Recently we(Group of 18 people, Family, and friends) had been to Shimla and Manali booking made through Bharat Booking. We feel that this agency is very unprofessional and is a kind of fraud or scam. They use all possible tricks to loot you. Here I will tell you what happened with us, and you people decide how this agency operates. It will going to be little lengthy since I want to explain as it is with all points.
1. Booking done on Feb 8th 2025 through Bharat Booking sales representative named Parvathi for Manali/Kasol/ Shimla tour dated 7th April 2025. Itinerary missed the Atal Tunnel/Sisu Lake and mentioned as extra cost and to be confirmed before travel based on the weather conditions. At the time of booking these places are not open for tourists.
I started follow up one week before travel date to inform us about the additional cost to include Sisu Lake through Atal Tunnel since there is no snow left in Solang Valley and we wanted to visit this place. Then sales representative told me that at the time of travel directly talk to driver and visit thats how all their customer will do and never disclose any additional cost for this.
2. On the day of travel it started with the tempo traveler driver called in the morning 7: 00 AM (Morning) for pick up instead of 7:00 PM (evening), We thought may be some communication gap between agency and driver. While discussing with driver I came to know that his tempo is not coming to airport for pick up insisted we must catch airport transfer bus or cabs to reach private carparking lot where his tempo is waiting which is 3-5 km away from airport.(just to save some entry fees they are asking families with kids to travel with baggage for 5km). This I bring to notice of sales representative(POC) and asked to sort it out. Then they agreed and told driver will come and pick. However, it doesnt happen, driver to denied to pick from airport and finally after 1-2 hour of argument with driver and agency we 18 people went to parking lot with kids/ ladies and baggage. Since we dont want to spoil our mood and start a tour with this note.
3. As per the booking terms and conditions we made 30% payment on the booking date. And remaining to be paid on the second day of our tour. However, driver asked us to give advance payment of 15k to him. This was surprising for me since booking was done through Bharat Booking and we suppose to pay the agency and not to the driver who is a third-party transport agency for them not for us. I informed this to Parvathi and she acted like she got surpised and asked me not to pay and she will revert. After some time she called back and asked me to pay the amount to driver and this can be deducted from balance amount to be payable to agency. This she was not mentioned on payment procedure and even terms the conditions. It clearly shows unproffesionally managed agency. We paid this amount to driver and moved on.
4. Next day we asked driver for the cost to extend our tour from Solang Valley to Sisu Lake which is around 27km from Solang Valley. He asked us to pay 10K extra. Then I talked to transport handling guy from Bharat Booking and informed about this he told not to talk with driver pay to agency 6k which is the cost of the package from Solang Valley to Sisu and agency will take care.
We enquired this with local transport guys and last minute we got two Tata Sumo 3k each. (From Manali to Sisu Lake full day tour). Finally, we went through tempo traveler only since we all travelled through single vehicle. Noticeable is that this tempo was already booked by us for the whole day tour and just to stretch 60km extra we end up paying 6k additional. Which is equivalent to fresh one day transport booking cost.
5. Next day of tour agency asked the balance payment, since we are on the go and no much time for sit and do this and even Phone Pay didnt allowed me to transact more than 1 lac I did this on the next day. After the receipt of complete payment, one more person from the agency called and informed me that our hotel stay at Shimla(Jade Vine resort) a day after next day has been canceled and they are arranging upgraded stay at different hotel. In reality which is a degrading of the stay. We resisted this strongly and the reason was given that no fault from agency and this is done by hotel due to some conference/event going on. Again we end up arguing with agency for whole day and out come was they told one day they managed to provide stay on the booked hotel but for next day again we have to check out and move to alternate hotel with ladies, kids and baggage and the second option is to change the stay at Chandigarh instead of Shimla after sightseeing. How can any professional travel agency provide this kind of a unrealistic and unplanned options?
6. This time we decided not to listen anything like this and sticked to our demand to provide the stay where they have promised at the time of booking else we informed them that we all come to your office at Shimla office and do arrange beds/stay at your office, we are not going to alternate hotel stay. Finally after two day of argument finally they provided stay at promised hotel but room category was changed from Premium rooms(with balcony) to Deluxe rooms(non-balcony).
7. We checked in and stayed for two days and while returning we asked Hotel manager about conference/event and cancelation of rooms due to the event. He informed us that there is no such thing happened from hotel side and room booking was received at last minute only, just a day before we checked in.
Guys please be aware of this and such other agencies who run such scam business.