Audley Travel Traveller Reviews

Booked a 16-day trip to Hawaii covering three islands, self-drive. Included numerous tours, I.e. helicopter tour, snorkel and sail tour, etc.

Used Audley Travel for a two-week trip to Hawaii. The agent was very knowledgeable about the destination and booked us on some very unique experiences that I would not have found on my own. While there were some issues, everything was either rectified or we were compensated for them.

We were unable to proceed with our holiday due to COVID closures and canceled our trip.

When Sweden closed to Americans, Audley offered credit. After cajoling and complaining, they refunded our money in full, hence I am editing my previously negative comments here. Consumers should be aware that travel insurance will not refund your money in the event an airline or tour operator offers credit for flights, hotels, tour plans, etc. even due to COVID. Whether or not one can use that credit is irrelevant to the travel insurance company because from their perspective, if credit is offered then the consumer has not incurred a loss. It is, therefore, imperative that one deal with a highly reputable tour operator, and in the end, Audley was that kind of tour operator. As a result, I would consider using them again in the future.

Simply Incredible! We had an amazing trip organized and executed by the Audley team through out South Africa. We started our adventure in Cape Town, then made our way through the wine country (Stellenbosch and Franschhoek), and on to Swellendam, Oudtshoorn, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, and finished off the southern itinerary on safari in East Cape. We then flew up to Mala Mala, stayed in Rattray's Camp, and had one of our best safari adventures ever! We then headed back to Cape Town for some beach time in Clifton/Camps Bay, and some amazing food, before flying home. We have been to South Africa, as well as to several other countries in Africa over the years but this trip was so well organized, and enabled us to really soak in all that the people, culture, landscape, and animals were offering us. Thank you so much!

Best in class!

I returned last month from Japan and Vietnam. The Itinerary was Huge for twelve days. It was full of useless information, but lacking in facts that I needed. Japan was hit or miss, but Vietnam was great. In Japan, I was sent to a Ryokan in Hakone for fifteen hours. This was a three train, two bus trip each way. The place was Awful. This was two days wasted of a twelve day trip. I wrote them a three page letter that was never acknowledged. This was an expensive trip for what I received.

I'm giving it average, because I enjoyed Vietnam. Japan was poorly organized. I have traveled most of the world in the last twenty years. There are much better people out there. I have also planned my own trips.

Just returned from a 6week tour of Australia and Singapore. This is our third trip with Audley. It did not disappoint. The hotels were perfectly picked to maximise our time. The trips with out exception superb and the travel arrangements spot on to ensure that this was really a fantastic experience. The advice given was excellent in terms of time of year to visit, locations and what to do. I can highly recommend audley. We will be using their services again

Excellent

My husband and I recently used Audley Travel for a trip to Australia and New Zealand. The destination is great.

Regarding Audley, the hotels and most excursions were fine. However, you choose a travel agency for help with the logistics--easy directions, smooth travel, etc. This is not the case in our experience with Audley. First, Audley did not have us fly in a day ahead so that if any of the 4 flights to our initial destination was delayed, then we had a cushion. In fact the first flight was delayed. Any company that has been in this business as long as Audley should not have made this logistical mistake. In addition, it is extremely difficult to follow the directions Audley includes in their travel packet: key information is buried in non-essential information about the area, you have to flip back and forth in their book to find where you are supposed to be when. Critical information about hotels or transportation for example was spread out over multiple documents. For their prices, there is no excuse for this. As a point of information, both my husband and I are PhDs and we are comfortable dealing with complex information. Audley's documents are really bad, and this is s systemic issue. In other words, it is not the fault of one bad travel agent at Audley. It is the fault of the Audley process as a whole. At one of the hotels Audley uses, the person at the desk who was helping me with a very confusing Audley-booked excursion mentioned that about half the Audley clients had problems. The word she used for that half was "a disaster." I would highly recommend going with someone else who can make the logistics clear and easy to use. No travel agency gets credit for a great destination (no travel agency created the beauty of New Zealand or Australia). A good agency at minimum handle logistics well. Audley does not in my experience.

We have just returned from a First Class holiday to Vietnam organised by Audley Travel. Hayley Ryan organised it for us and delivered what she said she would. She even arranged a local sim for our phone just in case we needed to contact our guides. Hotels and tours were all excellent and within walking distance of restaurants and shops. Thank You Hayley for an excellent trip, we will remember it for a long time to come.

Audley Travel. Hayley Ryan was our tour adviser. She organised a wonderful holiday for us with fantastic hotels and tours nothing was too much bother for her. She kept in touch regularly with us and was very helpful in explaining everything.

We visited Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket.

We hired Audley Travel to assist of with planning our trip to Thailand. The agent assigned to us for the most part put together a good itinerary with a few notable exceptions: 1) he failed to inform us that each of our planned excursions from the hotel averaged 11/2 travel hours or more in each direction 2) he didn’t make the effort to secure requested seating on flights and 3) made multitlple clearical mistakes in the intinerary. We requested the best hotels and they were all very good. However, for the fees paid the trip felt “packaged” and not custom.

Audley Travel organised the most efficient and perfect tailor made itinerary for our family Christmas-NewYear holiday to discover a most inspiring Country and People.

Harriet at Audley Travel from our very first conversation listened and understood to perfection what our family was looking for and came up with a very professional exciting and just perfect tailor made itinerary which came up to expectations throughout our tour.

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We chose Audley Travel through their Brochure which promised bespoke holidays. We outlined our itinerary which was Nepal, Bhutan and India. Realising that this was quite a complex booking we were tolerent of errors which our specialist made during the booking process. The mistakes are well documented by email. However once the deposit was in place and the details confirmed we did not expect any further amendments. As we were away for five weeks we decided to book business class for all flights to enhance our luggage allowance. By chance we noticed that the flight to Shimla only permitted 10 kilos. Our specialist seemed unaware of this. As we were carrying 25 kilos each various unacceptable alternatives were put to us. In the end we were driven to Shimla which was time consuming. One hotel had to be changed thus disrupting our programme and there was a general malaise once the deposit was paid. Two weeks before departire we were informed that one hotel had double booked and we would either have to change rooms after one night or move to another hotel. After one week the original arrangement was put back in place. The whole process was very stressful for what was a very expensive tour. On tour our business class ticketing was economy on one return flight so after arguing for one hour and speaking to the local rep who blamed Audley we paid for the upgrade using our dollar cash. We contacted our agent and the refund was transferred to our account prior to us returning home. Several hotels stated that we did not have full board where it had been arranged in Bhutan but we sorted this out locally. On our tour we met a number of people who were travelling with Cox and King who were very happy with their choice. In fact at The Claridges in Delhi we were down graded to an internal room whilst Cox and King clients were upgraded to a suite overlooking the lawn. We did protest and were eventually moved to a room overlooking the pool. The company also needs to update the country booklets which are out of date in many areas. Whilst we made the best of the tour and the car drivers were fine the same agents work for all the major tour companies. A couple of guides did give us the name of other tour operators who they felt were superior. One other flight was economy only as described by Audley. Of course at the airport we discovered business class was available and upgraded ourselves. The toy train also has a first class carriage which again we were told was economy only so we were squashed into a cramped carriage whilst the first class carriage was only half full. At the end of the day Audley produces nice brochures, costs average hotels in to the quote and the client then upgrades which pushes up the cost. We would not use Audley again under any circumstances. As an aside from people we met traveling with other operators only Audley used Jet Airways for the international flights as they cost far less to them than BA, Emirates or Virgin. Jet Airways were regularly in the papers due to being on the verge of bankruptcy. This added to the stress. Audley charges high prices but is low on quality.

As above