Chinese people love to travel. They also love to save money. How to take care of both at the same time? Bus tour packages! I know many are hesitant to participate in preplanned vacation groups, but what better way to explore a place you've never been to than having someone else show you around? Visiting a foreign land can be quite a daunting experience, especially if you have no idea how to get around, or even know the local language. There are many adventurous types who prefer fending for themselves, but for everyone else, Ritz Tours is just your ticket. Most of the clientele is entirely Chinese, and tours are conducted in Cantonese, English, and/or Mandarin. They typically try to group you with families of a similar background (HK with HK, Taiwan with Taiwan, ABC with ABC), so the language barrier is not so much of an issue. This is more possible in the peak season, but during the slower months, they may have to mix everyone together. This shouldn't be much of a problem though because the employees in the office, as well as the tour guides, are often bi or even tri-lingual. The only thing is that it may take longer to translate everything. All of the popular hotspots around the US, Asia, and Europe are covered. Short trips to such West Coast favorites as Southern California, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Crater Lake are great for those who just want to get away for a couple of days. Longer packages include stops in various East Coast megalopolises (NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Toronto); the Canadian Rockies, which kicks off in either Seattle or Vancouver, and takes you through Banff, Lake Louise, Edmonton, and Calgary; and Yellowstone, which also includes layovers in remote locations of Idaho, Utah, etc. Being a Chinese-American company, tours to China are Ritz's main specialty. Many packages are available, including a "general cities tour" (Great Wall, Forbidden City, Shanghai, Suzhou, etc.) and a Yangtze River cruise. Trips to other parts of Asia, such as Bangkok, Vietnam, Tokyo, and Hong Kong are also part of their repertoire. For Europe, the options are a bit less, but the obligatory, London/Paris/Rome tour is always a crowd pleaser. I'm one of those "The drive is half the fun" type of guys, so having the opportunity to come across various roadside attractions is quite the treat. While, obviously the target destination is what you really want to see, the quirky, local oddities are what stick in your mind forever. Here is a breakdown of the travel necessities provided by Ritz: Lodging - More than adequate, and sometimes luxurious. Obviously, with the foreign exchange rate, it may be hard to label a price, but I'd say that the hotels are all in the $150+ range per night. They choose the name brand American chains if they can (Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, etc.), so you at least know about the level of quality you are getting. Food - More often than not, local specialties will be served. In China, for example, we dined on whatever the particular area was known for. Dumplings in Shanghai, duck in Beijing, ribs in Wuxi, beggar's chicken in Hangzhou, etc. The restaurants are not necessarily the highest class places, but certainly above average, and the service is just top notch. Airline - This is the one flaw if there is one. For the price you pay, you certainly cannot fault them, but the cheapy airlines are simply horrible. If given the option, I would be more than happy to fork over a few more dollars for a decent, more reliable carrier. For example, I won't name the airline we rode to China, but I sure as heck do not wish such a torturous experience on my worst enemy. *cough* China Air *cough* Bus - Clean, spacious, and fairly new. There isn't much I need to say. Tour guide - Articulate, organized, and often multi-lingual. They are experts on all the attractions, and are also fun to talk to. By their very nature, tour guides are a bit bubbly and eccentric to begin with, so they are more than happy to answer any questions you may have, or just to chop it up. Clientele - There are some young couples but it's mostly families. All the kids seem to be very well mannered. If you are a younger guy (un)lucky enough to have a gf, I think taking her on one of these trips would be a magical time, although unfortunately, I can't say I speak from experience. Flexibility - This is the best thing about Ritz. Say you have a friend who lives in a particular city along the way. If you want to kick it with her, or even stay the night at her place, go right ahead. In another case, say the tour is over, but you want to stay in the city a bit longer. You can change your flight, and Ritz will also help you find lodging. They can even book a flight to an entirely new place. When we took the China tour, which ended in Shanghai, while everyone else went straight home, we tacked on a few extra nights, with the option of taking an additional flight to Hong Kong. Sorry, no more space! read more

