I dealt with the tour specialist, Cindy – She was fantastic and awesome! She understood our needs before she gave us a proposal & I always get her responds in a timely manner in answering all my questions before & during the trip. She put us in hotels that near train stations as req and make sure that our tours were exactly go accordingly to what we wanted.
Our 9 days in Japan were well spent, 3 different experience guides being assigned to us separately for private tour in Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto & Osaka, all guides were very helpful, kind & informative with wonderful services. Especially Tour guide Tanaka Masaaki-san in Kyoto & Osaka, he is really amazing and very informative! The guides bought us to many diff places to take good angle pictures and to try their local cuisine by taking Metro, Local Bus, JR Line and Shinkansen! Everything went off without a hitch. I enjoyed the most is Mt Fuji, Hakone tour, Nara & Osaka Castle with beautiful Cherry blossom.
Highly recommend Novaland tours to anyone that want to hv pleasant and fruitful trip, really with no regret. Will definitely use Novaland Tours again in our future traveling.
I just emailed you couple of pics from our Korea trip. I tried sending you a whole bunch as you suggested but was unsuccessful. That’s OK — my daughter will make an album and CD.
Thank you for all your help. This was my fourth trip to Korea — the best one! It was so fun traveling with a teenager.
The young man in the last picture is Young Youn, a former Novaland guide who I befriended on my previous trips to Korea.
Thank you, again.
Aloha,
Joanne
Fadi was wonderful and very reliable. Please pass on the review to the local office.
Cindy,
Sorry for the late reply. Has been busy with work and other matters.
Firstly, thanks for all your support and arrangement to make our holidays in Japan a wonderful experience and well organised ones. You are the main key for this, your support and continuous update and always be there for us (timely and engaging via whatsapp), very much appreciated.
Once again, Cindy well done on your great support and hardwork !!! keep up your great work!
S.Sugu
1=poor, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=very good, 5=excellent
Aspect | Mark(1-5) | Advice or Remark | |
Travel Consultant (Cindy) | 5 | Always there, timely support, ontime follow up and updates and attention to details. | |
Tour Guides Choyo Tanaka
Hisashi Tokuda
Makiko Shigetani | Command of English | 3 | Among all, Hisashi from Osaka is much better in English |
Knowledge of Subjects | 4 | All are equally good here. They have planned schedule and share the info before we start the trip. | |
Ability of Explain | 4 | All good and covered what we expected | |
Attitude | 4 | Great attitude, no issue at all…also, we know Japan people, they are humble and nice….patience. Well done ! | |
Flexibility | 4 | All good here too, they are flexible with our plans | |
Drivers and Cars | 4 | Nothing much to say here since we use it for Fuji mountain trip, safe driving skills and timely too ! | |
Hotels | Location | 4 | I like the proposals, all closer to train station and its make it so easier to commute. |
Comfort | 4 | Hotels are good. I like the airport hotel due to the size of the room, the rest is smaller but this is expected in Japan. | |
Sights or Activities | Worthiness of Visit | 5 | We did much more since we had the train JR tickets, this is a real handy and we plan it well . everyone enjoyed the trip…. |
Meet Your Interests? | 5 | Very much and more …we covered Hiroshima | |
Too Tight or Too Loose? | 4 | About right | |
Meals | NA | Our tour guide suggested the places, we been and enjoyed, great suggestion from them | |
Public Transportation (train, flight, cruise, etc.) | 5 | All great with ontime as always…we enjoyed all , train, bus, taxi, cruise…. | |
Any Other Aspect | 5 | It was all great plans from Cindy, proposals and with great help from the guides, we have no issue at all …its all great experience in Japan and we enjoyed …the trip | |
Overall Score of the Whole Package | 5 | Novaland tours, can tailor our trips based on individual/personal requirement and also handle the change at last minutes without any issue. Great support and service. Well done team and keep up the good work !!! Once again, thank you ! | |
Thank you for rollout on our trip!
The driving guide, Mr. Miyano, is very knowledgeable and speaks English very well. We are enjoying his help.Weather was not good yesterday so had to adjust our tour destination schedule a bit. Not a problem.
The hotel is quite comfortable. Room is large and perfect for a multi day stay. Hotel staff is excellent as is the dining.
The onsen is typical and the outdoor onsen is enjoyable. We are enjoying the bathing a lot!
Highland Resort view of Mt Fuji is perfect!!
The Takayama and Shirakawa sites were far superior the Iyashi no Sato place. Overall we are pleased with the trip.
