“I have had 2 holidays with Exoticca and both have been good value - for the price, I would not expect to have first class hotels and the organisation was acceptable.
HOWEVER !!!!
Exoticca cancelled my booking for another holiday and you would have thought that it would be a simple matter to obtain a full refund of the amount that I paid. I have e mailed them 4 times and telephoned 3 times and have still not been refunded. I also need to be refunded for an excursion that did not happen on my last trip with them, but there is no sign from Exoticca that they are willing to refund any of my money.
Be aware that if you have to have any of your money refunded ...... best of luck !!”
“We have just returned from a tour of Turkey (Istanbul, Cappadocia & Ephesus) and found it excellent value for money.
The tour guides were extremely good and 2 of the 3 hotels were excellent.
The 3rd, in Istanbul wasn't the best, but to be honest, it was such a busy itinerary, we didn't spend long in the hotels anyway
The absolute highlight for me was a balloon ride in Cappadocia”
“THEY PAY $50 FOR EACH 5-STAR REVIEW ON TRUST PILOT. My fiance's parents found this trip to Peru and thought it was a great deal. The red flags started almost instantly. After we had paid a sizable down payment to book a trip for four, they said that they would give us $50 off of our trip to post a 5-star review on Trust Pilot. Alarm bells went off but what could we do? They already had our money. I posted a review about how the booking process was easy (the part where they take your money) and left it at that. After I had posted my review, I followed up about the discount and was told that it wouldn't be applied to THIS trip, but to a future trip with them (which they already know you aren't likely to take). When you're booking, you can reach them anytime, day or night. After you put down a deposit, they will only answer your call during business hours when you're working, I assume to make it harder for people. I called the 9-5 number and a woman answered. I let her know that we had booked a trip and I had a couple of questions. She hung up on me. I called back and let it ring and ring and no one ever answered. No one responded to my email to customer service either. I guess they work on commission so no one wants to spend time taking care of existing customers. We were told that we would receive a detailed itinerary at least 30 days before the trip with all the information we needed. Despite us asking for it multiple times, it finally arrived three days before we left. Exoticca also failed to notice or care that my fiance's passport expired less than six months after we returned home from Peru, meaning he wouldn't be allowed to travel. Fortunately, our trusted travel agent was getting everything together for our honeymoon and SHE caught it and let us know. At that point, he had to call and get an emergency appointment eight hours away to get a new passport in time. Thankfully she caught it or we would have had to cancel and Exoticca would've kept nearly $5,000 of our money. The first hotel was fine, the second had no hot water and no heat (not even a space heater) with temps in the 40s. The third hotel had ants in the bathroom which I found on my toothbrush and ants crawling on the food at the breakfast buffet. Hot water was spotty. But the worst part was the smell. Our bathroom had a window that opened onto some sort of utility shaft. The window was broken so that we couldn't shut it all the way and the utility shaft and our entire room reeked of raw sewage. After one night we were both sick. The next night we figured out that we could shut the bathroom door and shove a blanket under the crack to keep most of the smell out of the bedroom and that helped some. But since the space heater was attached to the bedroom wall, that meant that you couldn't get any heat into the bathroom and had to take a cold shower in a cold room. We've traveled to less affluent countries and never encountered situations like these. The trip was poorly organized as well. For instance, instead of booking the 1-hour flight back from Cusco to Lima next to the 5-hour flight from Lima back to Miami to make it easy, they had us land in Lima late Saturday evening, bussed us an hour and a half away to what I can only assume was a hotel much cheaper than the ones close to the airport, and picked us up again at 4 o'clock in the morning to bus us an hour and a half back to the airport. We would've gladly paid more to at least stay near the airport and get a few more hours of sleep. We made the best of the trip and Machu Picchu was phenomenal. Most of our guides from Condor Travel were wonderful as well, especially Rodrigo and Alexis. But the one who picked us up at the Cusco airport told us that she had been about to take off and leave us behind. We had been off of the plane for 10 minutes, just long enough to grab our bags and make a quick stop at the bathroom before going outside to try to find her. She literally said that she was about to leave four Americans, one of whom was disabled and only one of whom spoke broken Spanish, stranded in a foreign country with no way to get to the hotel or home or anywhere because in her opinion 10 minutes was too long to get off of the plane and out of the airport. Exoticca is a get-what-you-pay-for situation. If you're okay with no communication, no customer service, no information, no hot water, no heat, no sleep, ants, raw sewage, and possibly being left stranded at an airport, then go for it. If not I highly recommend paying a bit more for a reputable travel company.”
“I would give this below zero if I could. This is by far the WORST organisation I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. They steal your money, promise it back, and then a year later, you are still having to ask for it. It is simply unbelievable. DO NOT USE, PLEASE HEED MY WARNING.”
“My holiday was cancelled in July. Ever since I have been repeatedly told I can get a cash refund (3k) - the latest being March 2021, but I would be paid as soon as they could. This then changed to if I hadn't spent my credit note by March, it would be refunded then - this then changed yesterday in the small print of a further marketing email they sent me to Sept 2021!! When I complained again, I was simply told "there will be a very long wait for all cash refunds." without acknowledging that they had suddenly changed the date from March to Sept (this would be a wait of 14 months!) very untrustworthy - and as much as they need my money due to Covid, I need my money back due to Covid!”
“SCAM warming! All the hotels were cheap and nasty, transfers were unsafe and the trip was poorly planned. This was sold as a luxury holiday via Secret Escapes and it was anything but. The hotels in Thailand were £30 a night (we checked) they were smelly, noisy, unsafe, outdated, dilapidated and terrible all-round. What's more is that Exoticca ignored our attempt to contact them about it, when the finally replied they just fobbed us off so I will go through an official complaint route when home. The planning on their side also had holes which made transfers between locations really stressful. They booked transfers with unsafe companies whose drivers were dangerous and left you clinging to the seats praying to avoid a high-speed crash while the drivers casually used their phone, ate, counted paper money, all while driving in the hard-shoulder at speed on congested roads!!! Do not risk your family or loved ones lives with Exoticca!!! The lesson I learned is never to buy a package trip again. Just do it yourself, get better places to stay and be more in control.”
