We chose Thomas Cook for our tour to Europe as our in-laws had heard good experiences from those who had taken their packages, and selected the ‘Premium Budget’ package. Though we live in Bangalore, we booked the tour from Mumbai as our in-laws live there.
We opted for a deviation(of a week before the tour) to spend additional time in London. In spite of having informed the Thomas Cook office about this well in advance, a few days before departure we were informed that we will have to pay Rs 25000 extra per person! Forget the size of the amount, the very fact that more money was being demanded at an inordinate juncture was highly displeasing. Later we were asked to pay Rs 3000 more, in spite of already having paid Rs 5000 as deviation costs. Rising airline costs and our decision to deviate was given as the reason. In addition to all this, the tickets were given to us on the day of departure, and that too with changed airline and schedule. This caused a great deal of inconvenience and tension, and we had to literally scramble to reach the airport. While returning back to India, we were made to wait long hours at Milan airport as the flight was at night. The flight from Delhi to Mumbai was on Jet Konnect, which is a no-frills airline and thus we had to make our own arrangements for lunch. Having paid full airline charges for tickets(inclusive of meals), this was unacceptable.
The pre-departure service was quite poor. I interacted with both the Mumbai and Bangalore offices, and in particular the Bangalore office was very inefficient. Several times, I had to ask the Mumbai office for clarifications. The photos for the passports were approved by the Bangalore office, but rejected by the UK visa centre; had these been checked properly by them, we could have saved both time and money. The travel information provided was also inadequate; no advice was given on weather, currencies, etc. After submitting original documents for the Schengen visa, they(all but one) were never returned and the Bangalore office never bothered about them as well. In fact, they didn’t even have the basic courtesy to respond to my e-mail query.
Since the tour started at Madame Tussauds in London and it was very close by to where we were staying, we wanted to join the tour directly instead of going all the way to the hotel which was near the airport. However, neither the London nor the Indian office was able to provide the tour manager’s contact number, because of which we could not coordinate with the manager and were left with no choice but to go to the hotel itself, wasting time and money. Providing the manager’s contact information prior to the tour is a basic thing the office failed to do.
The rest of the group arrived by different flights and some of them were delayed, having spent several hours for stopovers. As a result the tour didn’t start on time and the first night’s schedule got carried over to the next day.
The tour itinerary was designed poorly, as we spent most of our time in reaching the restaurants and the hotel. In France and Italy, the hotel was very far away from the city centre, and this became more pronounced in Italy because of which we had late dinners at the hotel, and also reduced the sightseeing time. In Paris, we were repeatedly taken to the same restaurant and the entire schedule was built around having to go there, which resulted in having meals at odd times and restricted the effective sightseeing(we got only an hour at the Louvre museum, which was ridiculous).
The tour manager Mr Abhishek Anand, was quite good and smartly managed the time to effectively cover the itinerary, though certain things were unsatisfactory. Firstly, his knowledge of currencies; he asked us to convert Pounds into Euros in London to pay for the Jungfrau optional, while we could have drawn Euros directly anywhere in Europe, saving on conversion costs. Besides, the office did not mention that this amount needed to be paid at the start of the tour itself; else we would have planned for it beforehand. Additionally, he kept mentioning that we would need Swiss Francs in Switzerland, while Euros are widely accepted there. Also, he has a limited knowledge of shopping areas and the best shops to buy from, because of which we were not able to do the best shopping or ended up wasting time looking for good shops in the already limited time provided.
Overall, I felt the tour was good. I say this because it is unreasonable to expect everything in such a tour package. It is definitely hectic and meant for those who want to cover the maximum number of places during one trip; it is merely a sampler tour. At the end of the day, one must choose between convenience and quality. Compared to other tour operator packages to the same countries, this was by far the cheapest, so value for money was obtained. For sure, there are many areas that can be improved, transparency being one of them. I would probably not travel with Thomas Cook again, simply for the fact that I enjoy travelling on my own and we mainly opted for this tour as all Indian vegetarian meals were being provided, which was a factor for my parents. Having placed the facts, I leave it to the person reading this review to decide whether to take this tour or not.