Not a paid review, if needed you can give a call :) .. Long post alert!!
Fabulous is the word!!! Kudos to Shell and Pearl Holidays .. especially Sailesh!! He is the man you should look for :)
Reliable, Amazing Quality, Promptness, Empathising, Value for money, Friendly, Cooperative, Knowledgab
le, Understanding
Till now I have always travelled abroad either on company bills or through brands like Makemytrip or Yatra in group package This is the first time I planned my holiday on my own and asked Shell and Pearl to curate it as a private trip. We celebrated our Xmas and New years in Spain and France (12 day trip). We were a bit apprehensive about going on a private tour with a 4 yr old kid, given that we planned to take trains, flights and explore not so touristy stuff across cities using public transport. But, What an excellent service by Shell and Pearly Holidays!!! I never had a good image of travel Advisors (don't want to call them agents, sounds very low) before this, had heard lot of stories about how bad they treat customers or in terms of services. I got a service which even brands like MakeMyTrip or Yatra can never match (trust me I have been in their packages lot many a times). The kind of proactiveness and eagerness Sailesh and team showed to make my holiday a wonderful experience was just amazing. I would like to specially mention about Sailesh here, who right from our first meeting was so polite and acted as our family member suggesting us things that would really work for us or won't work .. heard us well, he knew that we are travelling with a kid and made the trip in such a way that we are comfortable with a kid. Picking our calls on the first ring and answering our qns on whatsapp even late in the night. This is something that not even big customer care teams are able to achieve. Shell and Pearl made sure that I got all the tickets, bookings etc in time. I never had to crib or do followups in terms of the deliveries. I must tell you, that the kind of package they made for me in terms of activities, cities to be covered , quality hotels, internal transfers etc, they gave a quote that no one else can ever match. Beauty was that there was a hefty amount that had to be refunded to me due to some sudden change in the itinerary, and I can't believe that I told Sailesh the amount to be refunded, and without any procrastination or arguments to hold the amount, he transferred it in a day's time. I never had such comfort collecting money from any one else :)
One Instance - I could not get reservation in eurail from Madrid to Seville due to Xmas rush and only 1st class was available, which was expensive on spot booking. I had a flamenco show booking in the evening at seville, which I could have seen only if I travel in that train 1st class. Sailesh without blinking for a second asked me to book it and offered me a refund of the differential amount, as he did not want me to miss the show scheduled in the evening. Can't tell you how much comfort that gave me given that I was so stuck at the station with a kid who was totally tired, I wanted a helping hand then, and Sailesh just did it!!
Despite giving such a competitive pricing, I was amazed to see that he offered me hotels that were great, I stayed in good hotels throughout and the internal transfers given were top class. The promptness was such that when when we asked him to suggest us city lockers, activities late in night somewhere around 11-12 pm, he still researched about them and sent us important information, which saved a lot of effort.
Can't than enough the entire Shell and Pearl team to make my travel so memorable, They have become my travel advisors for life :)