I recently visited the UK, France, Switzerland, and Italy as a part of the European Express Package(02 - 11 May) offered by Thomas Cook; it was my first booking with them.
My detailed review is as follows-
1) Pre-tour co-ordination and assistance
If there is anything Thomas Cook really needs to improve on, it is their pre-tour communication. We experienced quite a few difficulties regarding the visa appointments, booking conformations; as a matter of fact, we got our flight tickets, hotel confirmations and tour documents just a week before we were to fly off. I also noticed there was a certain amount of miscommunication among the internal departments and the people who were handling our tour booking as well. They always required prompting in order to communicate with us.
2) Flight and hotel bookings
Three families flew from Bombay Airport including mine, all three of us flew different airlines. They booked some on airlines as good as Emirates, and we were unfortunate to fly via something as mediocre as Oman Air. The pre-booked meals were really depressing, TC made a mistake by booking veg meals for us when we had opted for non-vegetarian ones(miscommunication again).
On the subject of hotel bookings though, Thomas Cook booked us in some really nice hotels at all destinations. There was nothing too classy about any of them, but they were good enough for me to tick mark everything in my list of expectations. The rooms were nice, so was the food, free Wi-Fi, basic hygiene; all in all, it was nice to know that after a long day out we had someplace nice to have a good night’s sleep.
3) Daily Meals
TC has this amazing concept regarding meals, it provides you around 70% of the total no. of meals on the tour(which are all Indian), and allows you to purchase about 30% of the meals yourself(to let us try the local food!). Personally, I think it is a great concept, because all of us gotta try the local food at least once. The Indian meals which they provide are good, there’s certainly not much to complain about them. All the hotels too have a really good morning breakfast to offer, so that you start the day all cheered up!
4) Locations, spots covered, & time spent at each place.
TC European Express isn’t exactly a touch and go tour, you spend your 10 nights in 4 different countries so that you get to explore a decent amount of each place. At the same time, things aren’t at leisure either, the daily itinerary is planned in such a way, that you don’t really have the time to explore things at your own pace. The time spent at each attraction is sufficient though, you certainly don’t feel rushed at any place, any time. The selection of the places to visit at each destination is quite good too. Although if I was to make one small suggestion, they could show us the Doge’s Palace from inside instead of a tour of the Murano Glass Factory.
5) Daily travel and Comfort
Usually on city orientation tours, the travel is less, but otherwise, the distances between the main cities in Europe is quite a lot. We covered the entire journey by bus(except for the Le Shuttle between UK and France). For our entire journey right from Calais(Fr) until the very end in Milan, we had this beautiful Scania Tourer, which was very comfortable, and a joy to ride in. We had regular comfort stops at petrol stations, and since the scenery is so beautiful in all of Europe, the journeys weren’t really stressful or tiring either. Kudos to the bus captain(who I became friends with) who drove us brilliantly across Europe without complaining even once:) .
6) Assistance of Tour Guides
For the entire trip, we had Ms. Neeta Suptankar to show us around. She was excellent at executing the daily agenda of our tour, she guided us with care and never left anyone behind. She knew quite a lot about the places we visited, and helped us with everything, everywhere.
The local tour guides too, who were booked to conduct us around certain places were very knowledgeable and friendly.
To sum it up, Thomas Cook definitely is one of the better travel agencies in the country. They most certainly maintain high levels of professionalism in conducting the entire tour for you. Apart from the minor inconveniences faced while booking the tour and the documentation work for it, everything else was absolutely smooth and hassle-free.
All in all, Thomas Cook is a great agency, to explore the world with.