Getting burned booking independent tours?

[mauimary]

Cindy your tour outside Dublin sounded great. Would you mind sharing the name of that company?We will not be in Dublin until July 2020 but I’m researching now. I’m sorry to hear this happened to you. You definitely had a family of flakes which caused a financial impact for you. These things can be hard to predict.  

 

I also provide a detailed description of the tour and any changes I have made to a custom tour so everyone knows when they commit. One thing I make clear is that we are not stopping for shopping as we prefer more time for touring. If this is impt to them they need to find another tour. 

 

A couple of years ago we were  in Panama on a private tour arranged by someone else. There were six of us. We were about 30 min away from the port when one member starting getting sick. It was more than car sick as in seriously looking ill. We had to turn around and take him back to the ship. The driver got clearance to get him closer to the ship. Turns out he was seriously ill and got taken off at the next port and in the hospital for a week. This obviously cannot be predicted and things happen. We lost about 1.5 hrs of our tour. That left four of us. The other couple picked up their tab to keep it easier. They were reimbursed by the ill couple who were responsible people who didn’t get to see anything. 

 

There are risks we take but about all you can do is minimize them. For a couple that did not or could not come to the prior meet I make arrangements with them to meet us briefly. I want to see faces. This is not a problem for responsible folks.  We never meet off the ship at designated point. 

 

We too have met many many wonderful people who we are stil in contact with. We will continue to organize. 

Mary

Edited January 13, 2019 by mauimary
Question phrased wrong

[Cindy]

4 minutes ago, mauimary said:

Cindy your tour outside Dublin sounded great. Would you mind sharing the name of that company?We will not be in Dublin until July 2020 but I’m researching now. I’m sorry to hear this happened to you. You definitely had a family of flakes which caused a financial impact for you. These things can be hard to predict.  

Mary

 

Mary, our tour outside Dublin was with Beautiful Meath: https://beautifulmeath.com/.

[gma rae]

Loved reading the posts above and how specific people are when they plan and share a tour. I am relatively new to this but after all the reading on CC I did plan all our tours and shared them sometimes on CC and sometimes the tour company put the group together. In almost all cases we modified the tour and made it very clear no shopping, no stop at xy or z. It worked great. I followed all the tips above without realizing it at the time.

 

Definitely meet ahead of time on board and reiterate the plan of the day as well as put a face to a name. I think sometimes people just jump onto a tour someone else has planned  on CC so they don't have to do the work themselves but they don't really read the details. When they have to sign up on line with a tour company and provide  financial info they are more cautious.

[LHT28]

Cindy

OMG

I am afraid I would be banned from CC  because I would "Name & shame" them

You are probably lucky  they did not go in the end  but  it would have been nice to give you time to find others

 

[mauimary]

1 hour ago, Cindy said:

 

Mary, our tour outside Dublin was with Beautiful Meath: https://beautifulmeath.com/.

Thank you Cindy.  I have this company listed now in my travel folder. Really appreciate you sharing. This is what I like about CC so much. It’s the sharing of info that is so valuable. 

Mary. 

[styme123]

6 hours ago, Cindy said:

 

That was me!😢 I’ve booked dozens of small group tours all over Europe, the US, and the Caribbean, and a tour last summer in Ireland was the ONLY time I’ve had a problem with getting stiffed by people on my roll call. The thing that really stunk was I probably could have filled those spots three or four times if I had more than 30 minutes notice.🤬 That said, I will continue to organize private excursions because the experiences we’ve had and the friendships we’ve formed far outweigh the one problem I’ve encountered.

 

My “rules” for booking private tours/offering space to roll call members:

 

1. The company has to have a clear refund/no penalty clause if the ship doesn’t make it to port.

 

2. I will pay a deposit, but I prefer a company that either accepts advance payment from individuals or takes payments the day of the tour. If I am going to have to pay for an entire tour I ask roll call people for payment in advance. Yes, there’s some trust involved both ways, but I think I could refer people to some of my previous roll calls if they wanted to confirm I’m not a deadbeat!😊

 

3. I’m very specific about what I have planned, and people can take it or leave it. I don’t want to get into any disagreements about long shopping stops or returning to the ship early for a scheduled (free) meal. If that’s what somebody wants to do they should probably find a different tour. No hard feelings, but I don’t want both of us to be disappointed. 

 

4. People have to be willing to give me their personal (non-Cruise Critic) contact information, including cabin number, phone number, and e-mail address.

 

5. I ask everyone to meet in a designated location on the ship on the day of the tour so we can disembark together and avoid any mis-communication.

 

6. I usually ask everyone who has booked a tour with me to meet on the first sea day to put names with faces, reconfirm, etc. Our first sea day was a whole week after the start of the cruise last summer, so I skipped that step. I should have known something was amiss when the deadbeats also didn’t show up for the scheduled Meet & Greet on boarding day — and they (supposedly) had all the name tags.

 

Here’s what happened this summer: https://theworldthroughmylens.blog/2018/09/06/beautiful-ireland-outside-dublin-for-the-day/  

 

I really think that experience was an outlier. Almost every post on my blog is a private tour that was filled with “strangers” from my roll calls, and they were all great! Good luck with whatever you decide, but I think if you proceed with a little caution you can have a lot of success in creating or joining private tours.🙂

Too funny Cindy, your review (which I have tagged and refer to often as I was planning my up coming BI cruise trip) is the reason why I was feeling cautious. 😨That's why I'm kind of torn about 2 tours I was looking into. One fills the stops and is cheaper, but doesn't give refunds for missed port. The other, one I fill from CC but has no payment till day of,  and is $60 more, but has 3 more stops. What to do?

