Well, it was foolish of me to review a travel agency before taking the trip they booked. Nara Travel booked our international flight, hotel, a bus tour, and a domestic flight in Korea several months in advance.
When I traveled to Korea, I discovered that our 8-day English-language bus tour, K-Shuttle by US Travel, was a complete and utter mistake. The company was extremely unprofessional with low standards falling completely behind the quite luxurious and competent Korean bus tours, while it was even more expensive than Korean bus tours. The only reason this company is still in business is because travel agents like Nara Travel book passengers for them, because the agents are paid to do so. Every passenger on the tour was booked through an agent.
My wife had booked the tour with the travel agent and had asked the travel agent for two things:
1. We NEEDED a big charter bus. My wife gets migraines if she rides in a bumpy car and gets carsick easily too.
2. We asked for all meals included, which is typical of Korean bus tours.
The tour was not in a charter bus. Instead, they booked a small, rickety tour bus (very bumpy=lots of headaches) and dinner NOT was included. The "English speaking" tour guides were mediocre. Some of the bus drivers were completely incompetent. And the entire company seems shady. Not to mention, the tour voucher/itinerary that Nara Travel made for us did not even have the name of the company written on it - so that when we were trying to meet up with our tour at the very beginning, we were at the meetup spot but didn't know the name of the company we were looking for. That was Nara's fault.
Nara travel did not fulfill our requests or book a company that we would be happy with. My wife does speak fluent Korean, and we could have taken a Korean bus tour instead if we knew what we were in for.
When my wife confronted our travel agent with these mistakes, she didn't really seem to care or acknowledge them, much less apologize.
At the middle of the tour, we had a flight from mainland Korea to an island, which was booked by Nara Travel. Our flight was booked several hours later than the rest of our tour group's, so we missed one of the tour attractions because we were waiting for three hours in the airport.
The hotel that Nara travel booked for us, City Co-Op in Seoul, was okay. It was located a 15 minute walk uphill from the nearest metro station. We ran into a few other snags, which I guess is understandable given that it was a budget hotel, but I still could not recommend the hotel.
I trusted Nara Travel to fulfill our specific requests and book travel and accommodations that we would be happy with. They did not. read more
