Excursions in Australia & New Zealand

Has anyone ever used Short Excursions to book any excursions? Here is their website www.shortexcursions.com.au They look pretty interesting but not sure what type of service you might get because it appears they have contracted with numerous tour groups.:confused:

I just found this helpful website about the ports in New Zealand

http://www.newzealand.com/us/cruise/

I've never heard of Short Excursions and the link you provided does not work for me. I also couldn't find any company by that name doing a Google search of "Short Excursions Australia".

If you have another link or better information, I would be happy to look at what they are offering and offer my opinion based on my knowledge of Australia from having lived there for several years and visited it numerous other times.

Doesn't open in Aus either and I've never heard of 'em which may not mean much.

I've been looking at a company called shore trips and tours which is an NZ based company. They do tours in all the major ports in NZ and some in Aus as well.

We booked through Shore Trips and Tours and found them to be very responsive. Yes, they are a consolidator of other tour providers, but they have been very helpful and responsive. They have been quick to respond when a tour time needed adjusting and someone on our Roll Call had to cancel with about a week before the cruise and received a prompt and courteous refund.

We just returned from our New Zealand/Australia cruise.

We booked 4 of our excursions through Viator. 3 of the 4 excursions were outstanding. Viator is a middle man for land and cruise excursions. I had several questions about planning and times and called Viator. Their staff was very helpful and when the staff didn't have an answer, they called the tour company directly to obtain answers.

The one excursion we didn't care for was the one in Akaroa which went to Christchurch. We didn't realize how long of a distance it is between the two areas. If I had it to plan over again, I would not have bothered going to Christchurch due to the distance and instead planned something in the Akaroa area.

We just got back from a B2B from Sydney to Auckland and then Auckland to Sydney and found the I (information) Sites an excellent site to book tours. They were either located at the port or by the shuttle drop of point. You have to get there early but they would have quite a few different tours but different tour companies offered. We did a tour through the hills to Christchurch which included 2 hours free time in Christchurch, a wine tour out of Picton, an the Gorge Railroad tour out of Dunedin.

I would check them out on Trip Advisor.

Keith