We had the pleasure to work with Irene for our 2nd international travel needs, this time to…read moreThailand. Thailand has been on our "bucket list" and being invited to a Thai wedding provided the incentive to make Thailand our next international destination. From the moment we contacted Irene, we knew were would be in good hands (was there any doubt?)! After providing responses to Irene's questionnaire regarding our interests and desires about Thailand (along with several emails, text messages, and phone conversations), she provided an excellent itinerary that included flights, private tours, private drivers to and from airports, superb accommodations, and expert guides. During our 5 nights in Bangkok, Irene curated a centrally located hotel in Bangkok, an informal food tour in Chinatown, and an exceptionally knowledgeable local guide to introduce us to the some of the most historically important temples in Bangkok and Ayutthaya. During our first 4 nights in Chiang Mai, Irene curated a modern-styled hotel minutes away from the legendary Night Market (a must experience). We had the pleasure of touring Chiang Mai and the hills of Doi Inthanon National Park with an experienced and friendly local guide. There is no substitute to having a local guide to provide insights and knowledge about Thai culture, food, and history. Additionally, Irene had arranged a private cooking class where we prepared 7 Northern Thailand dishes, all delicious!! Our last 3 nights were spent at the Onsen at Moncham, a Japanese-themed retreat in the mountains before returning home. Although Irene provided many options for our destinations/events and hotels, our itinerary was completely customizable and ultimately, our choice. Whether you want to experience Thailand on the beaten or unbeaten path, but with comfort, reliability, and service, let Irene at Travel Darlings handle your needs!

Just returned from another extraordinary trip masterfully curated by Irene at Travel Darlings, this…read moretime to the Spanish and French Basque region and Barcelona. Working with an agenda combining golf, architectural touring, fine dining, the arts, and the beachfront, each stop allowing time for shopping and people-watching. Guides with locally based expertise tailored each expedition according to our interests and moods, from a unique vista overlooking San Sebastian to a just-off-the-boat lunch of turbot and sashimi-grade tuna. Our guide for Biarritz presented us with 120 photos highlighting our day of exploration. At the Dali Museum in Figueres, where the artwork is presented with little explanation, our guide provided deep background context, significantly elevating my appreciation of the artist. Irene secured prime time reservations at 3 Michelin starred restaurants including Besta in Barcelona which was the favorite among our group of 4. For lighter specialty fare, we enjoyed pintxos and vermouth in outdoor cafes in Bilbao and San Sebastian, and tapas in Barcelona and Girona. Our stay at The Artist Hotel in Bilbao overlooked the Guggenheim Museum and the river, where a lavish breakfast was served in an open-air setting on the top floor. The hotel featured artistic appointments echoing the style of Gehry and other mid-century masters. Each of the five golf courses combined challenging layouts with views of the surrounding hills and neighboring cities. Highlights included Real Sociedad de Golf de Neguri, aptly called "The Torrey Pines of Bilbao" and Real Club de Golf El Prat in Barcelona, where the huge, sculpted greens provided welcome relief from a profusion of sand traps. The highlight of the trip for me was a Flamenco performance by well-known stars of the craft (and an exceptionally gifted guitar player) at Casa Sors, with a cozy night-club setting inside a guitar museum. Irene provided us with a detailed (and colorful) itinerary, creative suggestions, expert planning, and direct communication throughout the trip which once again added to our confidence at just the right moments!

Highly recommend Quinn Travel. We just returned from a beautiful trip to Ireland and the UK…read more Catherine assisted us with our small group tour and air travel arrangements. The trip was wonderfully relaxing and stress free.

When my dad unexpectedly died during my trip home to Ireland, Catherine was available and extremely…read morehelpful in sorting out the rescheduling of my return to San Francisco.

Ellen/Boutique travel is fantastic. She helped us book our Honeymoon to Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora…read moreBora. She is a pleasure to work with, listens to our wants and needs, and gives you her honest opinion on what is/isnt worth it on the trip. He advice/expertise is unmatched.

