It was a long planned trip to Europe , comprising of 3 main countries (France , Switzerland & Italy) in 12 days.
Started off with multiple vendors and their quotes , but finally selected Hub Holiday based on my interaction with Rohit and Prashanth. The rates which were given to me was highly compet
itive. Thumbs up to it.
PROS :
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1) First and Foremost , Highly competitive rates.
2) Excellent response time from Prashanth , not only before the start of the trip but also during trip. There was one case where I did not have a connecting train ticket printout with me in Venice Railway station. Got response within 30 sec from Prashant and got the ticket. Hats off to that.
3) Support during changed requirements was nicely handled. After initial plan , I requested changes for inclusion of PISA. It was excellently managed. Thumbs up.
4) Politeness of the persons in Hub Holiday. Every interaction of mine was handled with utmost sincerity. Good job.
IMPROVEMENT AREAS (I will not say CONS as these people are new to travel organizing compared to other agents)
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1) I think , practical knowledge about the countries are really needed ( not only google / blog study ) for an effective itinerary creation. There were several instances where the station / bus stop is far from hotel , without even us knowing how to reach. Even though we managed with Google Maps and other ways , but for older and not-to-tech-savvy people , it might not be easy.
So either detailed guideline or easy transport details should be given during travel voucher sending ( this i even asked , but did not get )
2) Best transport options suggestion really would help a first time traveler. For example , in both Paris and Rome Hop-On Hop Off buses are waste of money. Much better option is to get Metro Tickets in bulk and use them for transportation. They are much cheap as well as very fast , so saving both money and time. These suggestions should be given and recommended.
3) Louvre / Vatican City etc. museums are always recommended to be visited with guides , or else it will just be some idols / arts without knowing what exactly are they. I felt , if we were told these things before hand explicitly , maybe we would have got better deal. Actually in Vatican , I had to book on-spot-guides , which is much more costly compared to prebooking of guides from Vatican itself.
4) VISA Planning : This was really scary for us. Even though i enquired with Rohit and asked him about VISA , his initial suggestion was 1 to 1.5 month was more than enough for Shenzhen VISA. But later we came to know , for some countries like Italy , it is always better to apply 3 months in advance as they take long time to issue VISA . For us , we received our VISA just 5 days before our travel, which was really scary. We even asked Prashant not to book any other vouchers like Eiffel Tower and other things. This resulted in , in last moment , we did not get online slots to book ticket at all and finally after reaching Paris , I had to book it separately. So these things needs to be handled in better way by guiding the first time travelers.
Overall the trip went well and we were able to visit all the places as PLANNED.
A Big Thank you to Prashant and team.
Wish to get in touch with Hub Holiday again in future.