We purchased the 12 days Europe Delight Tour, with stops in London, Paris, Luzern Switzerland, and a few cities in Italy. The included breakfasts were mediocre and food quality was horrible. The hotels were not four stars as stated. Another thing is "tips" for the drivers, assistant tour guides, and main tour guide is mandatory, not optional as listed on the flyer. It adds up to around $150/Euros per person. (Quite expensive for lousy service and bad attitude) Bobo Fung at the Millbrae Office of Peony Tours (Ritz Tours) is totally rude and incompetent. She should take a course on professionalism and customer service. I will be making a complaint to the BBB on this company. I wish I could give this company a negative 5 stars. read more

We have just finished 12 days tour to East Europe. Sight seeing was nice. But seeing too much castles and churches was getting boring, even though Tour guys are very knowledgeable, they kept talking but not many members listened. Shopping was not much fun , because most shops in the same interesting attractions area , were brand names, high priced department stores, which we could buy easier or cheaper in USA) . We wish to see more local shops, eating more local food , seeing real markets in the country part . Tour guy : luckily we got James Wang. He speaks fluently English and of course Chinese. Nice manner , trying to let us know about European history, experienced tour guy ! he took good care all of us until the last day, to the airport, he was still around helping us . Food : Peony mostly pay one meal dinner, Breakfasts belong to the Hotels . And after the fist two or three breakfasts, we gt tired of eating the same stuff every morning.. Hotels: good , some are excellent. Transportation: Bus ! Excellent Driver: Mario ( forget his last name ) nice and cool. Professional driver. Happy though with the services Minh Hieu Nguyn . Tour Eastern EU : 12 days from LA . September 11-22 -2019 read more

Not sure about the racist remarks from the other reviews. I don't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, but I had great service. I called and spoke to Siufun. She took my information over the phone and sent me an email verifying my itinerary. YIPEE!!! Yes baby, put it in writing. It's not official unless it's in writing. Me love you Siufun. She was super patient because I must have changed my arrivial city a gazillion times. She would rerun the cities and generate a new email verifying the dates, times, and airlines. It's complicated because we have six people flying in at different times from varying cities, but we all want to fly back together. She was very thorough and patient. Love it love love love it. Her price with Cathay was at least $300 off the same ticket on kayak.com. Bonus! read more

With very little notice or time in advance, I searched high and low, called multiple places to get quotes for airfare going to Taipei, with times ranging from peak holiday season to a week after that. Orbitz gave me the finger. Cheap tickets was a cheapass with prices. United's skies weren't friendly. Other Chinese travel agencies in SF and San Mateo were too busy enjoying their lunch and couldn't pull jack for me in terms of prices. But Ritz came through, BEST price out of all. Never before but this time they really did for me. Ditto for a Taiwan/Hong Kong package of airfare and 2 days hotel (oddly enough at the HK Berlin Metropol, same place where we stayed which 1 year later was where they first discovered the SARS virus!) So give Ritz a try, and this isn't about salted crackers. By the way Ritz is Chinese run. read more

First off, I've never used the 'tour' aspect of this company, but I did purchase tickets through them several times. The service was responsive and they got me good deals. I saved a good amount of money on tickets to Hong Kong and Shanghai compared to other agencies and online sites like Expedia, etc. In particular, I got a nice deal from SFO to HKG with a flight from HKG to Shanghai included. From what I can tell, they specialize more in destinations in Asia. As for previous reviews regarding speaking Chinese, I don't know because I do speak Chinese and it was fine for me. And well, the place is located in an Asian area, all the workers are Asian, and the sign is in Chinese. Based on this, you gotta figure its catered to serving Asians. I don't really see this as being 'racist', more as serving a particular segment of the population. read more