I've been using Boutique Travel for over 10 years, and I can't imagine planning a trip without…read morethem. What keeps me coming back is their ability to create truly bespoke experiences. Ellen has an incredible ability to tailor experiences, which makes each trip feel uniquely mine. She always finds the perfect balance by incorporating culinary, cultural, and art experiences that I love, along with athletic and outdoor activities that keep things active and engaging. It never feels one dimensional. I've used BT's services to book trips to Africa numerous times. Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Uganda are just a few examples.. Each destination has offered something completely unique, and Ellen has hit the itineraries right out of the park. Gorilla trekking in Uganda was a once in a lifetime experience, and visiting the Skeleton Coast in Namibia felt like stepping into another world. In Botswana, I was lucky enough to see leopards up close, which is so rare and exciting! I have also vacationed in Tahiti three times, and each time has been magical and different! Most recently, my husband and I just got back from an incredible trip to Rangiroa, and we are already talking about exploring more islands on our next visit. Looking ahead, I am starting to plan a trip to Japan, and I will definitely be working with Boutique Travel again to put together the itinerary. Their attention to detail, creativity, and ability to truly understand what we are looking for makes every trip seamless and unforgettable. Highly recommend!

We cannot thank Amy Tan enough for the truly unforgettable trip she planned for us. This was a…read morelast-minute getaway with some very unique circumstances, and Amy handled everything with such care, thoughtfulness, and expertise. She not only made it all come together seamlessly, but also saved us a few thousand dollars by choosing the perfect hotel and ideal travel dates. From the very beginning, we felt completely taken care of--and that feeling stayed with us the entire trip. What could have been stressful turned into something incredibly special. The experiences she planned were beyond anything we could have imagined. We spent our days laughing, bonding, and trying new things--ziplining through the jungle, ATVing through forests and shallow rivers, and even swimming half a mile through a breathtaking cenote. We saw dolphins and sea turtles, visited a beautiful Mayan village, and enjoyed some of the most authentic and delicious Mexican food we've ever had. There were also so many magical, unexpected moments--like spending time with monkeys and deer, and even spotting a massive wild stingray. Every day felt like something out of a dream. What meant the most to us, though, was how safe we felt the entire time. As someone who is usually a very nervous traveler, I can honestly say I felt completely at ease. Amy created an experience that was adventurous and exciting, yet always grounded in a deep sense of safety and trust. This truly was a trip of a lifetime, and we are so grateful to Amy for making it possible. Her attention to detail, her ability to understand exactly what we needed, and her genuine care for her clients set her apart in every way. We will be talking about this trip for years to come--and we cannot wait to work with her again.

Amy planned an amazing family trip to Europe a few years ago, so of course we had to go back and…read moreask her to help us again! We went to Venice, Florence, Bologna, Milan, and Mykonos. As always, Amy was courteous, professional, quick to respond, and catered the trip around its purpose, which was to celebrate a graduation. She answered all of our questions and concerns. We wanted a more relaxed trip than last time, so we opted to choose our own activities, but asked Amy to help us book them. This time we needed quite a few train tickets to navigate through Italy, and Amy chose great ones. I was stressed about our luggage and how we would watch/store it, etc, but we were able to put all our luggage above our seats and didn't have to worry about anything. Once again, Amy arranged private transfers to/from the airports/hotels for us. All of the hotels were in amazing locations within easy walking distance to great sights and great food. One of the hotels was a bit outdated, butwas built in the 1700s and is probably extremely difficult and expensive to modernize. The location was just down the street from the Duomo though. Honestly, could not get better than that. Overall, trip was so much fun and relaxing. Venice was a sleeper hit. We all wished we had more time there. Taking the vaporetto in was an experience! Very cool and convenient to take it straight to the hotel as well. It was really great to spend more time in Florence and get to wander and see the city. Some of us went to the top of the dome of the Duomo, view was amazing. The climb was intense though! Bologna food tour was incredible!!! Definitely want to go back and eat literally everything. Milan was a good pit stop and we wished we had gotten tickets to see inside the Duomo.  Mykonos was beautiful and the transfer company was great. Super nice and we used them for taxi service as well. Hotel had a free shuttle to and from Mykonos town until 9pm. The catamaran tour was beautiful, amazingly relaxing, and one of the highlights of Greece. It wasn't super windy that day, so it was basically perfect! Only bump was that 2 days before we left we were trying to check in for the flight home and it said there was an issue and talk to the travel agent. I reached out to Amy and we found out that one of the airlines we were using to get home had cancelled the flight without notifying her or us of the change. Definitely not what we wanted to hear right before we needed to fly back. But Amy was fantastic. She told us don't worry, this was why we had an agent, it was her job to worry about everything and that we just needed to enjoy our last day. Amy got back to me pretty quickly (all things considered) and had booked new flights for the 8 of us. And even though we weren't sitting 8 together, she was able to get us seats of 4 and 4 close to each other. It was still a little stressful waiting to see if we were stranded or not, but nothing in comparison to if we'd had to do all of that ourselves. Thank goodness for Amy and travel insurance!!! Another unforgettable trip; THANK YOU, Planet Hoppers.