[Guernseycruiser]

I was "burned" the other way.  Not on a tour, but a transfer with other CC guests from the port to Rome Airport.  We had not received any contact from the person organising the transfer to the airport for the end of our cruise, hence about half way through the trip we phoned them, no answer, so we left a voicemail.  After another couple of days, we tried calling again, no answer.  Less than 24 hours before disembarkation, we received a voicemail message to say that as we had not contacted them, they had found other guests to fill our spaces.  I was extremely annoyed, but what could I do?  I called them back to say we had tried to call them and left a voicemail, but they said they never received the voicemail!!!  I spent the last few hours of our cruise frantically trying to find a transfer company to take us to the airport (it is quite a distance away, and a standard taxi would have been really expensive).  In the end we could not find anything, so we disembarked the ship with nothing booked.  We luckily found some other guests with 2 spaces so joined them.  

 

I guess we should have just knocked on their cabin door when they did not respond back to our phone calls and voicemail.  Lesson now learnt.

[delee78]

I am currently planning tours for our BI cruise in August.  I have cruised for a number of years and seen quite a few different tour standards based on region.  Typically, tour companies want payment onsite at the start of the tour or a deposit.  I completely understand how this could be risky for the tour providers, but wow - the tour companies that I have contacted in Scotland, Ireland, and England all require full payment up front.  And cancellation policy is in their favor.  They would not adjust the cancellation policy if the ship was unable to dock or drop anchor. 

 

I almost gave up and took the ship's tour options but then was given another option - add all of the tours to your travel insurance policy.  I just did this and feel a bit better about the risk.  And, I get to take the tours that I wanted to the places that we wanted to see. 

 

This won't help with the risk involved with booking the tour and then sharing the cost with fellow cruisers.  I just came to peace with the idea that worst case, I would pay for the entire tour and we would get a more personalized day.  If others join, then better yet.

 

For two ports, I did book the non-private option of being on a big bus with many other people.  Downside is obviously the crowd and the transportation coordination needed to get to the tour pick-up.  Upside is definitely the cost - 25% of the cost of the private tour. 

[geoherb]

On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 12:27 AM, styme123 said:

Since you booked directly with the company how many people were usually on the tour with you? I think that's the benefit of getting the groups together they are often 8 people. I'm sure it was less than the cruise ship bus anyway.

 

Our tours were larger groups. One was in a mini bus that held 18 passengers. I thought it was fine. Two women we met on the cruise thought it was too cramped. That was the tour that took us to Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness cruise, Clava Cairns, and Cawdor Castle. Our tour to Blarney Castle and Kinsale was in a full size bus. That was with eCoach (Butlers). That company impressed me a lot. Our ship was several hours late getting to the port. They emailed us and other passengers to let us know they were aware of the itinerary change and would accommodate us. 

 

We did Dublin on our own the first day and with one of the Hop-on/Hop-off buses the second day. We did Belfast on our own, taking the ship's free shuttle into the city's center and walking to where I wanted to go. We did Glasgow on our own, taking the train from Greenock and then HoHo buses to get around the city. We did a train on our own in Edinburgh as well.

Edited January 15, 2019 by geoherb

[mauimary]

When booking companies we take a particular interest in using companies others on CC have used as I have found them to be pretty honest. If not up to par or there have been problems CC folks will definitely let you know. I do not consult Trip Advisor at all. 

 

We have booked tours in a number of Italian ports, England, Spain, Portugal, Columbia, Panama and New Zealand most all without having to put up a deposit or prepay. The few times we did the company allowed each party to pay separately with them. The companies we have chosen obviously have not been burned very often.  I just do not understand loosing a deposit or being charged if a ship does not make port. It’s obviously out of a cruisers control.  I am wondering now if this is pretty standard for Ireland and Scotland?  Are these big name companies that have been around awhile? If this is the case we will not use them. Sometimes it’s just easier to use the Cruise Excursions on Ports that are higher risk. 

[styme123]

1 hour ago, mauimary said:

When booking companies we take a particular interest in using companies others on CC have used as I have found them to be pretty honest. If not up to par or there have been problems CC folks will definitely let you know. I do not consult Trip Advisor at all. 

 

We have booked tours in a number of Italian ports, England, Spain, Portugal, Columbia, Panama and New Zealand most all without having to put up a deposit or prepay. The few times we did the company allowed each party to pay separately with them. The companies we have chosen obviously have not been burned very often.  I just do not understand loosing a deposit or being charged if a ship does not make port. It’s obviously out of a cruisers control.  I am wondering now if this is pretty standard for Ireland and Scotland?  Are these big name companies that have been around awhile? If this is the case we will not use them. Sometimes it’s just easier to use the Cruise Excursions on Ports that are higher risk. 

I'm kind of new to cruising as this is my third one, so others might speak more if this is a  Ireland and Scotland thing. When I booked excursions in Alaska I believe they refunded. I also think it was less likely we weren't going to miss a port there also. It's funny that most of the companies charging up front and no refunds have been the most well known ones that have been around a while. While the newer ones are giving you a refund. I think it's a good idea for them as it drums up more business for them. Especially with cautious people like me. The companies that don't give refunds just give you the recommendation to get travel insurance and then you don't have to worry about it. 

[New Hampshire]

I too have organized private tours througout Europe finding fellow travelers on our roll call. I have never booked with a company that required payment prior to the day of the tour and none of the tours involved more than ten people.  For those who were interested, I posted my email address and required from them, their phone number, email address and ship cabin number.  I made it clear to everyone that their commitment was iron clad and if they had to back out once we were onboard they were still responsible for paying their share.  We also arranged a short meet up very early in the cruise. On only one occasion did someone have to back out because they were legitimately ill.  The spouse of this person also stayed behind and he saw to it that he met me to give me their money before we left for the tour.  

 

If Inwas going to join a tour set up by someone else, I would suggest to that person that they make sure their partipants followed this commitment also.