The extent of my experience with Ritz / Peony tours has been four different China tours which I booked throughout the years through travel agents (first one was in 1999, the most recent was in 2007). For China I say they do a very good job as far as the sightseeing is concerned. For Chinese tours they provide an overall guide for the whole guide and a local guide for each city visited. They usually speak both Chinese (in Mandarin) and English. The problem I have with them is that seems like every day on each tour they take you somewhere to spend time shopping at locations of their choosing, which often includes product demonstrations which is not exactly what I booked a vacation for. There has even been instances where we were somewhere where undue pressure seemingly was applied to get us to spend. The worst case being after visiting Huangshan where the shop visit was under the pretense of a "free foot massage" but with pressure to buy a type of powder, which these people holding our feet. I understand the tour guides may be trying to make more money through commision from these sales, but still this part is very unsatisfying. If I go with this company again, the next destination might be to visit Jiuzaikou (via Chengdu) in the Sichuan province, but don't know how the recovery from the big 2008 earthquake is up there. read more

Would not refund deposit when my parents couldn't get Italy visa which has the most ridiculous application process. I had obtained travel insurance refund without any issue because of this kind of circumstance that's beyond our control. Stay away. read more

I recently joined the 17 days Europe highlight tour provided by Ritz tour and I am very disappointed with the tour. This is the worst trip I ever experienced. Dissatisfaction: Food: I wish there is less Chinese food and more local food. The amount of food is just not enough. For most meals, we only have six small dishes for 10 people. We have to lick the plates almost on every meal. When we have to dine on our own, I wish the tour guide would drop us off somewhere where we have more choices instead of some fast food restaurant off the highway. We basically ate at the same fast food restaurants off the highway throughout the whole trip. When asked the tour guide for restaurant recommendation, we were directed to restaurants where the tour guide can earn a free meal or some freebies (a few people on the tour witnessed it). The food was expensive ($50+ per person) and the quality was very bad. I know we all want to make money, but I hope the tour agency can sometimes value the customers' interest instead of squeezing every penny out of them. Itinerary: The trip was dreadful and tiring. We don't have time to enjoy most of the places we have been to. Often time, we were only allow to spend 1 hour at a city after driving 5-6 hours to reach there. The itinerary was the most disappointed. We got into an argument with other tour people when we asked for more time at the Coliseum in Rome. I can't believe we were only allowing 10 minutes at the Coliseum and we can only take a few pictures from afar. While at some places like the crystal and diamond shops, we are left there for over 1 hour. I guess Ritz tour must think that these shops are better sightseeing places than the Coliseum in Rome. DISAPPOINTED! In summary: - Too much time on the bus, drive 6 hours to only spend 1 hour roaming the city - Food sucks - Tour guide/agency trying to hard to make money from customers - Will I join another tour from Ritz tour - No - Will I recommend Ritz tour to anyone - No, I don't think anyone would want to join Ritz tour after they hear my experience. There are "at least" one third of the people (15+) on this tour that shared the same view and were very disappointed. If we survey everyone, I am sure the dissatisfaction rate is much higher. read more

Don't buy your flight ticket from Ritz if you expect to get any services. If Ritz know you can use a computer or speak English, they will advise you to check the airlines' websites on-line or call the airlines directly by yourself (from selecting seats to making special requests). If you ask Ritz to do so on your behalf, don't even expect a follow-up phone call from them because they will not do anything until you spend a couple hours calling them again and again. The only thing that Ritz is efficient about is to get your credit card number and push you to issue the tickets ASAP. I wish I knew about this before wasting my time to deal with them and end up having to contact the airline company myself. read more

I had a chance to join the US Eastcoast-Cananda tour in June with Ritz Tours Inc. I really like it. We had a wonderful tourguide, Rick Yang, who took good care of us and he always makes sure that every one got on the bus before we took off. We went to visit so many places and Rick always explain the history if each place but sometime people don't always listen. I don't know Chinese at all but he is good at speaking both English and Chinese. The hotel stayings were pretty much above what I expected (from the price that I pay). When you buy air line ticket please make sure you are taking off from Boston Airport. You difinitely need to take lot of cash for admissions because you will want to visit every places that they recommend. We also like the bus driver, David. He is a very experienced one and a safe driver. I highly recommend it. read more

