Eight Good Reasons to travel with Travel Companies
You are insured
When you travel with group tours, most of the times travel insurance is compulsory. Of course, you have the option to purchase your own travel insurance but travel insurance is very important at all times.
There are many unforeseen incidents can happen during travel times. Loss, thefts and damages can happen from time to time. Baggage lost or baggage damaged is the most common issue while other unforeseen circumstances such as accidents and medical coverage will be covered by travel insurance rather than your personal insurance.
Always remember to get yourself insured while traveling.
Based on my past experience, there are also many reasons why we try not to use travel companies :
1. We always get seats at the back of the planes
2. We rarely get good restaurants as travel companies will try to make more money out of us with sponsored restaurants. Eg, we were taken to a 300 yen restaurant, yet the tourist guide bluffed us that we are going to a home cooked restaurant and yet never tried to tell the restaurant to hide the 300yen menu ! And this travel company is probably the biggest Msian travel company for Japan tours.
3. Many travel companies will arrange Msian Chinese food restaurants even if you go to countries like Australia, where the food is more touristy type and you get fried rice, sweet and sour pork, corn soup etc
4. All travel companies will include compulsory stops to overpriced and aggressive shops, especially China. It spoilt my trip to Hangzhou where we spent half a day at a tea plantation where focus was to sell us their longjing tea at high prices and the sales person get aggressive when you refused to sit in the demonstration of their tea’s so-called magical powers. We have bad experience at another stops selling Chinese medicines in industrial building where they scolded some of us who doesnt buy anything. I just told them to speak in English if they want to sell anything and walked off.In fact, we even have an argument with the local Chinese tourist guide when all of us refused to go there.He said the bus is sponsored by this company and we have to pay them if we dont visit the stops.
5. Some travel companies even skipped the agreed itinerary by giving silly excuses. We even have one that told us that he is changing restaurant as that one is much further away but we are already paying extra for that particular restaurant.Another cheating way to substitute cheaper restaurant.
6. Little time is given for famous sites and we all are supposed to rush instead of exploring these sites. We went to a lavendar farm in Japan and only given 1 hour to tour the place and it was raining and they were rushing everybody to go for their lunch when we have a big buffet restaurant.Ended up passing by other nicer lavendar farms, which the tourist guide commented that these are nice farms and he didnt know about them!
7. Some of the local guides tend to bluff a lot , thinking we are ignorant when everything is a Google away and they get upset when we correct them. The worst are the ones in China, they just seemed in a hurry in everything and only brighten up when they get tips when tips are already included in the total cost.
8. All travel companies will only go if they get enough numbers. We were only told that we are leaving about 10 days before departure, yet we have to book months ahead. My parents’ trip to Hokkaido almost could not leave as they were short of few passengers and the travel company has to get from other agencies to fill up the numbers. Again, the risk of not leaving is there when you put the deposit.
9.The travel companies tend to give you hotels or motels or hot springs resorts that are out of the world , just because these hotels give them a cheap deal, thus there are 90% possibility you will end up in old hotels, small rooms, small toilets and no wifi and in some areas, no coverage at all and the TVs only showed local shows that you don’t understand. You can’t choose where you want to stay and can’t go out to walk around at nights in many areas.
Hi Sam,
You just gave me 9 reasons why not to travel with travel company. Thanks for your comments and I did experience some of the issues you pointed out.
Maybe choosing the right travel company is a tough one.
Regards
Wilson