Smartours and Friendly Planet Travel
 

Has anyone taken a trip to India and Nepal with Smartours or Friendly Planet Travel? We found their tour itinerary the same and also the same price.

Any help appreciated.

Just found your message. after we arrived in Denmark) We took a trip to India/Nepal with smartours a few years ago and it was great. Friendly Planet and smartours seem to be the same company now, Just took a trip with FriendlyPlanet which wound up being smartours(they gave us smartours luggage tags and buttons to replace our Friendly Planet ones when we arrived in Denmark

Samrt tours and Friendly Planet both sell Kompas tours.

My husband and I are planning on going to Borneo next spring or summer (April -July 2006) and I noticed that smartours and friendly planet seem to offer the same packages. Does anyone have any suggestions on one company over the other? We also plan to take our daughters ages 12 & 5, any recommendations/suggestions?
My husband and his father did use smartours to travel to India and Nepal in November of 1998 and they were very pleased with their trip.

Just posted a reply but I don't know where it went!! I'll try again.
Smar and Friendly Planet are "sister companies". One operates on the east coast and one on the west. Their tours are a combination of people booking through both companies. We went on their African Wildlife Safari (and Tanzania extention)this past January. We were so impressed with them that we are going to South America this January (16 day) and will be booking several others when they are available. Several of the people on our tour had used this company before and not one had a bad thing to say about them. Have a great time.
Nancy

Thanks Nancy. We used smartours in July 1999 on their 17 or 19 (?) day China/Yangtze River Cruise and ended up on the same river boat with the same cabins/dinners/sightseeing excursions for 6 nights as people who had paid almost 3 times more to another tour group. Needless to say, we were very pleased with smartours.

Friendly Planet has a much better website and I wasn't sure if they were involved with smartours.

Thanks again. Todd

I went with Smartours to Scandinavia and St. Petersburg this June and it was a wonderful trip. I was so impressed with Smartours. We had a number of people on our tour who had signed up through Friendly Planet.

There were also a lot of people in the group who had taken multiple tours with Smartours before. They all had only positive things to say, including a a number of them who had been on the India/Nepal trip and loved it. We actually just booked the Smartours trip to South America for next year and I am really looking forward to travelling with them again.

I just used Smart tours for Croaia, and it was a good trip. A lot of the people had traveled with Smart Tours/ Friendly planet mulitple times.

Has anyone taken their Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand trip? I have booked that trip with F Planet next spring.......

Friendly Planet sells smarTours trips -- FP is located in Pennsylvania and smarTours is in New York City. I've used both for a total of 8 trips...main difference I've found is in how you make payment. Obviously I think they give good value for what it costs.