Tours without prepayment or credit card deposit

Hello Everyone,

Doing a southern cruise on AOS in April and trying to book a land tour, but every one we tried required our credit card. Some offered refunds if ship doesn't dock, but some only offered a future credit. I've always booked tours without running into this problem, but it seems Barbados is the exception. Appreciate any help.

Based on this post from December 2009, we contacted Esline and arranged for a tour last April.

We did a great private tour in November for just the two of us. We went where we wanted to go, stopped when we wanted, and saw just what we wanted.

 

We had a 9 passenger air conditioned van with a young native Bajan, Willie Drayton, as our driver/guide and he knew Barbados.

 

The toatal charge was $25 per hour or $100 for the 4 hour tour for both of us. It was about the same price as a group tour. We were very pleased.

 

Our only regret was that Harrison's Cave was still closed for renovation and we could not visit it this time.

 

If you want to follow up the contact is Esline at draytonstransport@caribsurf.com

 

Tell her that Peggy and Jerry referred you.

In our initial email, we mentioned Peggy and Jerry as was suggested in the post and we got the same rate. Don't know if that might be higher now.

We did not have to prepay anything, just paid after the tour (plus tip).

Willie will design a tour for you, depending on what you want to do. We went to Welchman Hall Gully and the Flower Forest, then to Bathsheba for pictures.

Our pictures for our day in Barbados:

http://travel.webshots.com/album/577643475VJvHvp

On our 14-day Caribbean cruise, we needed to make a deposit on over 1/2 of our excursions (and we had an excursion in every port). I don't blame companies one bit for requiring deposits. On one island, 17 people didn't show up for an excursion (that was over 1/2 of the capacity of the boat) that didn't require a down payment. A company can't possibly plan for the day when that occurs too often.

However, offering a credit for future use if the ship doesn't dock? I'd run from that company!

On our 14-day Caribbean cruise, we needed to make a deposit on over 1/2 of our excursions (and we had an excursion in every port). I don't blame companies one bit for requiring deposits. On one island, 17 people didn't show up for an excursion (that was over 1/2 of the capacity of the boat) that didn't require a down payment. A company can't possibly plan for the day when that occurs too often.

 

However, offering a credit for future use if the ship doesn't dock? I'd run from that company!

Hi Mytime,

We have had a number of cruises to both east and west Caribbean cruises and have never run into this before. We have four other excursions on this cruise and no deposit was necessary for any of them..only Barbodos. Rccl has already changed one of our ports for an unknown reason, and I'm kind of leery to book and pay anywhere between $60 and $250 in advance for any tours. All that being said, I can understand the operators not wanting to be stuck with no-shows. There must be a way to find a happy medium here.

Reg

Hi Mytime,

 

We have had a number of cruises to both east and west Caribbean cruises and have never run into this before. We have four other excursions on this cruise and no deposit was necessary for any of them..only Barbodos. Rccl has already changed one of our ports for an unknown reason, and I'm kind of leery to book and pay anywhere between $60 and $250 in advance for any tours. All that being said, I can understand the operators not wanting to be stuck with no-shows. There must be a way to find a happy medium here.

 

Reg

Out of curiosity, I just went back and looked at my list of excursions. Except for the boat excursion where 17 people didn't show up, the deposit/no deposit list fell into 2 categories: every excursion involving a boat required a deposit. None of the others did. And Barbados was one of the ones that required a deposit. Unfortunately, I erred on that day and grabbed the envelope for the next day, which showed that I could pay the entire fee with a credit card. Instead, I was supposed to pay with cash. We were fortunate that they graciously allowed me to pay by credit card.

I actually worried about those that didn't want a deposit--I was afraid that some of them might not show up!