This year Tauck celebrated its 100th anniversary. If they don’t get their act together and offer their customers better value for the money, this anniversary may well be their last! Below we have cited some of the highlights (indeed, the lowlights) of our recent trip with Tauck to the shores of Eastern Canada in September, 2025.
The two Tauck tour directors, Danielle and Tristan, while friendly and cheerful, were casual and uncertain in their leadership roles.
They didn’t understand the needs and wants of those of us on the tour, nor did they try to.
It was clear to us that they would certainly benefit from working with more experienced leaders.
The tour program was weak with only one speaker during the eleven day trip who provided valuable and meaningful information.
For example, one of the excursions we took to a blueberry farm on the Saguenay Fijord was led by a person whose sole objective was selling blueberry preserves and other products the farm produced.
The most egregious example of the carelessness and poor planning that went into this tour was the disembarkation. All the information claimed we were disembarking at Bayonne, NJ. We had a driver scheduled to pick us up who had to drive for 2 1/2 hours to get to Bayonne. As we disembarked, and he was arriving in Bayonne, we realized we weren’t in Bayonne but at Pier 90 in New York City!
We called the driver, and he agreed to extend his trip to pick us up, which he did, and he reluctantly said he would have to charge us an additional $200 for this trip. We paid this knowing not only was our day confused and misdirected, but his workday was also misdirected and extended. Tauck insisted that we present a receipt for the charge before they would reimburse us. Wow!
Unfortunately, there were numerous other examples of poor planning and execution on this trip.
This mismanaged tour and poor guest experience continued in the post-tour environment. We wrote a letter to Tauck explaining how poorly managed the tour was, and as former loyal customers, we had no intention of repeating this experience with Tauck. Therefore, we wouldn’t use them again.
Two weeks after sending the letter to Tauck, we received a call from Kate, a guest services manager, to review our letter and concerns. She played the Tauck “customer playbook” claiming that no one else had made these comments, implying we were wrong, and we rebuffed her by saying these are our concerns, and we are not speaking for others. She then reverted to the other line in the “playbook,” expressing that Tauck’s principal point of interest is guest satisfaction. After the second time hearing that, we tuned her out. She simply was not listening.
That telephone exchange was followed by a letter from the CEO of Tauck expressing disappointment that we had an experience that didn’t meet our expectations, but expressing no accountability as well as the conviction that they would see us on future Tauck tours! Clueless - no one at Tauck is listening!
This was our second Tauck tour this year and the fifth trip for my wife, but no more Tauck tours for us!
Dan M and Ellen H
