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Nov 2, 2022
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Re: SGA Travel A tour of Turkey: Incredible in Every Way!
Incredible: travel agency (SGA Travel); travel agent (Caglar); guide (Serdar); driver (Ehtam); 20-day private tour itinerary (Oct 3-23, 2022); hotels; transport; price; etc, etc.; even the weather! I highly recommend that you take a SGA Travel package or private tour of beautiful and interesting Turkey!
Trip.me (now Travel Local) made this private (2 couples), very reasonably priced tour possible by connecting me with a very knowledgeable, efficient, and prompt, Turkish travel agent – Caglar. Shortly after carefully listening to and enquiring about our interests, dislikes, physical abilities, desired time period, … he sent me a very comprehensive, varied, interesting and well-balanced initial itinerary. After a little more input and a few tweaks it was perfect.
Our guide and driver were great and worked extremely well together during our 20-day tour! Serdar communicated very well and had a vast and varied knowledge of Turkey’s history, culture, politics, geology, agriculture. He was well organized, hardworking, energetic, personable and caring! Ehtam was a very amiable and conscientious person with an incredible knowledge of the backroads and little scenic highways of Turkey. He was an excellent driver who obviously enjoyed showing us the varied beauty of his country. We came to view both as friends!
When I compared the similar parts our tour to a 10-day Highlights of Turkey bus tour: hotels of the same quality; our tour was $37US less/day pp; we had 1.6 vs 0.9 meals/day; many more sites and activities were included and all were chosen based on our specifications; all our entry fees and such were included in the excellent price for the tour.
One important warning: Be sure that you use the Turkish government’s official site to obtain your VISA. It was temporarily not working. I used one of the many carefully set up, alternative websites and ended up paying an extra $300 for our Visas.
Re: Travel Local
Generally, our experience was excellent.
I have organized my own trips; participated in big bus, small group, private tours; big and small ship ocean and river cruises; … This is the 2nd great tour I have arranged with a local agent carefully chosen by trip.me / Travel Local. I will definitely use their valuable services again: vetted agents with an abundance of knowledge and experience; bankruptcy protection; payment options; guaranteed currency exchange rate for final payment …
We had 2 problems with Trip.me/Travel Local this time. 1. There was an extended period during which no one responded to my emails. This was probably due to Covid and organizational difficulties that arose as Trip.me merged with Travel Local. I assume that these problems are now resolved. 2. One couple had to drop out of our private tour which - of course resulted in a price increase for the 2 remaining couples. Rather than simply increase the tour's price on the existing invoices, Travel Local issued 2 new invoices for the increase which then required a new set of down-payments and final-payments - twice the hassle and twice the transfer payment cost if you choose transfer money. Apparently this was done according to company policy. I shared my displeasure with this policy with them and they allowed me to make a single final transfer (cost = $50) instead of 2. I wonder if they would make a new invoice if the price had decreased. Hopefully they have now changed their policy so that any price change is dealt with on the existing invoice.
Travel Local provided us with an exceptional vacation that was tailored to our own expectations, we do not want to purchase a trip will we be spending it with 50 of our friends, on a bus. They also gave us highlights that we will remember.
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Nov 2, 2022
Verified review
Re: SGA Travel A tour of Turkey: Incredible in Every Way! Re: Travel Local Generally, our experience was excellent.
Re: SGA Travel A tour of Turkey: Incredible in Every Way!
Incredible: travel agency (SGA Travel); travel agent (Caglar); guide (Serdar); driver (Ehtam); 20-day private tour itinerary (Oct 3-23, 2022); hotels; transport; price; etc, etc.; even the weather! I highly recommend that you take a SGA Travel package or private tour of beautiful and interesting Turkey!
Trip.me (now Travel Local) made this private (2 couples), very reasonably priced tour possible by connecting me with a very knowledgeable, efficient, and prompt, Turkish travel agent – Caglar. Shortly after carefully listening to and enquiring about our interests, dislikes, physical abilities, desired time period, … he sent me a very comprehensive, varied, interesting and well-balanced initial itinerary. After a little more input and a few tweaks it was perfect.
Our guide and driver were great and worked extremely well together during our 20-day tour! Serdar communicated very well and had a vast and varied knowledge of Turkey’s history, culture, politics, geology, agriculture. He was well organized, hardworking, energetic, personable and caring! Ehtam was a very amiable and conscientious person with an incredible knowledge of the backroads and little scenic highways of Turkey. He was an excellent driver who obviously enjoyed showing us the varied beauty of his country. We came to view both as friends!
When I compared the similar parts our tour to a 10-day Highlights of Turkey bus tour: hotels of the same quality; our tour was $37US less/day pp; we had 1.6 vs 0.9 meals/day; many more sites and activities were included and all were chosen based on our specifications; all our entry fees and such were included in the excellent price for the tour.
