Great Value Vacations - NOT
 

I have read some great reviews of GVV and I wish we had the same experience. Our trip was Dublin, London, Paris.
Dublin - nice hotel 45minutes outside of town!!! And our room overlooked the service parking lot. Needless to say a lot of time spent on the Luas tram in transit.
London - decent hotel and good location with helpful staff. However due to conflicting information between our official itinerary and our travel vouchers we received from GVV, our London stay was cut short, missed train to Paris and but for the kindness of an employee at Eurostar, we would have had to shell out an additional $600 out of pocket for new tickets. She even called GVV herself after reading my travel docs and was so angered by the response she got, she got us new tickets at no cost!

Paris - 3 star hotel in a bad part of town 30 minutes out of center city. Scared walk to and from metro for transit.


Lesson - You get what you pay for

Sorry you had a bad experience, but surely you were aware of the hotel's location when you booked this tour?

Who is GOV? Never heard of them.

People do get what they pay for, was this a surprise to you?

Tours give ideas of hotel locations and the tours I've taken always gave you a couple choices which were likely to be the hotel picked. There were no surprises. Why would someone even book a tour without having any idea where the hotel was? GVV gives you names of hotels, also, "or similar". Now if they gave you the name of a 4* hotel in the dead center of Dublin and then switched you to a 2-3* 45 minutes out, yes, I would complain, but we don't know that they did that.

I took a tour to Dublin once and the hotel probably was about 45 minutes outside of town, maybe not that far. But it was on a major bus line into the city center and a nice hotel, it didn't bother me at all and I didn't gripe about it nor complain on message boards. I was young then and just starting to travel so everything seemed exciting to me. It was closer to the airport, as I recall, and it was interesting as I was there during the tail-end of a hurricane so the hotel was being used to evacuate local residents (must have been higher or something), so the lobby was full of local residents that morning. I was lucky as the side of the hotel my room was on was away from the wind, the rooms on the other side had water coming in the windows. Was quite a travel story.

Who cares if your hotel room looks over a parking lot, geez. how picky, some rooms have to, after all. Who cares, you are mainly there at night anyway.

In Paris, being "30 minutes" out of city center isn't that bad, I stay in areas like that because I want to, actually.

This sounds more like a travel agent than a tour company.

This is why I plan all our trips. That way if anything screws up, Tracy, Kim and Mary can vent their anger immediately and directly at the person responsible.

((H))

This sounds like the company provided an independent travel package. I used to use a travel company that did the same and I was able to pick the hotel from a list. Most hotel locations were out of the way. The condition of the more central located ones were maybe 2-3 stars and fine for our needs. We were traveling cheap so didn't mind and sometimes were nicely surprised with what we got. I was able to research them before booking. Were you not able to do the same?

One of the hallmarks of cheap tour companies is using hotels in the suburbs.

juju

Thanks for posting, I've not used a tour company for so many years it is hard to imagine but a real eye opener for me.

Great that Eurostar pulled your nuts out of the fire, there are nice people in the world and it is good when you run into them, I hope you dropped them a nice note on tripadvisor or similar. :-)

GVV, don't know, had a quick look and didn't like the website (I know I'm fussy) but I couldn't find a "who we are" tab. What I do like is that they "hand pick" the hotel, so I guess that is wonderful to know ;-)

Before I book any tour I look up the hotels on the internet and find out where they are. That way I can decide if I want this particular tour or not.
If I know I might have to take public transportation to get to the center of town I will look for another tour with closer hotels. Most of the time on the cheaper tours you get at least one out of town but not always if you look hard enough.

what was this to be avoided 30 min away from center area in paris ?

according to brochure

3 nights in Paris at Hotel ibis Paris Gare du Nord Chateau Landon or similar

Sorry, but the whole hotel location thing is not, IME, peculiar to so-called "cheap" tour operators unless you think outfits like Globus and Trafalgar are "cheap."