Hi All.. Would like some feedback about Smartours if any of you have booked with them. A friend is interested in a New Zealand tour they are offering at a really great price . . . 13 days for about $1700 including air from L.A. Sounds too good to be true, but there's a $600 per couple discount for early booking by Oct. 15th. Are they reputable and are the tours good? Appreciate any thing you can tell me about them. Thanks.

Yes, I used them once to go to Asia, and I had no complaints, no problems whatever. The great thing was that everyone in the particular group we were with were very experienced travelers-most had been all over the world-there were also a number of repeat Smartours travelers. We had a great time together.

You might want to go over to the Asia board, and do a search there for additional Smartours comments. I think you'll be quite pleased with them.

Savannah-if you go over to the Asia board there's a topped thread "Thailand Journal" -which is a trip report on Smartours.

Thank you for the replies about Smartours. Sounds like they might be pretty good. I'll check out the Asia board and see what else I can find out about them. Thanks again..

I am definitely not a tour person and I've gone on two SmarTours . . . one to Vietnam/Cambodia . . . it was so outstanding that I booked their India/Nepal and it was just as good.

I normally prefer to make all my own plans and was afraid that on a tour, that I would be stuck with a lot of whiners, complainers, and people who were either too old or two lazy to make their own arrangements. Big surprise! Everyone on the VN trip was GREAT! They had all travelled a lot, were extremely interesting, never late, never complained, it was a charming and charmed group.

Our guides were outstanding, we stayed in wonderful deluxe hotels, I could not come even close to doing this trip on my own (and I'm cheap . . . uh frugal). I was so impressed that I immediately booked the India trip and it was just the same . . . outstanding.

It's not easy or pleasant trying to deal with the SmarTour employees, they are brusque, unhelpful, give you almost no information, and border on rude . . . you just have to book the trip on faith and the feedback from their customers. The price is so cheap, even if you just use them for the transportation and hotels and ditch the tours, you'd still come out 'way ahead. That's what we had planned to do but our companions were so much fun and so great that we stayed with the group. We still correspond with some of them and it's been about 4 years now.

I would book with them again but I have already been everyplace they go.

Hope this helps,
Sandy (in Denton)

googled SmarTours & found this-
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/smartours.html
Sounds off-putting!

The web site had interesting info - but without knowing the details its hard to judge.

There was obviously something missing from the first complaint - no one would be removed from a tour for no reason - as the complainant asserted - every tour company on the face of the earth goes as far as posible to retain passengers.

As far as the second, its not entirely clear who/how the air fare was purchased - which would obviously affect options once a storm had caused cancellation of the original flight.

Don;t misunderstand - I'm not an apologist for Smartours - just a little cynical about complaints that seem so egregious.

Thanks to all of you. It does sound as though Smartours is O.K. I think the price of apprx. $1700 from L.A. to New Zealand includng air fare is very reasonable. My friend needs to find out if she is on her own getting a fare to L.A. from Chicago or if there's an add-on fare available. Based on what you said about booking the trip and the attitude of the employees, it will be interesting to see what she comes up against tomorrow when she calls them. Anyway, thanks again for the good info.