One important warning: Be sure that you use the Turkish government’s official site to obtain your VISA. It was temporarily not working. I used one of the many carefully set up, alternative websites and ended up paying an extra $300 for our Visas.
Re: Travel Local
Generally, our experience was excellent.
I have organized my own trips; participated in big bus, small group, private tours; big and small ship ocean and river cruises; … This is the 2nd great tour I have arranged with a local agent carefully chosen by trip.me / Travel Local. I will definitely use their valuable services again: vetted agents with an abundance of knowledge and experience; bankruptcy protection; payment options; guaranteed currency exchange rate for final payment …
We had 2 problems with Trip.me/Travel Local this time. 1. There was an extended period during which no one responded to my emails. This was probably due to Covid and organizational difficulties that arose as Trip.me merged with Travel Local. I assume that these problems are now resolved. 2. One couple had to drop out of our private tour which - of course resulted in a price increase for the 2 remaining couples. Rather than simply increase the tour's price on the existing invoices, Travel Local issued 2 new invoices for the increase which then required a new set of down-payments and final-payments - twice the hassle and twice the transfer payment cost if you choose transfer money. Apparently this was done according to company policy. I shared my displeasure with this policy with them and they allowed me to make a single final transfer (cost = $50) instead of 2. I wonder if they would make a new invoice if the price had decreased. Hopefully they have now changed their policy so that any price change is dealt with on the existing invoice.
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Mar 26, 2023
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Private, personalized vacation was amazing!
We loved our personalized private tour with Travel Local to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan! We rode camels, explored ancient tombs of the pharaohs, toured Luxor in a horse-drawn carriage, went on a felucca, saw Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Petra. We had fabulous personal drivers and guides. We stayed in beautiful luxury hotels. We designed every aspect of our trip with the help of the tour company. I had trouble verifying that this company was legitimate, but it really is! I hope that Travel Local will become even better with their communication, so that people will look to this company with confidence. We felt we got a great value for our money--luxury hotels, professional drivers, and quality private tours. The Nile cruise was a highlight! But everything was great!
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Nov 28, 2022
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Process was smooth and easy; more details would have been great.
Process was smooth and easy. I would have appreciated more detailed information on each day of the trip, guides' responsibilities etc. Now we just had to trust someone wold meet us at the Cairo airport when we arrive, and everything would evolve from there. This DID happen, but there were several days when my money is just sent off and I had very little to show in return.
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Mar 22, 2023
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We had a wonderful trip in Jordan
I contacted Samir to ask for his help to arrange a trip for group of 10 people in both Jordan and Isarel. Samir did a really good job. He’s one of the very best agent.
We must have communicated over100 emails just for the planning, Samir was extremely patient with all of our questions and requests. And he tried his best to meet our requests. He booked us the finest bubble camp in the desert which was the best experience in Jordan.
Once we arrived Jordan, the whole itinerary was smooth. It stared from VIP service in the airport at 2am. The driver and guide made the trip flexible to meet our request. We added some programs, changed to a different hotel, etc. all the hotels were 4 or 5 star as promised. we asked to watch the night show in Petra, and the guide purchased the ticket, the driver waited for us during the night to drop us there and later for a pick up.
The trip in Jordan was perfect.
The only thing is that our Isarel trip was through a local agency, which did not meet our expectation. I had very bad experience in Isarel from the tour guide, the hotel, the food, etc. The local agency screwed it up. Especially if we compared our experience in Jordan, it was not very friendly. Samir was always online to help me! He has tried all of his resources to resolve the conflicts such as to give me free meals to compensate the bad hotels, and I understand it was not in his control. So I still appreciate that he was trying to help even in the late of night, and listened to my frustration.
Overall I would recommend Samir to all of my friends to have a wonderful Jordan trip!
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Jan 27, 2023
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Travel local was a good platform, some of the guides were too rushed!
Travel local was a good platform. What was less than satisfactory was some of the guides provided (by Memphis tours) in Egypt. When we were picked up at the airport we were given a lecture on tipping and what was expected of us. Then we had a guide who was always in a hurry to go smoke his sheesha, so we were short changed and rushed at many venues. We had an excellent guide at Abu Simbel (Georges).
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Oct 5, 2022
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I covered a lot of this in other survey, but will summarize here again. Trip.Me was well organized & orchestrated. The guides & drivers were excellent. One of our drivers in particular went up & beyond to help me get medication when my husband was sick. We did not like our hotel in Cusco at all, but the other two were great. There was one guided hike that was a 2 hour drive from our Eco Resort. We thought that was too long a distance & would've appreciated if that was pointed out to us, so we could opt out.
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May 11, 2023
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Solo trip to Spain
The ability to custom make the trip at least to a certain extent. Having someone in Spain I could contact at any time was the best feature.
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