Insight Vacations Reviews

It's a cultural tour, more historically than contemporary. The tour director's incredible academic knowledge of the history of places we visited is very much part of it. Very organized and didn't leave much slack to stop for random impromptu interactions. (Ed: Review based on slightly different itinerary. Trip name and itinerary updated this seaso ...read moren)

Tour director was very knowledgeable and helpful. Coach was comfortable. Very good first experience for my Dad.... would join Insight Vacations again definitely.

Very happy with Global Journeys in that Michelle White has handled our booking magnificently - she is very approachable and always happy to help and assist! Insight Tours has always been excellent (I did a tour with them last May 2014 with my mum) and our Tour Director this year is the best! His name is Tim Pendlebury and he just gives you his 100% ...read more attention all the time and always look after all his 39 Insight Tours coach guests. We really enjoyed our time with Tim and hope to be in his future tours again! Insight Tours should extend the Wifi on the coach to at least 200mb as 100mb is not sufficient at all. Thank you very much.

Enjoyed our holiday, picturesque places we visited and Fjords area was very pretty and scenic. Our tour guide was very helpful and interesting. Great coach driver which made us feel very safe along some very difficult roads and weather conditions. On the down side we felt that some of the other guests on our tour had better accommodation to us so ...read more probably wouldn't use Insight again and also long wait at airport for our transfer to our hotel. Our travel arrangements and paper work was excellent so we will consider using Global Journeys again in the future.

Our French Heritage tour in May-June coincided with many festivals such as the Grand Prix in Monaco, Cannes Film Festival and the Roma Gypsies blessing in Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer along with the French Tennis Open in Paris - these added to the pleasure of the tour. We greatly enjoyed our tour guide Laurent (in the Country Road tour) as he gave us great ...read more insight as a native Frenchman into the culture, history, food and wines of each place we visited. As the French Heritage is a new itinerary made up of joining the southern Country Road tour with the northern Normandy tour, there was no welcome meal to give an opportunity for us to meet the new people in the latter tour. Booking details went well except that our departure date on airfare tickets did not agree with the end of the Insight tour.

Fabulous tour, probably because of excellent tour guide as much as anything. A lot of attention to detail. Global Journeys should make sure their clients are well aware of the costly (but well worthwhile) Optional Excursions and the fact that these excursions eat in to free time (which makes the tour quite fast paced). In order to beat queues and ...read more crowds, there were a lot of very early starts. Also, the accommodation on the ship (Celestyal Olympia) used to cruise the Greek islands was disappointing. I was told by others that it was a long way from equaling even a very basic P&O cruise that Aussies are used to. We paid for an upgrade (to superior class which meant a porthole window) before we left but found that we were given the same accommodation as those that didn't pay for an upgrade. When we tried to upgrade further (after seeing our cabin), nothing was available. (Ed: Review based on slightly different itinerary. Trip name and itinerary updated this season)

Our tour director Michael was fantastic. Very knowledgeable and offered interesting insights into the various regions we visited. Accommodation was better than other tours we have been on especially in Chamonix where we stayed in a fantastic chalet in the snow covered mountains. Our Optional excursions were excellent and we took every one on offer. ...read more We went on several excursions each day and never felt we were pushed or did not have enough time. Dinning out and in house dinning was very good quality in most instances. Our coach driver Ramzi was excellent and a very experienced driver and it was a pleasure to be driven in a new coach. Overall I would recommend this trip to everyone of any age and walking ability and we will not hesitate to organise another Insight Tour again in the near future.

We thoroughly enjoyed everything about this itinerary and the services of Insight Vacations. Our tour director, Anne Kennedy, was outstanding and went beyond the call of duty particularly with the end of tour flights changes from the impact of the Rome airport fire. Roserio, our driver, was amazing and so professional and attentive to customer needs. ...read more This is only our second tour with Insight Vacations and will no doubt not be our last. This is our first experience with Global Journeys, and the service provided was simple, stress free, timely, and professional. Thank you Michelle.

Absolutely fantastic tour - Ernesta our tour guide was unbelievable! Everything was perfect. Cannot wait to book another tour! Insight accommodation was more than we expected! Loved it loved it loved it. So many amazing highlights. Everyday was more amazing than the previous. Thank you Emily Cran for looking after our booking - very efficient and ...read more professional. Definitely book with you again.

It was a shame that we missed the first day of our tour of Turkey because Turkish Airlines bumped us off our flight to Instanbul due to an earlier flight cancellation. We were then unable to get a seat on a flight to Instanbul until the following day, which was Day 2 of the tour. Being a Sunday when this happened it was not easy to contact Insight ...read more to let them know about our unfortunate delay, which was outside our control completely, although I was able to leave messages with Insight's London Office and the hotel in Istanbul. This hiccup over, we joined the tour group late in the afternoon of Day 2. Our tour director was nothing short of brilliant. He not only had outstanding people and management skills, but his in-depth knowledge of the places we visited, their history, geography, and modern society was simply outstanding, and his ability to communicate this equally as good. We learnt so much about Turkey - both ancient and modern - that our memories of that part of the trip will stay with us forever.

