ritz tours
Feb 13th, 2001 | 06:45 PM
#3
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Carol, <BR> <BR>Ignore the idiot who wrote above. I am also planning a trip to China. I have backpacked all over Europe without tours but on the advise of others have been looking at tour companys for China. I have heard of Ritz and would also like to know any information that you might find out. <BR> <BR>Pete
Feb 19th, 2001 | 12:12 PM
#4
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Hi Carol-- <BR>I went on a 14-dayish tour of China with Ritz Tours about 3 yrs ago with my parents (I'm about 30, they're in their early 60s). Normally, I'm not a package tour type, but my parents didn't want to deal w/ the hassle of arranging tours, hotels, etc, so take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish. In general, the hotels were excellent (Peking being a bit of the exception, if I recall correctly, it was the Nikko?), nicer than I would have stayed in if I'd been travelling on my own. The food ranged from mediocre to excellent (I'll guess that's par for the course for this type of thing). There was one guide who led the trip and was responsible for coordination of daily events, getting from place to place, etc; and individual city guides, who were generally excellent. A couple of caveats: as with most guided tours, there were daily shopping stops, prob w/ some type of kickback to the guide/driver--personally, these weren't of great interest to me (conversely, in front of the open air market at Xian, where I found some amazing batiks, we were hurried along for fear we'd miss our next activity). The tour covered a lot(!) of ground in 2 wks, maybe 9 or 10 cities in all--since everything's planned out, you maximize your touring time, but I thought we skipped a lot of potentially interesting sites. (We were the only people on the tour who actually had a China guidebook, though, so maybe no one noticed!) The tour group was primarily composed of ethnic Chinese--this was fine for me personally, as I fall into this category; I think the lone Caucasian couple (elderly, not that mobile to boot) was not so comfortable. The tours were in English and Mandarin Chinese. The age range on the tour was from about 22 to 70's, more younger people on a shorter tour that we joined up with at times (also run by Ritz). It's worth finding out how many people will be on the tour--ours was relatively uncrowded (10 people, maybe?), the shorter tour had maybe 20-30 people. Arrangements at our final stop, in Hong Kong, where our trip guide did not accompany us, were a mess, necessitating multiple letters requesting a refund for hotel room fees (actually, I remember threatening them with the loss of repeat business--from my parents, at least; maybe this posting is their just desserts). Bottom line, if you're willing to accept the limitations of a guided tour in return for the conveniences, I think they did a pretty good, though far from amazing, job. I think you'll get more for your money hotel-wise, and probably tour-wise, than perhaps on your own--I remember reading that it may actually be pretty difficult to get guide services otherwise, as trained guides are rationed out to large groups first. However, if you want to do more than see the sights, you won't necessarily get anything close to the true flavor of how people live--for myself, I would get up in the mornings at about 5 or 6 AM (just happened, with the jet lag, then I got to liking it) and walk the streets, wander around the market, etc--have some of my best pix and memories from these jaunts. Hope this helps...
Mar 11th, 2001 | 08:48 PM
#6
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I'm leaving on Fri on a 14 day China tour on Ritz---- I'll let ya know.. (I did ask when I booked if the our group would be joined by other groups and was assured that that would not happen--- so gpi's message is of interest to me...but three years, lots can change)
