I had posted this for cox&kings Mumbai whereas I had dealt with C&K Pune. I have put a separate review for Pune since I don’t see a delete button here :-)
At the outset, let me mention that my experience is quite contrary to what I am seeing here however this is what I got and this is what I’m sharing.
We booked for the European discovery tour with C&K last year after comparing some of the competing brands. Part of the influence was also due to the willingness of sales person to spend time discussing options etc. while other vendors were too busy to care.
Just after the initial deposit was paid and the visa formalities were completed, I had to rush away due to a personal emergency and I must say that C&K made no fuss about any delay in paying the balance amounts while as per terms we were supposed to pay all the amount before even our tickets were booked.
I returned a coupled of days before the actual travel and C&K immediately arranged for the money to be collected as well as the forex to be delivered etc. Also they had already sent across the flight tickets etc.
We got a pretty well informed tour guide and that itself is worth a mention since a lot of what’s passing by is an important part of the places we visit and if the guide isn’t informed one just comes away knowing little about the people, places and cultures visited.
On the food, for me, it was a tad dissappointing since we got Indian food all through the tour instead of the cuisines of the countries we visited but looking at the general expectations amongst the rest of the group I think it was a smart thing to do albeit the group still was grousy about the not so perfect Indian food.
One thing I’d definitely suggest is that some of the key attractions should be moved to mandatory rather than optionals.
Another suggestion would be to run some awareness ssession for the tourists to make them better prepared for cultural, culinary and language disparities that one should expect and probably even how one should respond to them.
Overall a very satisfying trip and hope they maintain and improve hereon.