1=poor, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=very good, 5=excellent
Aspect | Mark(1-5) | Advice or Remark | |
Travel Consultant | 5 | I was impressed by the flexibility and response times from Kate about the trip. I also realize we high expectations and gave little time to ensure they were met. In that regard, we were very satisfied. | |
Tour Guides | Command of English | 4 | Oded was great. No problem with the English language. |
Knowledge of Subjects | 4 | Oded presented excellent information about the sites we visited and the various topics that were addressed. | |
Ability of Explain | 5 | Oded had no problem explaining what he understood as valuable information. | |
Attitude | 5 | Oded was humble and witty. We enjoyed our time with him greatly. | |
Flexibility | 5 | Oded was very flexible, modifying the schedule as needed by changes of events. | |
Drivers and Cars | 3 | Oded drove during our guided tour. He did a good job and was cautious to make us feel safe. The driver who picked us up from the airport and brought us to Tel Aviv was good, but the vehicle was much older and appeared to be a personal vehicle. The driver who brought us back to the airport at the end of the trip was very professional and had a nice vehicle, although his English was very limited. (This was not the same driver who picked us up originally.) | |
Hotels | Location | 3 | The locations were excellent. Right where we needed to be. |
Comfort | 3 | When staying in Tel Aviv and Tiberius, we enjoyed the hotels greatly. The Fattal hotel chain appears to be top notch. The food was good, and the rooms were all updated. The Dan Boutique in Jerusalem left much to be desired. It was very dated. I had a cockroach in my room on the last day of the trip. The food was okay, but not great. The hospitality was only acceptable. Upon researching the hotels in Jerusalem, I talked with my friends who were touring at the same time and the Hotel Grand Court – Jerusalem was much better priced, and the rooms were much larger than our hotel. They also had a package for and dinner in their pricing. I didn’t remember until they reminded me but we stayed at that hotel in 2017 and were very satisfied with the accommodations and the food. I’m sure the pricing would have been comparable to what we paid for the Dan Boutique. | |
Sights or Activities | Worthiness of Visit | 4 | Since I (Rick Ponzo) was the one who created the site list, I was very happy with the sites we visited. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to tour the En Gedi Nature Reserve which is one of my favorite places in all of Israel because we were 10 minutes late for the entry. The people manning the station were very argumentative and unreasonable. I will be writing to the tourism ministry about our encounter there. |
Meet Your Interests? | 4 | Most of our interests were met with the exception of En Gedi. | |
Too Tight or Too Loose? | 5 | Flexibility was more important than too tight or too loose. | |
Meals | 3 | We ate out on the town for most of our meals, having breakfast at the hosting hotels. As mentioned previously, the Fattal chain offered the best meals, while the Dan Boutique was adequate, but sometimes rude. | |
Public Transportation (train, flight, cruise, etc.) | 4 | We only took 1 taxi while in Israel on our free day, and it will be something we remember forever as we fit 5 adult men into a smaller Toyota vehicle. | |
Any Other Aspect | 4 | Overall, the trip was very good. We were initially surprised by the cost of food in the local restaurants, but realized that we were in Israel, and should expect it. | |
Overall Score of the Whole Package | 4 | The overall cost was higher than expected, especially when presented with the lower level of quality of the hotel in Jerusalem. My room had an uncomfortable desk chair, and no other place to sit except the bed, and a small ottoman. Derek and Joel had the best room, but it still had the feel that we were back in the 1970’s. Michael and William had a room with 1 chair, and nowhere else to sit. The Dan Boutique also told us the breakfast was at 7:00 a.m., but found out it actually opened at 6:30 a.m. It would have been nice to know earlier so we could begin our tour earlier. I appreciate Kate keeping in contact with me throughout the trip. | |
I inquired about tailor-made tour with 3 tour specialists and Novaland was the first to response. The other two took about a week. They have specialists to take care of you in the airport when you arrive and help with immigration. We did not need to stand in line. Once you passed through immigration, your tour guide and driver will meet you and bring you to your transportation. When we arrive at the hotel, our guide did the check-in for us. All we did was relax and enjoy our vacation. When is time to depart, the airport specialist will take care of you and make sure everything goes smoothly. Novaland makes you feel like a VIP from the minute you arrive until you depart!
More important, I chose Novaland because of Helen timely responsiveness. She is based in China. It does not matter what day of the week or time of the day; she will respond to your questions. Being in a strange foreign country, my biggest concern was the ability to reach out to Novaland if something went wrong. When our guide went MIA in Aswan, I was able to reach Helen and she took care of everything for us. When we missed our connecting flights from Cairo to Jordan, she stays up till 2 am to make sure everything goes well. She is a quintessential tour specialist who places customer service above all things. Our tour guide in Cairo, Mustafa Shah, came to meet us at the airport (past 12 am) when he heard we missed our connecting flight and stayed with us until we were able to get an alternate connecting flight (cannot overemphasize this - AVOID Cairo Airlines at all costs). By the time everything was taken care of, it was around 1 am and Mustafa helped convince Burger King at the airport to serve us dinner!
When I was unhappy with one of the tour guides in Aswan, Novaland replaced him with another guide the next day. If you want a relaxing, stress-free vacation, I strongly recommend Helen.
Charles
Thank you for the message! Everything has been so amazing, we have very impressed. Thank you for checking in!
Erin