Advice about booking with foreign tour company

red_verity

Hello, 
We are looking to book a family holiday in Sri Lanka and initially contacted Trailfinders but have since found a company based in Sri Lanka (srilankanroadtrip.com) who have suggested an itinerary (including accommodation, private car and driver and some tours) which we found to be much more in keeping with what we're after. The costs aren't massively lower (ie, not too good to be true) but we really like the sound of what they offer and they have some good reviews.

Anyway, my question is how can I a) find out if this company are genuine, other than a standard google search for reviews and b) is there any protection we have or could put in place before paying anything out to this company?

This is just for tours and accommodation, not flights. We plan to book the flights directly with Sri Lankan Airlines using a credit card.

I am sure we aren't the first people to book a tour directly with a foreign travel company so I am hoping for some advice and pointers to help us do this as safely as possible. This kind of holiday and expense is a once in a lifetime thing for us so I want to make sure I'm not leaving us open to disappointment.

Thanks in advance :-)

DullGreyGuy

There is not much you can do beyond checking reviews etc and paying them by credit card so at least you can recover funds if things go terribly wrong. 

You could post on a travel related forum to see if anyone knows of them but you may well get patsys saying they are amazing rather than genuine travelers etc.  Normal rules apply about checking out the commentators before accepting their advices.

Have booked with overseas operators before and other than being charged the foreigner level pricing theres never been an issue to date. 

red_verity

Thank you for the quick reply. I thought this might be the case :-\

With regard to credit card payments. Would the protection apply if I paid the tour company by credit card and they turned out to be dodgy and didn't supply what they promised? Or is it only when companies go bust or something? I don't use credit cards very often so haven't any experience of claiming.

CKhalvashi

red_verity said:

Thank you for the quick reply. I thought this might be the case :-\

With regard to credit card payments. Would the protection apply if I paid the tour company by credit card and they turned out to be dodgy and didn't supply what they promised? Or is it only when companies go bust or something? I don't use credit cards very often so haven't any experience of claiming.

Yes. Read Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. The issuer of the card will be equally liable with the supplier (and a lot easier to chase) should you have a serious problem. This also covers insolvency as long as you haven't received the services you'd paid for.

DullGreyGuy

red_verity said:

Thank you for the quick reply. I thought this might be the case :-\

With regard to credit card payments. Would the protection apply if I paid the tour company by credit card and they turned out to be dodgy and didn't supply what they promised? Or is it only when companies go bust or something? I don't use credit cards very often so haven't any experience of claiming.

It would cover you if they breached the terms of the agreement as long as the cardholder paid for it and is the contracting party plus its paid directly to them by credit card not via a third party like PayPal.

Obviously in some parts of the world tours have to change due to developing situations and the terms of the agreement may cover that. When we did our tour of Sri Lanka many years ago the tour was upfront that day X was to go to the north of the island but if the relevant governmental authorities declared it not safe to do so instead we would be doing Y instead. 

If your tour has something similar then clearly there would be no valid claim if the troubles have restarted and you have to do Y instead of going North.

MattB90

I would strongly advise shopping around, other travel companies are available.

My own personal experience with trailfinders has resulted in lengthy but successful section 75 claims. Trailfinders switched a day activity without any consent or communication which was originally agreed as part of a package holiday.
Not only did we find this out at the last minute because the original tour provider did not exist but the new activity they planned was clearly of lesser quality and became very unsafe, we did not even complete the activity and had to be returned to our hotel for safety concerns. It was like something off one of them holiday scam TV programmes.

Trailfinders also provided false information when arguing against my section 75 claim, such as stating I had logged into my trailfinders account several times therefore meaning I had seen their T&C's, which is false because their app didn't work and under the terms tab there was no information displayed. I provided them the screenshots to contest this.

A poor company in my opinion and a stain on the travel industry. Most things you can organise better yourself anyway.

MattB90

I should also add that trailfinders t&c state they will refund immediately any part of the trip if there is any issue, they did not stand by this and it took us many emails and telephone calls to get our refund, probably close to a month.

Truspilot is rather interesting with trailfinder reviews, they actively seem to remove detailed negative and verified reviews such as mine but allow very short positive reviews to remain, even where no actual holiday purchase was made. Strange....

adriat

Did you end up traveling with this srilankanroadtrip.com? 

