Riviera Travel
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A missed opportunity by Riviera Travel to delight it’s customers
Ordinarily this would be a 4 or 5 star review. The itinerary included a good balance between excursions and free time, both the tour manager and the local guides were very good and the group had a good dynamic with everybody getting on well. However it is when a problem occurs that you find out the true credibility of your tour operator. In our case we were scheduled to have a 4 hour evening stop over at Hanoi airport before a 13 hour flight to the UK. However due to the closure of Heathrow airport on the preceding Friday the return flight was delayed by 7 hours which stretched the stop over time to 11 hours overnight. Riviera Travel were aware of this 12 hours before we arrived in Hanoi but despite constant chasing by our tour manager they chose to do nothing to arrange hotel accommodation for the party, leaving 30 individuals all aged 50+ anxiously facing the prospect of spending the night in Hanoi airport’s departure lounge. Hats off to the tour manager, on arrival at Hanoi she took upon herself to make contact with one of Riviera’s local agents who arranged both hotel accommodation and transport to and from the hotel. This of course took time and we were standing around in the airport for 2.5 hours whilst the arrangements were made. It is acknowledged that flight delays are sometimes unavoidable, but Riviera knew of the delay well ahead of our arrival in Hanoi and if they immediately went ahead and booked overnight accommodation for the party they would have had 30 happy customers who would have no doubt have booked their next holiday with Riviera. Instead we were left with the impression that Riviera just did not care. It certainly caused considerable consternation amongst the group with most questioning whether they would use the services of Riviera in the future