Turkish Heritage Travel - tour operator?
 

Hi all,

Hjas anyone used this tour operator for Turkey?

they are charging me around 665 Euros per person for flights from istanbul to cappodochia, ephesus...hotels in Ephesus and Cappodochia plus tours to Ephesus, Cappodochia and Pammukale....(group tours).

is thi sreasonable? the 140Euro balloon ride is separate...per person...

We are a group of 8 and I thought this would be an easier way to go with a tour to each places - it also includes shuttle transfers from airports to hotels....

Or is it easily done on my own? Maybe i can get just hte flights and hotels (they are cheaper than online quotes) booked through them? And they say the 140E balloon ride is for a reputed company.....

pls help...thanks!

I dont know who you are going with but do NOT travel w/ Bora Ozkok Cultural Tours. I did and I was not at all happy.

We did not see what was promised....some thing due to weather but mostly due to bad planning on the leaders part. And there were room mix up, and bad hotels etc etc.

I have done a ton of tours w/ many other companies and was always very happy with them.....and like the bus/coach way of seeing a country....but my Turkey tour was very disappointing.

I think I paid about $275 for my balloon ride and that was several years ago.

I found it easy to travel around Turkey on my own, but I traveled solo and I'm sure that's much different. You might find some useful information in my trip report - just click on my name to find it.

It's a wonderful country - enjoy!

That is about $865.00. If they do everything and do it really well, then perhaps OK. How many nights in each place?

Guess you will have to add it up to see. Our costs were (aprox. . . ):
$110.00 RT pp Turkish air, Ist to Cap
$70.00 PP hotel in Cap - Urgup really luxury suite. (3nts)
$10.00 pp shuttle airport
$25.00 pp private driver for day of touring.
*The total was $50.00 and would have been the same if there had been four people, so only $12.50 pp then.

$165.00 PP Buttterly Balloons. Have to double check that - may have been more - or less. I may not be remembering quite right. They were the most expensive, but I used this company because their owner/pilot has a perfect safety record, and they use different launch sites, depending on weather. The flight was a bit longer than I thought, which was nice. They counted only the time actually in the air.

$12.00 PP Entire day tour in van with 8 people from Kusadasi to Ephesus, Mary's house, caves, etc. We paid our own entrance fees, no actual tour.

If you want to let a tour agent plan and book this for you, there is a person highly recomended by others here. He is named Murat. Maybe someone can give you a link. Due to timing, I ended up booking for myself, but he was very helpful anyway.

It was per night in Cap.

Also, realized that including your balloon flight, your cost would come to over $1,050.00 pp. Now it is getting high.

yeah it sounds ridiculous to my own ears....ok i'll check out Murat - if anyoneknows his email id please let me know...thank you!

did you go there and rent your private driver? did you find you needed a guide there for ephesus/pammukale/cappo or not really? i can use a guide book and do the hikes etc on my own in cappo right?

and how did you get your flights? i heard internal flights being booked by an agent in turkey is cheaper?

There are some funny rules about booking Turkish air from another country. I don't remember off hand, but know it was through a TA agent, not a regular travel agent.

I booked the flight to Cappo, the hotel and the balloon flight from the states. The hotel arranged the shuttle and private drivers, and taxis when we got there. When we got to the underground city, we booked an on-site guide right there - cheap as I recall. We bought a guide book for the outdoor museum and walked around outselves. You can do the hikes on your own, but you need transport to get to the valleys. After the underground city, our driver dropped us off for a couple of hours at one of the valleys to see the sun set. We are not hikers though. I think the hotel would have booked the Balloon for us also. We got some kind of discount for paying ahead or cash or something like that. Sorry, it was a year ago and I didn't make notes.

For a group your size, you might want to rent a couple of cars and drive yourselves around. Driving looks really easy there - decent roads and little traffic. With only two of us, it was simpler to have a driver each day.

You don't have to have a guide for Ephesus. We bought a good guide book at the entrance instead, but I think one of the tours would be wonderful. You can hire a guide right at the entrance. Since you will be a group, it shouldn't be too much pp. We listened to some for a little bit. They all seemed very good.

I've not been to Pammukale.

About Murat.
Look up the old thread started by MikeBuckley on Reasons you should consider doing business with Murat and Esbelli Evi. It has more info and address links.

excellent i have contacted Murat thank you so much

My DH and I used Heritage Tours for all our tours and balloon flight (they use Butterfly Balloons) in Cappodocia. We stayed at the Kelebek hotel In Goreme (loves the hotel). I had booked the air from IST and the hotel on my own. I believe the owner of the Kelebek is one of the partners in Heritage Travel. I thought the tours were a very good value (about $50 pp) as they included lunch and all admissions plus our own guide. We love self touring, but there is so much history regarding the Cappodocia area that if we had not had a guide, we would have missed a lot of info. There were never more than 8 in our van.

got it...thanks so much! i enjoy self touring more...hate being carted around and rushed but like you saidthere seems to be a lot of history and i don't want us to miss that....

maybe for Cappo we can do the tour and Ephesus and for pamukkale do that on our own....our tours are working out to be 50 Euros which is expensive per person in dollars...

Air from IST - who is that? is that an agent in Turkey? You didn't book through heritage?

No, I booked my flights directly through Turkish Air and Pegasus Air. We left IST on Turkish Air's first morning flight because that was the least expensive. Worked out great because we arrived at the hotel by 10A. The hotel had made the arrangements for the transfer. The Kelebek offered us breakfast (no cost) because we arrived early. Then we walked to the Outdoor Museum in Goreme and toured it on our own. It was at that point that we realized that a private guide would give us much more info than being on our own.

In Istanbul we toured everything on our own. We bought a museum pass from our hotel. We did, however read and take Fodor's and Rick Steve's books on Istanbul. Never felt a need for a guide in Istanbul.

One other thought, although I had to buy the air tickets when I booked them on the airline's websites, I did not prepay the hotels or the tours (did guarantee with a credit card). All the hotels and tour companies discounted if I paid in cash ( Euro or US dollars). I just converted the Euro to USD and took that in cash. It saved about 10% over all

perfect thanks for your help!

Travel04, when you are all done with your planning, will you let us know how it all works out, which agent (if any), hotels, etc.? This is such a big job you are doing. Your friends owe you big time.

I think it's definitely worth checking out the cost of flights and maybe booking them yourself.

From Istanbul to Nevsehir with Turkish Airlines:
http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/
Or from Istanbul to Kayseri with Turkish or Pegasus:
http://www.flypgs.com/en/default.aspx

From Kayseri to Izmir with Pegasus or SunExpress:
http://www.sunexpress.com/en

Thanks folks - Sassafrass - yes will do :)
I actually LOVE planning/researching and traveling. I'm trying to make it my career - i just don't know how yet :) But yes it's a big time consuming job for sure.

Thanks Croesus i will check it out - i checked a couple of airlines and the agent's prices are cheaper. But i will check directly with the turkish airlines.