On May 14, 2014 from Athens (Greece) to Istanbul (Turkey) by Aegean Air, we all 40 tour members MUST pay Euro$35 of for the first piece of check-in luggage because the Ritz/Peony Tour purchased the cheapest GoLight international ticket. We all are disappointed with Ritz/Peony's recent business practice on purchasing of the cheapest ticket for international tourists, and also caused us to line up at another counter to pay that Euro$35 for each person's check-in luggage. read more

I took Ritz Tours to China recently visiting Beijing, Xian, Hongcho, Sucho, Wuxi, and Shanghai. I was pleased with the trip overall. There are positive as well as less positive parts of the trip. I will describe them briefly. ON TIME AND ALL EXPENSES COVERED The entire trip was well prepared by Ritz. I did not have to spend any extra money because Ritz covered them all. Ritz tour lead went with us for the entire trip in addition to the local guides for every place we visited. They spoke English as well as Chinese and explained in great detail of the history behind all the sites we visited. We were on schedule for the entire trip. All tour bus drivers were courteous and they drove safely and patiently. LODGING AND FOOD The hotels are fine. They are rated according to local standards. Other than the 3-night in a Beijing substandard hotel (Ritz claims all 4-star hotels but, in my opinion, not really), all other hotels are fine hotels. Food is average. Breakfast provided by the hotels are better than the lunch and dinner arranged by Ritz. Food in Beijing and Xian is greasy. I was hoping to taste fantastic northern Chinese cooking but was quite disappointed. Four of us had food poisoning in Beijing and Xian. Vomit and diarrhea for 2 days is by default expected. I brought Imodium and used it to take control but sure had a really bad day. SITE SEEING AND SHOPPING Ah, this is the good part. Great Wall is fantastic. Flying from Bejing to Xian took about 1.5 hours. Ritz took us to the Ba-Da Lien section of the Wall. There are two sides to climb the Wall. The easy side was full of people with red hats. I took the difficult (steep climb) side and went all the way to the top where a road block stopped me from going further. According to the team lead, if I had bypassed the road block I would have ended in Mongolia. Wow, that was the most exciting part of the trip. Site seeing at Xian was good too. Ritz bought us tickets flying 737 from Beijing to Xian and to Hongcho. I was delighted to see the clay soldiers in part of the emperor Chin's burial area and learned the 2000-year old history behind it. Wow...that was great. Flying to Hongcho took about 2 hours. Ritz took us on a boat ride on the West Lake. While on the lake, I looked to the shore and saw the old East and new Western buildings coexisted around the lake. Sucho was interesting where we visited silk factory and bought a all-silk comforter - costing a few hundred bucks. The Tai-Hu Lake visit at Wuxi was also interesting. The scenery was great and food was good. Cultured pearls are part of the products from the Lake. One single gold-color pearl could easily cost a thousand bucks. Maybe we, being tourists were targeted for high prices? Shanghai is a city by the river. Food in the surrounding cities is better prepared than the ones in Beijing and Xian. But the pears, apples, and percimins in Beijing and Xian are the best ones I have ever tasted. COULD I BEAT THE COST? Looking at the amount that I paid for the trip, I could not have beat that price if I had arranged this trip on my own. So, I would say it is definitely worth the money. read more

If I could, I rather give them a zero star !! I recently joined their East Coast 9-day tour in June. I had a very disappointed journey and very bad experience with their tour guide. After filing a complaint to their office, i was also very dissatisfied with their irresponsible response. (1) False advertisement and Unprofessional tour guide: Although our travel agent told us the tour will be held in both Mandarin Chinese and English, the tour guide spoke Cantonese Chinese mostly during the tour. The only time he spoke Mandarin Chinese was to tell me when to get on the bus and when to gather before next stop. It's a waste of money for this tour. If the tour was held in Cantonese Chinese only, the company should let us know in advance. I would not sign up for this tour. (2) Because my flight was re-routed to North Carolina due to the bad weather at JFK airport, we missed one and 1/2 days of the tour. During this period, neither the company nor the tour guide took responsibility of contacting us. It's our travel agent who helped me to make further arrangement. I will not want to refer their tours to the people I know. read more

