Ok, everyone trashes China Tour Companies and their industry. But there must be someone out there who has had a GOOD experience with a tour company. We want a private tour next November and need a recommendation on a GOOD china company you have booked a tour with.HELP!

This question gets asked with some frequency. I'd suggest you choose China from the drop-down menu above, and skim through the posts to see which agencies get good reviews.

www.ctrip.com #1 provider locally

ctrip is not a tour company, but a portal for booking internal China flights and hotels.

Had a great trip organized by China Advocates in San Francisco, China specialists.

Friends raved about their private China tour experience with Explorient.

Touring in China is very hit and miss. We live here and travel a lot in China and have plans to continue traveling hopefully for years to come but honestly, the tour agencies generally are lacking, from our experiences.

We do a lot of independent travel, and a lot of our experiences have been with local scientists earning some extra dough and they have been absolutely GREAT travel experiences. But we generally head to remote nature reserves and wilderness areas that few if any travel outfits in China even know about...

HEre is our blog which will give you an idea:

http://cokesmithphototravel.com/Our_...Adventure.html


But when you hook up with a travel agency, wow - getting a good guide and experience is generally the exception to the rule. But we have had a few good guides that have been flexible and accommodating from time to time, and we tip them well! ;-)But they are very rare and have generally spent time in western countries and know what they are doing...

I think the more specific you can be about your needs and expectations ahead of time, you can have a better chance. If you don't want to stop at every single jade and tea shop for the mandatory 30 minute stay, be VERY clear that you will not tolerate that... This is common in many Chinese tours and they really will not allow you to leave the tea shop early... Just be very clear about your expectations and what you want to see and do. Be clear about food too - so much of the food in China is simply awful and the choice of the restaurant can be very important. Good Chinese food in China is extremely rare but it can be found. (We are not picky eaters at all - but seriously so much of the food here is slop)

And doing some direct searching with outfits in the cities you wish to visit rather than a national site may be worth some effort. There are many local travel vendors now who know their areas very well and would be more willing to work with you more so than the national travel agencies which are basically massive wholesalers and have little to nothing to do with the ultimate product...You can easily arrange all of your internal flights yourself and arrange for specific tours of the various destinations your research tells you are interesting and worth a visit.

I generally have each of my days mapped out with goals and destinations and send that to several local agents and see how each responds. You can generally tell pretty quickly which ones will work with you and which ones are lemons... IF they come back with a canned tour that looks nothing like what you requested, you know what to do...

Best of luck!

You might want to check with Ritz Tour, very popular among Asian travellers, but if you want private custom shouldn't matter.
http://www.ritztours.com/OtherPages/ContactUs.aspx

looking for china tour operator who has interest sending clients to maldives

Hi Confusedtravellady,

I'm Fodor's Shanghai correspondent. I agree it can be very hard to find a proper tour operator that doesn't drag you around to a million shops and then feed you slop. What exactly are you interested in seeing? How long are you here for? How much do you want to spend?

firaq, you would want a specialty agent for the Maldives, not someone who conducts tour to China.

Sophie, you've responded to a thread that is more than a year old. I expect that confusedtravellady has already gone on her trip.