Frank: I live in Charleston and have worked in the hotel industry around the country for many years and totally feel your pain. The hotel you were switched to is most definitely NOT on the same level as the Renaissance! That hotel was formerly a Sheraton (and a bad one at that) and the flag was yanked..for good reason...so the fact that they felt it was in the same league as the Renaissance is beyond my imagination.

While in the hotel biz, I was responsible for tour groups and had to at times shut down their inventory and relocate ("walk") them to another hotel and we ALWAYS sent the guests to the same level if not better hotel and also gave a letter to the tour company with our apologies to give to their guests. It is a shame the same was not made available to you.

I do hope you will visit Charleston one day and please feel free to email me with any questions.

To those of you who are against organized tours--you act like the airline YOU booked has never had a snafu or the hotel YOU booked did not have your reservation or the limo YOU ordered did not arrive--give me a break!!

Well actually Fairhope, honestly my self-booked flights and hotels (~30 trips internationally to date) never have made a mistake yet (knock wood).

For OzarksBill...I will email you privately about our SA tour and the others we took with GCT. I'm still working on my journal...want to hear about your tours, too.

Just a follow-up to my original post. Sometimes you can "Fight City Hall or in this case "Collette Vacations". As a result of the bait and switch I described in my original post, we were out $186 for the Cancellation Insurance we paid to Collette and an additional $200 in Airfare cancellation fees.

I contacted the USTOA (U.S. Tour Operators Association) and as a result of their intervention I was refunded the $186 of insurance money but not the air cancellation fees we incurred. Collette claimed that since I had made my own air arrangements they were therefore not responsible.

I than contacted the Rhode Island Attorney General's office and as a result of their intervention I received a $200 check from Collette to cover the air cancellation charges.

Just goes to show you don't have to roll over and play dead, as some of the respondents to my original post indicated. If you feel you have a strong case it's worth fighting for and maybe it will make the tour companies think twice about their practices.

Just thought this was valuable information to pass on.

Great news, thank you Frank for posting, I'll print this for future reference... just in case!

By the way, had a Switzerland tour with Globus, the same thing happened: shoulder season, we got upgraded in Zermatt. So it's not always bad.

Having taken many escorted tours, I can tell you that your experience seems to me to be an exception.

I don't know about 'Colette Vacations', but posting your experience here may help others avoid that problem. This shows the value of Fodors' talk board.

Of course if you have a bad experience it colors your feelings about a certain tour. We are back from another very successful Grand Circle tour (see Back from Central Europe) and once again appreciated the educational and cultural aspects built into our trip.
ozarksbill

Perhaps "bait and switch" in regard to hotels is a common practice of Collette Vacations? "Substituting" another hotel means providing a different hotel of equal quality. It does not mean charging for a high quality hotel but providing an inferior quality hotel, as Collete does.

On a trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in April 2004, Collette Vacations advertised that the hotel would be the Strasburg Inn in downtown Strasburg. However, with no advance notice, Collette changed the hotel to the inferior Holiday Inn on route 30/Greenfield Road in Lancaster. The Holiday Inn is not within walking distance of anything, was dirty, and had bugs in the breakfast foods that were reheated, to be served over and over again. (The tour bus driver and the tour director were excellent.)

On a trip to Innsbruck, Austria, which was to begin on November 28, 2005, Collette Vacations advertised that the hotel would be the Grauer Bar. However, a week or two prior to departure, Collette changed the hotel to the inferior Hotel Maximilian. My personal visit to the Grauer Bar confirmed that the Hotel Maximilian does not even come close to the Grauer Bar in quality. (The tour bus driver never washed the windows on the bus, and the tour director was awful--he appeared a day later than scheduled and was totally confused throughout most of the tour.)

In the past, Collette was a very good company with which to do business. However, it appears that the "younger" generation that now manages Collette is more interested in the almighty dollar than in customer service.

Really happy for you, Frank! So glad that things worked out for you in the end ...

You know, aside from reading the small print and all of that, I think this really comes down to a question of good customer service vs bad.
OK, so you booked this tour on the assumption that the hotels advertised would be the ones you stayed in.
The company has this policy that they can switch hotels if the advertised hotel is not available.
What Collette should have done is to contact you immediately upon finding out that the hotel advertised was not available and given you a list of potential properties to review and settle on.
We toured in Egypt this past September and the cruise ship originally booked on was not available, the tour company Rep emailed me right away to let me know and send a detailed description of the ship they were offering as a substitute, though it wasn't quite as appealing as the original ship, I liked feeling empowered to make that choice. If I had felt like it I could have had her suggest a few other ships and if additional costs were involved then made the determination whether or not to upgrade.
If Collette had been proactive and informative, they could have had a happy customer (I believe a lot of people will be understanding if things on a tour aren't exactly as planned provided they know and are enabled to make choices) they key is communication and obviously Collette did a lousy job.