So I recently came back from a tour in China. For China, Ritz typically has two tour groups, an American one catered to English speakers which costs more, and a Chinese one where most of the dialogue of the tour guide is in Chinese with some English translation. Obviously, for monetary reasons, my parents, sisters and I, went for the Chinese tour group. So let me try to cover some of the things that are important when on a tour: 1) food 2) organization 3) lodging 4) transportation 5) freedom food - the food i wouldn't say is excellent, it was above average though. i'm not sure about you guys but on a 10 day tour, chinese food started tasting the same everywhere. organization - i must say, they had this down. everything was in order hotel room wise and restaurant wise with no issues lodging - the reason why we chose this particular tour was that in this instance the hotels were 5 star hotels. unfortunately, as you might have guessed, ratings are not the same as the US. five stars in china basically just means that they have a gym. and by that, the term is used very loosely. one hotel just had a room with one treadmill and an elliptical however, there were others that were very nice with pool and club equivalent equipment. transportation - bus wise, it was solid. AC worked nice since I don't like hot weather. flights within China was all set up as well. sucks that it was coach though since im a 6 footer. but, cant really complain on that too much freedom - here is why ritz recieves such a low rating and where i believe is one of the most important areas. i'd like to say that i have a decent amount of friends and that when i travel somewhere, i'd like to shop for friends and family. i'm assuming that ritx has been around for awhile since they totally control shopping. if you go on their tour, you'll notice that they will only take you to certain places. 2 jade factories, a pearl factory, a silk factory, etc. they hope that you do your shopping here. this is because ritz receives a cut of whatever you buy. i confirmed this with one of our tour guides. one tour guide that took us to the pearl factory, she was basically working for pearl factory. she was pushing one of the ladies in our group to buy a pearl pendant. when the potential buyer asked my mom for her opinion, my mom said it wasn't worth it. what does the tour guide do? she escorted my mom out of the higher end pearl area. and you can confirm the tour guide was making money on the side since she was wearing a pearl ring and necklace, which i doubt your average tour guide in China could afford. The same was true at the jade factories. At one factory, we spent 3 hours there while two ladies made choices on some jade bracelets. I mean, this is fine, but my gripe is when you go to certain historical landmarks and see street vendors, the tour guide will pull you away. While going back to the bus one time, one lady stopped by a street vendor to buy something while we were all on the bus already. She was in our view from the bus. What does the tour guide do? Instead of letting the lady complete the transaction, he gets out of the bus, and goes tells the lady that we need to go. Sheesh.... Five minutes never killed anybody. Another place you will visit is the Friendship Store where the guides will say that they have good prices and everything is set. NOT TRUE on either count. Yes, there are signs everywhere that says prices are set. However, as I mentioned, my group had Chinese speakers, so they wheeled and dealed and got lower prices. One thing you need to ask yourself is this.... Out of all these factories that they take you to where they boast the cheapest prices anywhere, why then are there ONLY tourists? Not one single native Chinese person buying. So, at the end of the trip, all I pretty much ended up buying was tea, which was of course from a tea factory they took us too. Lastly, some tips for the traveler. Beware of the following scams that were encountered by our group: - fakie replacement bill: you're buying something but all you have is a high value bill. you ask them if they can make change and they say yes. you give them the money and they say they actually dont have enough change. they give you back a bill. you go on your merry way and try to buy something with that same bill. unfortunately, the seller tells you the bill is counterfeit. you come back to look for the previous seller but his booth is gone. - foreign currency - you buy something and get change. you try to buy something else with the change elsewhere. only problem is that its from some other country. know what the denominations look like! not being chinese, it all looked the same to us. - switcheroo - buying fruits, whats visible is the nice fruits. they throw stuff into a bag and next thing you know, its all rotten stuff ZOIKS... NO MORE ROOM TO WRITE read more