We joined the Greek Island cruise section of our holiday in Istanbul. While this was a more relaxed paced, we found we had been spoilt with having such an outstanding tour director with us throughout Turkey. Because a number of different tour groups joined the cruise, the group we had was suddenly much bigger, coaches for the land excursions more crowded and overall the tour guiding was not nearly as informative and interesting as our Turkey experience had been. This may have been influenced by the nature of a cruise differing from the nature of a smaller, more intimate tour group travelling throughout a country together. But this does not explain the different attitudes between the tour directors. Whilst our Turkey tour director was very open in sharing and acknowledging the historical past and the present of the country in a way that acknowledged how the past has shaped the present, we found that the Greek tour guides always seemed defensive of Greece, relying primarily on its ancient past without teaching us also about modern day Greece. They did not distinguish well between historical fact and mythical history, and this was frustrating for anyone who actually had any knowledge of ancient history. We definitely missed being led on a tour of discovering how more recent history (e.g. the last 1000 years) has influenced the development of modern Greece, and just how Greece functions today. We always got the feeling that somehow the Greeks have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, and only had the glories of their ancient past to boast of... I actually don't think this should be the case, as Greece is undoubtedly a very unique country. it's just that the tour guide failed to bring this out.

Nevertheless, overall the trip was fantastic. Without at doubt, the Turkish Delights part of the trip, though very full on, was an amazing and unforgettable experience that has changed my understanding and knowledge of modern Turkey enormously. Marvel Tourism, that manages the Insight tours in Turkey, really has got their act together! Well done!

We wanted to experience the cold weather, snow and living in the Arctic and weren't disappointed. Everything went like clockwork. Tour director Chad Hartin and coach driver Oleg were excellent. We had good weather most days. Even when it was overcast it never rained heavily. The tour group were all very nice and we made new friends. Saw some wonderful ...read more sights, got up close to wildlife, reindeer, huskies. etc. We took all the extra excursions so it was very lively but we thoroughly enjoyed everything. Took lots of great photos too.

Highly recommend this tour. Great hotels, pace was good, saw some fantastic sights. Costa Del Sol not that good, hotel good but too much of a tourist holiday destination. But would certainly do it again. Loved the Spanish food wine and people.

Enjoyed especially with the knowledge of the fabulous Tour Director Stephen Thacker. He pointed out little details and included his vast travel stories and most of all his upbeat positive attitude.

The tour was very enjoyable with a knowledgeable friendly guide. The guide was always available and happy to help, well organised and managed the tour group well. The scenery was beautiful and the travel comfortable with a friendly expert driver.

A wonderful trip overall, very well organised, professional and knowledgeable tour guide, comfortable coach with lots of leg rooms, all hotels are in the central location. Would be better if all the hotels have free wifi.

Had a really fantastic adventure. The tour guide was very informative and took good care of all of us. The driver was skilful and the ride was indeed smooth. The hotels and food were generally great. One hotel the breakfast was below par but the location was fantastic. This cannot be helped I suppose because its the only hotel in that vicinity (Lake ...read more Powell). Most part of the tour was very scenic and this is by far by my greatest adventure.

Overall we had a memorable fun holiday. Big thanks to our tour director Elena - she always do her best to keep us on time. And also big thanks to our driver Bernado for his best driving skill. Thanks to Hannah Campbell for making our booking so much easier. She is really polite and courteous.

We were very pleased with this tour - the coach, our guide, (there was some beautiful little extras - provided by the guide ) our coach driver, the accommodation, the included tours - our only concerns were the optional extras - 6 in total were listed but we only did 3. We had allowed the extra money, researched the tours and we were looking forward ...read more to them, but the tour director decided against doing them. Our welcome dinner meal was very poor in quality and so was one of our other included night meals.

Overall a great itinerary at a comfortable pace. Highlight was the accommodation inside the National Parks at Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon. These are NOT 5 star hotels and some on the tour complained of the 'basic' standard forgetting that these are National Park cabins and not the Grand Hyatt....still they were clean and comfortable and only a few ...read more steps from the rims. I feel we could have spent one more day at Bryce Canyon as this would allow for some short walks around the park. Lake Powell could be one day instead of 2. A place to use as a base but not much to do there itself once you have done the boat tour. I was able to go into Page to join a tour through Antelope Canyon - is there a reason why this is not included or offered as an option in the tour? A majestic canyon well worth the effort! I would not waste time going to Cameron Trading Post, very much a 'set-up for tourists' and also contained a lot of products made overseas instead of local work. Native American designs made in China, quite disappointing to see. Our tour guide Larry was most helpful and patient and knowledgeable. He made sure everything ran smoothly for each of us. Meals were always great when included.

The trip was conducted by an experienced tour guide who made every effort to ensure that everything worked perfectly. Forward planning was executed in a most efficient manner. We were fortunate that the Fall colours developed strongly during the latter half of the journey. Special mention must be made of the coach driver 'Randy' who drove with safely ...read more as his prime concern. He was always first off the coach at each stop and was there to assist all passengers to alight. Accommodation was of a high standard. While we would have preferred to eat fruit for the 'on-your-own' lunches it was obligatory to use restaurants in those towns where there was no public toilet facilities. In a group of 40 participants we ended the short tour not meeting some of the other passengers. I would recommend that the daily seating plan should be varied so you are not sitting with the same group for the whole journey.