AlanS

Are you receiving my PM's again? FYI, there is a somewhat negative post about England, Scotland, Wales that you should probably weigh in on.

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AlanS
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  • British
    British → AlanS

    Part 2
    If it all works out, I’ll let you know the company. It’s good for tours that Tauck do not do or are slightly different and often longer.

    ·
    March 5
    • AlanS
      AlanS
      Not how this "wall" thing works- I guess I must comment to reply. Have a great trip.

      All things being equal, booking air early (right at 330 window), I have always beaten Tauck airfares and usually got better routing/layovers. For mid-cycle or late air booking, Tauck fares seem to be best. I haven't asked, but believe someone (you?) posted that now you must pay up front when booking air with Tauck for exotics. I haven't seen that in writing but haven't looked or asked either. I still like the control of booking myself. Also, I don't remember how many miles less, but the last time I booked Tauck (discount) air, I didn't get the normal amount of Delta Skymiles. I called Delta and they directed me towards their fine print. We never seem to accumulate enough miles for big trips, but we use Skymiles when we can- used them for nearly free flights years ago for Hidden Gems of NE, more recently for a family visit to Panama, and last month for or business class flights to Yellowstone in Winter ($12 ea.).

      There are other good tour companies out there that challenge Tauck. Joyce Welch went with A&K to Jordan and Egypt and found them comparable - each had their strong points. They offered discounts, but believe that was mainly because of the time of year- she went in August and regularly experienced temps over 100° F especially down south in Aswan, etc.. I don't know how many more years we will be traveling, but I think I'll probably stick with Tauck. If I had the money, I would love to do a custom, personalized tour with just our family and a TD (Tauck actually offers those), but I will never have that kind of money!
    • AlanS
      AlanS
      Forgot- have a great trip!!!
  • British
    British → AlanS

    Hi Alan, looks as if there is indeed an advantage to booking air with Tauck after all! Tauck recently canceled our tour date for Singapore Bali but paid our air change fees in full but it was over $1000 for the two of us. So if our Croatia tour is cancelled I nJune, we will likely be out over $500 and wouldn’t you know we recently had to amend the flights because they were changed and the connection time was insufficient, so we have three flights to take to get us to the start of the tour. We would never cancel in advance for this tour, we are still hoping things will be blown over by then, but the tour does end in Venice, we’ve been trying to get back there for forty years.
    I’m not sure how them keeping insurance fee for tours up to 2021 will work since we have two booked with them for 2021 already plus a tour to Japan booked with our newly discovered company. I’m hoping they will take it off the cost of one of those tours.
    We leave for Borneo on Monday evening, everything is a go

    ·
    March 5
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  • British
    British → AlanS

    Hello Alan. Looking forward to your Yellowstone report.
    I’m hoping this link gets you to a photo book I made of some of our Gorilla photos. They aren’t wonderful, partly because we were transfixed, and also we had to keep our eyes peeled on their movements because if they headed it way to move past us, we had to get out of their way. But you get the idea. Best wishes, British!
    Https://link.shutterfly.com/e/te5wnndj33

    ·
    February 13