I, along with my wife took the much touted Fusion Europe tour package of Thomas Cook from 12th Spt. to 22nd Sept. The format of the tour started unfolding from the very moment we saw the chosen airline(Oman Air) which would consume 22 hrs in travel time from Delhi to Paris and Munich to Delhi with a stoppage of 5 hrs each at Muscat airport. The design of tour package can be summarized as follows:
Consume as much time as possible in travelling(Air and Bus) so that tourist is left with hardly any time for sightseeing.
Travel 6-8 hrs in bus every day, so that the tourist is totally tired and is left with hardly any desire for sightseeing.
Chose the least visited hotels on periphery of city and then take them for dinner at the other corner of the city so that maximum time is consumed in travelling.
Include places of least interest(read places that have cheap tickets) in itinerary and leave all others as optional. Otherwise how would you explain a visit to a Perfumery and Top of a tall building as part of the package and all the while excluding the ‘River Cruise on Sine’ and visit to Art Galleries and Museums in Paris.
The package boasts of six countries(including Vatican). In fact it is a city tour of Paris, Rome, Venice and Engel berg. Visits to Jungfraujoch, Lido show, third level of Eiffel Tower, Disney park, inside of Colosseum etc are all optional(You have to buy your own ticket). You take lunch in Innsbruck, see Florence from a hillock, travel through Austria throughout the day, sleep in Munich and take your flight back home in the morning and on top of it you have your day 3 as rest day! One wonders whether you have gone Paris for taking rest.
The much touted glass of Champagne was not more than 30 ml. and barring a few places the food was not up to standard. At one place dinner was outsourced from a ‘Pakistani Dhaba’ which was hardly eatable and many vegetarian tourists were very uncomfortable with the source and the cooking methodology. The terrorist groups in Pakistan are always on lookout for soft Indian targets all over the globe and this arrangement on the border of Italy and Switzerland can give them an opening to hit India. You should discontinue this practice immediately.
The Wi-Fi services in hotels though free(except at one place) were not reliable and we wasted a lot of time accessing it. It is suggested that the bus in which the tourists travel throughout the length of tour should have Wi-Fi.
We were charged €3 per head per day as tip for the driver on the very first day and were promised that loading and unloading of our luggage from the Bus will be done by the driver. Except on the first day, he was nowhere to be seen at the time of loading/unloading. This led to the Senior citizens and ladies struggling with their luggage, which was a pathetic sight to see. This is not acceptable by any standards.
My friend Jasbir S. Chauhan has written in detail about the other aspects of the tour and I entirely agree with him. The sole motto of the tour operator is to maximize their profit and in the process they have totally sacrificed the interests of the tourist. In their ads and itinerary they have promised the sky but delivered a fraction of it. Unless otherwise they modify their package, keeping the comfort of tourists as their top priority and not their profit alone, I will not recommend it to anybody.
J.S.Dhaka