Insight Vacations Reviews
The 600 Insight Vacations reviews listed below are from past clients of Global Journeys that have traveled with Insight Vacations. Each review has been individually verified by our team.
Hotels were excellent, except the Shearton 3
Country Roads of Croatia
Thomas & Lois Stalley, NSW, Australia, May 2015
The Shearton in Zagred was way below standard for such a tour. It was old, smelly and well worn. eg holes in the carpet. Insight needs better booking of their rooms, they are a volume buyer, as such they should ensure everybody has a good room. The Hotels were excellent, except the Shearton. Every night there were concerns over rooms, mainly position.
Great way to travel Croatia the first time 2
Country Roads of Croatia
Gave, NSW, Australia, May 2015
Loved that we saw so much of Croatia at an easy pace and that we spent mostly 2 nights at most places. Would have liked to see Lake Bled as well as caves in Slovenia. Tour guide was excellent and informative, much better than some local guides. Was quite a large group around 40 but quite organised. Really enjoyed the islands...be aware lots of cruise read more ships in Dubrovnik. Some lovely surprises with Insight when touring around. Of course it is a tour and you can't have everything. Great way to travel Croatia the first time.
This tour is comprehensive and fantastic. It gives you the full treatment of Italy in 17 days, is very busy and requires a reasonable level of personal fitness. Lots of walking over cobblestones and slippery walkways. Insight staff i.e. the Tour Director and Coach driver were just fantastic. Both friendly and professional. Extra leg room on the coach read more was just great. I also enjoyed the local city/town guides that we had as well as they were able to give a deeper understanding of each location and the history associated there with. Hotel accommodation was fine however four stars in Italy is not as good as four stars in Australia. Generally the rooms were small by our standards, although many of the hotels were stylish with great locations and very accessible to city centres. If the tour had a weakness it would be the food - at most of the hotels; where included in the program or optional food inclusions. When we got the time to visit local Italian restaurants, (where the locals eat), we were able to better experience the Italian food experience than we had in our hotels. Overall this is a great tour and professionally managed by Insight and their great tour staff.
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 season)
Very good first experience for my dad 2
Jenny, NSW, Australia, May 2015
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.
Greatly enjoyed the festivals and our tour guide 4
French Heritage
Connie & Doug Fraser, NSW, Australia, May 2015
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)
Recommend this trip to everyone of any walking ability 5
Country Roads of France
Helen & David, Australia, May 2015
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.
Enjoyed everything about this itinerary 4
Country Roads of Southern Italy & Sicily
Joy & Lou, QLD, Australia, May 2015
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.
Unforgettable experience 2
Wonders of Turkey
Jennifer & Christopher Elliott, NSW, Australia, Apr 2015
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 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.
Scenery was beautiful and the travel comfortable 1
Eastern Capitals & Dalmatian Riviera
Debra & Alan, QLD, Australia, Apr 2015
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 1
Kee Tan, VIC, Australia, Mar 2015
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.
