EF Educational Tours
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Extremely Disappointing Experience with EF Educational Tours - July/August 2025
As paying parents who joined our student on this tour, we feel obligated to warn other families about our terrible experience with EF Educational Tours. Our initial tour director was completely unprepared and unsafe. She walked without identifying markers, failed to ensure group safety crossing busy streets, consistently answered questions with "I don't know," and forced us to wait 30+ minutes at every hotel while she figured out room assignments. Parents had to step in and perform her duties throughout the first half of the trip. Despite premium pricing, we experienced holes in hotel walls, non-functioning AC, cold showers, hard beds, and insufficient amount of breakfast food. Meals were inadequate for hungry teenagers through out the trip- cheap, repetitive dishes with no options. After a 20,000-step Vatican/Colosseum day, "dinner" was iceberg lettuce, thin cheese pizza, and ice cream. Students regularly spent their own money on additional food. Two hours before boarding, while sitting at the beach with luggage loaded, we were told our cruise was canceled. EF provided no clear information about next steps, meals, or accommodations or refund opportunities but asked for us to make a decision quickly so they could start booking flights. Only through our group leader's persistent calls did we slowly get details about options and potential reimbursement. Consistent late hotel arrivals followed by very early departures left everyone exhausted. The group repeatedly requested hotel rest time instead of more rushed sightseeing, but requests were ignored. We did not get a full 8 hours rest until the 2nd to last day of the trip. EF booked a flight to Europe with 6-hour layover then added an "extra day" at the end of our trip causing many of the students to arrive back at 10PM the night before school started causing significant stress. Our second tour director, Stelios, was excellent - professional, safe, and educational. Unfortunately, by then we were still dealing with cruise cancellation aftermath and continued subpar accommodations. This experience made many students never want to travel internationally again. EF provided the absolute minimum - checking boxes for basic services without regard for quality, safety, or customer satisfaction. Students were exhausted most of the time and because of the constant moving to new hotels, getting on flights & subpar food, few of them enjoyed the educational excursions from the stressful experience. Even when paying premium prices, we were then asked for additional money for catacombs and Naples stops during the trip- it felt like we were being nickel and dimed. I will never recommend EF Educational Tours and will actively discourage other parents from risking their children's safety and travel enthusiasm with this company. For these prices, families deserve professional leadership, safe experiences, reasonable accommodations, and adequate food options. EF failed completely.