I have rarely used a travel agent but when telling a friend ( who travels a lot) about taking a…read moreViking river cruise he urged me to talk to David Peltin at Flair Travel. I contacted David and he booked our trip and solved problems that arose. Our air flights were also done by Viking and David found much better connections than what Viking booked. Also , he fixed our seat assignments when my wife and I were put in different rows . I found him to be knowledgeable, professional and respectful. Will definitely use him again. Terry

I had a great experience with David and Flair Travel. They responded quickly, timely and was very…read moreforthcoming with suggestions. While I decided to not use them for my cruise, I will consider them for other travels. Thanks again!

Always great experience. Quick and good service . Day or night, weekend or weekday Pooja is always…read morethere to book your tickets

Pooja is the best travel agent I have worked with. She is very responsive, professional, and a…read morepleasure to work with. When my flight was cancelled, she went above and beyond to help - from reserving seats to working with the airline to make my long layover stress-free. She is an outstanding choice for any travel planning needs. Very strongly recommend.

这次参加了文景假期主办的欧洲9国游，觉得甚是愉快，收获颇丰。在此感谢文景假期旧金山店的谭小姐与导游邵璋先生。read more

I applied for a new visa for China two weeks ago, but still had a reviewing documents message on…read morethe consulates site. My wife and I submitted are applications at the same time but she got her visa a week ago. Very nervous because we have a trip to China planned in three weeks. I found China Travel Services and called to see if they would handle my case since I am going on a domestic trip and would need to have my passport mailed to me in another city. I went to their office, now located in Chinatown SF, and spoke to Apple. She was very understanding and understood my needs. I left my passport with her and she instructed me to contact her when the status changed to submit my passport. Three days later I got the message to submit my passport and immediately contacted Apple. She said they would submit and will mail it to me when returned. One week later it was in the mail and returned to me with a new Chinese visa. Very appreciate the help and would recommend this service.

This is my first ever Yelp review…read more I've known Cadao Tran for about 20 years and I've just recently started using her and Smiles Travel again. For the longest time it was very easy to do most of the airline ticket and Vietnam visas myself. Now, post-COVID it's all become a lot more complicated. With airfares, it's been hit and miss. Last November she got a great price on a trip to Vietnam. On this month's trip I didn't get a bargain, but I didn't pay more either. ( Sometimes she can get special deal with business class !) What I've really appreciated is someone who knows the ins-and-outs of Vietnam travel visas. The new requirements getting a visa are supposed to be friendlier and easier, but I found the e-visa confusing and complicated. I'm much happier just turning the whole process over to her. If you're having any problems with the Vietnam visa process, just call Tran Cadao at Smiles Travel. She's very responsive, very knowledgeable, and very helpful. You can contact her by her cell phone 415-516-0332 Jimmy B

the best travel agent in San Francisco! CaDao is so responsive and quick turn around to get my…read morepartner a visa to Vietnam. She does it with a smile!!!

Rosie did such an amazing job planning our 10 day trip to Slovenia & Croatia. It was filled with…read morethoughtful events, places to see, and things to do. Rosie worked with us to provide the best experience possible based on our interests and nailed it. My wife and I talk about our trip everyday. We will be working with Rosie again!

