Post Southern Charms Review
We have taken one Tauck eight-day tour (Savannah/Hilton Head/Charleston) and based on that experience would not recommend the trip for the following reasons:
- It was expensive. We paid $5,589 PP. If you booked this yourself, it’s only ~$3,165 PP. This means you are paying almost twice as much for the same experience (of course you don’t’ get a tour guide, but everything else would be the same).
- The experiences were “nothing special”. We could have booked any of them on the internet.
- The food was mostly “OK” with one meal being superb (45 Bistro) and one meal being inedible (Westin Hilton Head).
- Tauck also charges a lot for some extras – we booked an extra day at the hotel and were charged $298.50 (the single person rate) times 2 (since there were two of us) for a total of $597. The published rate for our room was $383.
Some minor things went wrong – we didn’t get our “welcome package” until the second day. The Westin Hotel in Hilton Head was a disaster – no water pressure, clogged toilets, no service, bad views, expensive drinks and inedible meals, thankfully only one night. This seems like a really strange overnight to sandwich in between Savannah and Charleston, but overall the transfers worked well and the other hotels were acceptable.
If you’re considering tours in general, I’d urge you to think about the logistics: You are being “programmed” and in order to get the most out of the tour, you need to be up in the morning and stick with the group. This is not a criticism of Tauck – this is simply the style of travel they provide. If you’ve never watched the movie, “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium”, please do so prior to booking. Sure, its satire, but there’s a lot of truth there. You may also miss some things that are important to you. I skipped the plantation tour because I wanted to see the Patriots Point museum in Charleston which was not on the Tauk tour. If you do decide you’re a “tour person”, check out the competition. A similar tour from them would have been $3,099 PP.
Both Savannah and Charleston are fantastic destinations! We had great weather – people kept telling us we had come at the best time (April) and that it would be 100 degrees and 100% humidity in a week or two. Overall, the trip was “nice” and the few gaffs forgivable, but for the price we were expecting a more premium feel and a more “special” experience.
Net-net, do your homework and make sure this type of travel is really “for you” and read the fine print if you decide to book extras through Tauck.
Comments
Hi Richard, I feel your pain about the sticker shock. My husband and I were shaking our heads because we got the email announcement about the Rose Parade celebration trip at the end of this year for the New Year, and the tour is listed at over $7,000 per person for a whopping 4 nights (Rose Bowl game tickets not included). (We live in the neighborhood and we were joking that we could do it for $3,000!) While I am certain everyone will have a wonderful time, the price is astounding.
I appreciate your honest review of your trip. We have taken 9 Tauck trips and enjoyed them all, but none have been American trips. I seem to read more negative reviews about the American trips.
Regarding group travel, I'm sorry you had to figure out that you are not a group-tour traveler the hard way. You are correct that it is not for everyone, but I'm sure there are companies that offer a less-structured experience if you are interested. We appreciate Tauck for the customer service, overall quality of the tours, their experience, tour directors, and their agility on the ground. We like that our fellow travelers have been enthusiastic, energetic, and generally very interesting people. We have not had any issues being able to add on experiences on our own, either before or after, or during the trip when there is free time. You can't do everything in one trip, anyway.
Best of luck in your future travels!
Wan, That was explained perfectly. I wholeheartedly agree.
Most of our tours with Tauck are overseas, but we have taken some of the US ones. They are very expensive compared to foreign tours with them , Both Savannah and Charleston can easily be done on your own. The most recent time in Charleston, our second time, we took a road trip over two days to get there. We realized that Tauck misses out prime places . If we are going somewhere in the US, we use Tauck itineraries for ideas. Some of their tours however are far more convenient than taking them yourself, such as the family Canyonlands one we took last year. Nine of us. Sometimes, having to be ready to go at a set time saves waiting around waiting for others to organized themselves. Exotic places abroad, we could not do without being on a tour.
When you book an extra night at the start hotel, you often don’t get your welcome pack until the next day. Of coarse, once you taken one trip with Tauck, that extra night is always free.
Tauck very rarely offers ‘extras’ apart from pre and post stay hotels. You have to remember transportation and breakfast is included with those rates.
We have taken both international and domestic tours with Tauck. In general, I think that the domestic ones are primarily for people who can't or don't want to drive themselves. They tend to get an older crowd, probably for this reason. We were going to take the Tauck Michigan tour, but couldn't make it work due to plane schedules and the unavailability of a pretrip GOT day. So we used Tauck as a guide and we were better off doing it ourselves. The exceptions to this are if there is a special activity you just can't do yourself or if there are hotels that are hard to book on your own (I'm thinking of the National Park lodges). I look at the itineraries for California, where I grew up, and think, "Wow, you miss so much on a Tauck California tours."
Ken - Every ‘local’ anywhere in the world, I believe, would make the same statement about a Tauck tour of their area - “Wow, you miss so much on a TBD tour”.
Any one to two week tour can never provide much of an in-depth and full coverage of any area, unless the area is so limited. Perhaps a one/two week tour of the Louvre might allow one to get the ‘in-depth and full coverage’ experience.