TOTAL Quality and TOTAL Flexibility (Kuoni Travel)

Member Name: petehall

Product:	Kuoni Travel
Date:	02/04/02 (239 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Phenominal flexibility, splendid service, surprising value

Disadvantages: Absolutely none

Kuoni un-packaged the package holiday long before JMC had even been thought of. They've been offering mix-and-match facilities for many years. Apart from affordable holidays to superb destinations in splendid hotels and their magnificent service, Kuoni have another major asset. They don't book massive capacity on planes and in hotels then try to sell them to us, each holiday is created at the time of booking. So, if you want to change hotels, airlines, departure dates, departure times, length of stay, or even the sequence of the holiday, they will do it for you. We've done this many times, and it often works out cheaper. When staying in a city such as Bangkok we want a deluxe hotel in a central position, but at a seaside resort such as Phuket we are much more concerned with proximity to the town and resort facilities than the hotel's star rating. Most packages tend to group hotels of the same category in all centres of a multi-centre holiday, forcing you to choose all deluxe, all 5-star, etc. With Kuoni this is not a problem, you simply ask them to change the hotels to suit your preferences. If one hotel is cheaper then it will bring down the cost of the holiday. Because they use scheduled flights, it is also possible to change the number of nights in any particular destination, or even the order in which you visit destinations, subject to operational limitations.

Our last Kuoni holiday was a two centre holiday to Thailand. It began as nine-night Bangkok followed by Ko Samui with medium class hotels in both centres. On our request the destinations were swapped so we did Ko Samui first, the hotel in Bangkok was swapped from the Asia to the Royal Orchid Sheraton, and the length of stay in Bangkok was extended by five nights. The departure day and airport were our choice, as was the airline. They checked it all out for us whilst I was on the phone to them and gave me an option number. On passing this option to a travel agent I secured a discount which meant t
hat the holiday worked out cheaper than the one advertised in the brochure. A longer holiday, more suited to our preferences for a lower cost - what more could you ask for. Actually, we did get more ? because we had booked before a given date, our room in Bangkok was upgraded and we got a free evening meal. Had we gone a week earlier when it was our anniversay there would have been a further room upgrade.

Have you ever been met by a holiday rep, other than Kuoni, at the departure airport in the UK? The best reps we have ever had have all been Kuoni. I'm not saying that Kuoni don't sometimes get it wrong, they do, but we were adequately compensated on the three occasions when things did go wrong, even though it wasn?t their fault:

At Singapore we were not collected from the hotel for our return flight and the rep was not aveilable. The hotel manager gave us $25 and called us a taxi. We had to add 10 cents to that for the taxi fare, and boarded the plane less than five minutes before take-off, but Kuoni paid us £25 compensation. Kuoni were required to use Tour East reps in this area and did not have direct control over them.

In Hong Kong we were bumped off the return flight due to the airline's over-booking. We got a hotel room for the day, three meals and a direct flight twelve hours later with priority check-in. Kuoni paid us £100 each in compensation.

In Ko Samui, for the first night, we had to stay in a different hotel to the one we'd booked, due to over-booking by the hotel. Apart from all the perks we got from the management of the hotel, Kuoni paid us £50 each compensation.

Kuoni have a great reputation for customer care and have been voted 'Best Long Haul Operator' for many years.

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