I recently joined the 17 day Europe tour and it was HORRIBLE!!!. After joining this tour, I have no desire to visit Europe again. Food: HORRIBLE - most of the food that the tour paid for was Chinese food. CHINESE FOOD IN EUROPE. I was expecting to have at least a few "European" meals. We complained about the food and the tour guide told us that we shouldn't complain because the restaurants were chosen by the owner of the tour company (B.S.) Lunch: we mostly ate in the "service station" and the food was nasty. We had to pay $10-$15 for a dish of cold spaghetti. If you think you can eat something else when you get to the hotel, WRONG!!! Hotel: 80% of the hotels that we stayed in were located far from the city. There were no restaurants/shops around the hotel. Most of the hotels were old and some were very dirty. If you had allergy, make sure to bring medicine with you. I was sneezing most of the time because of the dust in the room. In one hotel, I found dried blood on the mattress and my friend found a shoe print on the bed sheet in her room. Lovely, huh... Tour Guide: He was sleeping most of the time in the bus (I saw the bus driver looked at him a few times because he snored.) He was walking so fast that we had to literally chase after him. He did not explain much about the tour spot and he smoked constantly.... Tour Bus: I expected to be in the bus 5-8 hours/day (no surprise.) The bus had no bathroom and it traveled about 2.5-3 hours in between bathroom stops. Tour: A lot of museum, church and river tours (not surprising.) We usually stopped in the tour spot for 1-3 hours... The tour guide often encouraged us to buy in certain shops... maybe for commission.. Who knows..Oh, one important DETAIL that the tour company did not mention. There were additional activities that you would have to pay. Of course, you won't know about them until you joined the tour. You could choose not to join the activities and stayed in the hotel room/on the street. I paid additional $400 for additional activities. With a total of $3500/person, that's what I got... If you decided to try it out, GOOD LUCK and HAVE FUN.... read more

If I can give any negative number to Peony Tours or Ritz Tours, I would not hesitate to do that at all. Customer service sucks. The tour I joined was totally a mess. Food was terrible and hotels were not as what they described on the website. Worst, neither the company nor the tour guide cared about the complaints. Most of their customers are Chinese people so I assume that they just take it for granted -- thinking that Chinese would never complaint. I WOULD NEVER CHOOSE THIS AGENCY AGAIN read more

My wife and I have traveled five times with Ritz/Peony Tours. We enjoyed each trip. Tour guides took a special interest in making the trips meaningful. I was usually the only non-Asian on the tour. Everyone went out of their way to make me feel welcome and a part of the experience. As a surprise, a special detour was taken to allow me to see the homtown of my grandfather in Denmark. That was generous and thoughtful. We are very happy with Ritz/Peony. read more

My husband and I traveled on Ritz Tours in March 2011 to Beijing, Xian and Shanghai (RDX). Suifun in Millbrae assisted in my booking and was so helpful and attentive to all our needs. She was the best! Our first trip to China and I must say was probably one of the best trips we have ever taken. It was our first time going abroad using a Tour Agency, we usually travel independently. The guides were very knowledgeable, and language was not a problem, they all spoke English. I can't say enough about the Tour Guides who took care of everything. The hotel in Beijing, "The New Otani", was a bit dated and need of refurbishing especially the bathrooms. Our hotels in Xian, "The Hyatt Regency" and "The Swissotel", in Shanghai were fabulous and will not disappoint. Our rooms were very modern and spotless. Meals were adequate for a Tour Group but nothing special. Breakfast at the hotels were very good with many choices. I would highly recommend using Ritz Tours and look forward to traveling with them again. read more