Hi, I'm new to this board and was thinking of using SWAIN tours to help plan my trip to Australia and NZ. However, I read somewhere here in the forum that they had gone bankrupt a couple of years ago. Has anyone recently used them and would it be safe to use them now?
Thanks in advance

Swain is planning a tour for us thru a TA at the moment. So we're reasonably certain they're still in business.

Have seen a bunch of their ads in local newspapers...but that could be because they've increased their ad budget due to possible financial difficulties; drumming up additional business, etc. Don't really know if that's true or not. Just speculation.

But. would really like to know your evaluation once they've helped w/your planned trip to OZ & NZ.

I used Swain to book my flights LAX-Fiji-NZ-Australia. Booked late 2004 and flew mid-2005. No problems.

Thank you guys for your replies.
Did you use SWAIN only for booking flights or did they also help you with the itineray/activities and accomodation?

I used Swain only to for flights. I had my itinerary (basically) all set when I contacted them. I'm a travel research junkie

But I actually did use their website to help brainstorm my itinerary. Their tour & itinerary descriptions gave me a great idea of what was possible and a starting point to allocate my time.