Rachel

Apr 2, 2025

Balkans Tour

Be prepared: extremely early hours f the night flights and very early morning starts each day, not getting to your hotel until late and having to rush down to dinner before an early night. This except for day 6 and 7 where the day was wasted hanging around and in the worst hotel with nothing to do and no running water . Schedule poorly designed. A different hotel every night- no point unpacking and very exhausting and unsettling. Three hard-sell visits to a gold and jewellery dealer, a leather and fur dealer and a carpet dealer. A huge waste of time and money. So much time spent on a bus with not enough time to get out and stretch your legs and go to toilet. Local guides all very knowledgeable and good English. Quality of hotels varied considerably but overall very poor. Holiday guide: very good English and overall quality of information good. However she was extremely unprofessional in several ways that require note. She told our fellow travelers that they should not have come on holiday if they didn’t want to do the extra excursion with additional costs. She told my daughter who is vegan and didn’t want to go into the leather and fur dealer that she’d be guilty if anything went missing on the bus, despite driver being in the bus. She did a very long lecture on how we should invest in the gold and jewellery for offer in the dealer and gave a very heavy sell like she was on commission. It was very lengthy and so horrifying that a couple of travelers expressed their opinion on this. She got very angry and on entering the dealership, in front of the gold/jewellery dealer she spoke critically about us travellers and expressed her outrage calling them rude and indecent for simply expressing unhappiness for the unprofessional sales pitch. She brought her brother and niece on the bus which is a breach of insurance policy. She was also very poor at helping my vegan daughter who also has additional support needs. We were often given rooms on separate floors despite asking for assistance with this from guide. We had also asked for her assistance at the beginning to help liaise with her vegan diet so that she could be catered for without surviving on salad. It turns out there was 4 vegans and 3 vegetarians yet my daughter was left with nothing but cold boiled vegetables and fruit and on her own negotiations with final hotel was able to arrange for two suitable protein rich dishes and soya milk for all the vegans and vegetarians: this should have been done by guide and was actually very straightforward- it only took a little effort.