hotel in Barcelona--Very small and crowded Previous 3 trips with Smart Tours were good--this tour of spain was average at best”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“I travel with SmarTours to Croatia from 10/03 to 10/16. Here is my feedback: 1. I like the itinerary very much. It covers all the wonderful sites in the area 2. Except in Zargrab and Dubrovnik, I DO NOT like the hotels we stayed anywhere else. I remember I saw a spider in bed at one hotel. At another, there was a flood in the bathroom floor every time we took a shower. It turned out that the bathtub door wasn't sealed. 3. Rok is a very good tour director. But his mannerism is a little rough on the edges. r”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“who ever booked the airline reservations for the return flight should be fired, we had only one hour between the arrival of our flight from Dubrovnik on air croatia and the departure of our American flight from Frankfort to philadelphia, when we landed in frank ford, we were told one hour is never enough to make a connection in the Frankfort airport, the airline people put us on a lufthansa flight which left serval hour later so naturally we all missed our flight from Philadelphia to chicago, of course we know smart tours was not responsible for that flight, but smart tours was totally incompetent in serving up an itinerary to allow only one hour between flights in frankfort. a terrible ending for a nice trip”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“Felt like we were not given all options on some of the extras like taking gondola up and having the buffet. The dinner was not good and we were crammed in so tight you couldn't get out comfortably to get food. There was an option to just take the gondola up and not have dinner for much cheaper but we were not told about this option. Would have been better with a tour guide from the countries we traveled in instead of from the states. I had never been on a tour of this type so maybe my expectations were too high. We had trouble with several of our flights so felt like we lost one whole day of our trip. After we got to our destinations the optional tours were priced higher (sometimes up to $40 ) then the final papers that smart tours had given us just two weeks before the trip. This may have been because of the difference in currency but I feel this should be explained better than what it was. We were dropped off at several different places and told to find our way back to hotels. I felt our tour guide talked down to us and in my opinion she wasn't very personal or approachable. The first hotel we stayed at my sheets and bedspread were stained. I should have complained at the hotel but didn't. It was a nice hotel and everything else was good. The breakfast buffets had lots of choices and very decent foods. The bus drivers were very nice and informative. The farm stay was one of the highlights of the trip. I was not looking forward to it but ended up having a great time there.”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“Tour director was just ok. She was very organized and punctual. She lacked empathy to the clients it seems and not very focused on catering to them. Given the $ amount spent on this trip it seems as though she could have done better and put forward more effort towards making our experience more enjoyable.”

Customer Service
Communication Channels	Telephone, Email, Live Chat
Queries Resolved In	Under An Hour
Customer Service	3.8 out of 5

smarTours Reviews