We had the worst experience with this travel agent, Rosie Allara. We planned our trip to the Middle…read moreEast - Jordan and Dubai. Both my husband and I have very busy schedules, we did not have time to do the planning ourselves, we needed a travel agent to do it for us. We clearly expressed it to Rosie. First red flag was on our first phone call. Our expectation for this call was that the travel agent would spend this call gathering information from us and asking questions about what we wanted this trip to be. Instead, after the initial couple of general questions, she started looking at prices of the hotels on her computer while we were on the phone and telling us what they were. After the first 15 minutes of this, we tried to steer her into what we thought the main purpose of the call was, but she would jump from one topic to the next and to the other and then back to looking at hotel prices again. It felt like she could not organize her thought process. Finally, after 45 minutes of being on the phone and being exhausted from a lot of jumping around and not being able to communicate to the agent in the organized manner, we decided to end the call with the agreement that we would communicate by email. Rosie started looking for the airfair for us. Her prices were very high and the flights she kept offering were at a very inconvenient hours - in the middle of the night or very early in the morning or with very long layovers that would make the flight unnecessarily long. We explained to her that we prefer more comfortable times and flights since it was going to be our vacation. That did not change anything. After a lot of back and forth, we felt a lot of stress and pressure where she would say that there was nothing else she could find from her wholesaler. Feeling between the rock and a hard place, we ended up going on-line and looking for tickets ourselves. We found a very good price on Priceline, 35% less expensive that her price with comfortable hours and flights. We told her and she was OK with us purchasing the tickets on our own. Now, we thought that the rest of the trip - hotels and organizing the itinerary would be fun and easy. Boy, were we mistaken. Rosie gave us an approximate/1st draft itinerary with some hotel suggestions. Being first time to the Middle East, we had questions about the itinerary and we did not like some of the hotels that she proposed. It would take her several days to respond to each email, and in her response she would ignore half of our questions. We had to send follow up emails, she would not respond for several days, then respond with half of the answers again. That was about the itinerary. When we asked for restaurant recommendations, entertainment recommendations, walkable streets where we could walk around in the evening, she would not know the answers at all. Her answer was "The information that I have is old and outdated, you can get this information from your hotel." Really? isn't it your job, as a travel agent, to have an updated information? Isn't this why we needed a travel agent so we don't have to scramble for this information when we are in a foreign country, not speaking the language. It was back and forth, we were running out of time, it was getting close to our trip time, we were not making any progress. She would not care about our time, she did not care about the information that we asked for. After 1.5 months, we felt that we did not accomplish anything, we did not get passed that first draft of the itinerary and unsuitable hotel recommendations. She did not complete a single thing for our trip. The only item that we had after working with Rosie for 1.5 months was the plain tickets that we purchased on our own. After depleting all our patience and being completely stressed out, we had to find another travel agent. Fortunately, he did a great job for us and we ended up having a great trip. As far as Rosie is concerned, even though she did not get anything done for our trip, she refused to refund the $300 fee that we paid her to prepare our trip. We believe that Rosie is completely disorganized and lacks knowledge in the travel industry. She indeed has outdated information from the time when she travelled to the Middle East herself 10 years ago. Even bigger problem is that she is not willing to do a new research and provide her clients with the new, updated information. If she is not interested in updating herself and all she does is re-use the same information year after year after year, she should not be in a travel industry that is constantly changing. In our case, we asked for a new information (like anybody else would), she just ignored us, did not respond to our emails, dragged her feet, ignored our questions, and wasted our time hoping that we would just go with it. Awful experience!

We used Travel Wizards for our trip to Easter Island/Rapa Nui off the coast of Chile. It was an…read moreamazing trip and the moai are amazing. Travel Wizards found us an amazing tour guide.

What an incredible trip! Two weeks exploring New Zealand with tours, professional guides, first…read moreclass hotels & car service. It was our "bucket list" tour & did not disappoint in any way! Our agent was knowledgeable & had many terrific suggestions. She accommodated our personal requests & made sure arrangements were confirmed. We're ready to book with Travel Wizards again right now