10-Day Andalusia and Morocco from Madrid

Unacceptable, This tour should not be allowed to operate.

This tour should be allowed to operate. It was so disorganised that it ruined my holiday of a lifetime. I was on 12 days Andalucia, Morocco and Spain from Lisbon, ending in Lisbon (this option is not on this dropdown menu). I booked the tour online through TourRadar, an Australian site, which says English speaking guide, but I was in Spanish groups majority of time. It was sold as one tour (guided tour) however in that 12 days I was mixed and matched with 5 groups and had 5 ‘guides’ only one guide in Morocco spoke reasonable English then he said he was expecting me (who didn’t understand Spainish or Arabic) there. From the beginning very little information, first there was no contact person or number if you had any questions. I was given a WhatsApp no but saying ‘only for emergency’. When I tried contacting no response. I was nervous until I found the 1st guide, I knew the meeting address but no other info. Inhad left message to this guide to contact me to confirm if I was in his group but no response. I arrived at the address with my luggage, when I met him I learned he didn’t know English, he checked his list and found my name, I was relieved. He tried to communicate with me using Google translate and told me that I will be sent to another group where the guide will speak English, luckily there were many Americans who also spoke Spanish and they translated to me necessary instructions. 2nd guide spoke few basic words of English, 3rd guide in Morocco Najib was the only guide in this tour who made effort to ‘guide’. 4th guide Pepe spoke basic English (I was in french/english group now) but could not be bothered explaining things much. Last leg was another drama. After arriving in Madrid I learned that rest of the group are finishing their tour and heading home, I was the only one supposed to continue on to Lisbon. I had no communication/further instructions from the tour company, I tried contacting them to no avail. As per the tour schedule I had two nights in Madrid, when I couldn’t contact the tour I check with hotel about my reservation, they had only one night reserved for me and hotel is fully booked so they told me to vacate the room. Still can not establish contact with the tour, when I conveyed my concerns to hotel receptionist, one ignore but other picked up the phone and called the tour company and told me that ‘they will check and call back’ but since the hotel is fully booked they told me to kindly vacate the room and sort out issue with the tour company. Meantime I also had also written to TourRadar. Finally I got a response from TourRadar and tour company saying I could stay there the night. Then next I didn’t know how I was going to Lisbon, if anyone is picking me up. After many attempts to contact the tour company (they won’t answer my phone but answered hotels phone), the office didn’t have any record first then they found my name but no idea about my schedule , simultaneously contacting TourRadar, until 9:30 pm I didn’t know my next days program. Finally I received a text with name of the driver and time for pick up. Then in the morning I was told the driver couldn’t find me, eventually he turned up and drove me to Lisbon. This is not an organised tour, so not worth the money. There are so many budget tours much more organised than this, I booked this only because this fitted my time that I have and area I wanted to visit. This tour should not be allowed to operate. If anyone have booked, they have free cancellation, please take advantage and cancel it as it is easy to travel independently in those areas. Since I was travelling solo and I had pleasant experience with organised tours in the past with other tour companies (Cosmos, GoEuGo and TakeTour) I booked this but I still cannot believe that this is allowed.

Response from the operator: Good afternoon, We are surprised by the inconveniences you mention. Please send us the details of your reservation to vptterminal@vpttours.com to follow up and check what happened or perhaps this complaint corresponds to another operator, in which case please direct your complaint to the appropriate person. We remain at your disposal. Kind regards

via Tripadvisor

Wonderful!

Tour was great. We went to Caceres, Sevilla, Cordoba, Ronda, Torremolinos, Tarifa, Tangier, Fes, Rabat, Granada, and Toledo from Madrid. FYI, the tour doesn’t include Madrid. That is just the starting and ending destination. For the Morocco part, we were given clear information that we were going to switch to the tour company Mundi Maroc, which was good. For the Spain part, our tour guide Carmen was friendly and enthusiastic. She was great! In total, highly recommend this tour.

via Tripadvisor