Sajidh N., from srilankanroadtrip.com has quoted a trip for me, but I realized they carry different names (bestoflanka.com, srilankanroadtrip.com, udawalawesafariholidays.com, etc), and I am afraid it might be a fraud…
Can you please tell me your experience? 

adriat

red_verity said:

Hello, 
We are looking to book a family holiday in Sri Lanka and initially contacted Trailfinders but have since found a company based in Sri Lanka (srilankanroadtrip.com) who have suggested an itinerary (including accommodation, private car and driver and some tours) which we found to be much more in keeping with what we're after. The costs aren't massively lower (ie, not too good to be true) but we really like the sound of what they offer and they have some good reviews.

Anyway, my question is how can I a) find out if this company are genuine, other than a standard google search for reviews and b) is there any protection we have or could put in place before paying anything out to this company?

This is just for tours and accommodation, not flights. We plan to book the flights directly with Sri Lankan Airlines using a credit card.

I am sure we aren't the first people to book a tour directly with a foreign travel company so I am hoping for some advice and pointers to help us do this as safely as possible. This kind of holiday and expense is a once in a lifetime thing for us so I want to make sure I'm not leaving us open to disappointment.

Thanks in advance :-)

Hi! Did you end up using the company you mentioned (srilankanroadtrip.com)? I have a quote from them; how was your experience with this agency?

Since all the contact with the agency has been through an "employee", Sajidh, who always contacts me through his gmail account or whatsapp, I am a bit weary this might be a fraud.

Voyager2002

MattB90 said:

I would strongly advise shopping around, other travel companies are available.

My own personal experience with trailfinders has resulted in lengthy but successful section 75 claims. Trailfinders switched a day activity without any consent or communication which was originally agreed as part of a package holiday.
Not only did we find this out at the last minute because the original tour provider did not exist but the new activity they planned was clearly of lesser quality and became very unsafe, we did not even complete the activity and had to be returned to our hotel for safety concerns. It was like something off one of them holiday scam TV programmes.

Trailfinders also provided false information when arguing against my section 75 claim, such as stating I had logged into my trailfinders account several times therefore meaning I had seen their T&C's, which is false because their app didn't work and under the terms tab there was no information displayed. I provided them the screenshots to contest this.

A poor company in my opinion and a stain on the travel industry. Most things you can organise better yourself anyway.

Did you read the OP? The question is from someone who looked at Trailfinders but then decided to book with a company in Sri Lanka.

CKhalvashi

MattB90 said:

I would strongly advise shopping around, other travel companies are available.

My own personal experience with trailfinders has resulted in lengthy but successful section 75 claims. Trailfinders switched a day activity without any consent or communication which was originally agreed as part of a package holiday.
Not only did we find this out at the last minute because the original tour provider did not exist but the new activity they planned was clearly of lesser quality and became very unsafe, we did not even complete the activity and had to be returned to our hotel for safety concerns. It was like something off one of them holiday scam TV programmes.

Trailfinders also provided false information when arguing against my section 75 claim, such as stating I had logged into my trailfinders account several times therefore meaning I had seen their T&C's, which is false because their app didn't work and under the terms tab there was no information displayed. I provided them the screenshots to contest this.

A poor company in my opinion and a stain on the travel industry. Most things you can organise better yourself anyway.

Very little that my travel interests offer are available on the market from other suppliers. We (legally) operate as a tour operator based in Poland, but do sell single (non-packaged) services to UK consumers and to selected travel agencies (almost all of which are local businesses and not the OTAs). We tend to price 15-20% higher than the 'local' rates for DIY, but this tends to work out at about the same price in reality for most travellers. All contractors are hand selected and are normally 'friends of friends' for us, unlike those who go with the unknown. Likewise, those putting specialist products together for me are normally people I've known elsewhere for a long time and are operating as a JV for that market.

Without giving a specific opinion on a company an interest of mine competes with in specific markets, some operators don't explicitly stick to their terms and conditions without a fight and do actively work to remove negative reviews, especially detailed ones.

We also act on the basis that logging into an account doesn't necessarily mean any particular page has been activated unless we can prove otherwise. As most terms are clearly summarised as part of the process in 3-4 bullet points, we don't have this issue for direct bookings, but for agency bookings this can be a bit of a larger problem. I wish more companies would do this in honesty.

You're very often better off contacting the local contractors directly for bookings in reality. We'll give the same price as on our website, but many companies will offer 20-30% off those online rates, which will result in about the same pricing for the service as we charge in the first place. This is a quite high margin business model in general anyway for all concerned.