Insight Vacations Reviews

This is a well designed, well planned and extremely interesting tour which both my daughter and myself enjoyed tremendously. Our guide Basham was an absolute fountain of knowledge, always courteous, always helpful and thoughtful and really good company. Yes - it was a bit tiring with lots of walking but we are not complaining about that! The hotels ...read more were excellent and majority of meals were well above average. The weather was hot, but manageable and our bus driver kept the supply of cold water well tended. (Ed: Review based on slightly different itinerary. Trip name and itinerary updated this season)

The guide Almando was very good. The driver Sal was also very helpful. nothing was to much trouble for either one. We did order a double bed and kept getting singles, I thought it must have been the tour booking and on the last night I mentioned it to Almando just in general and he sorted it straight away. I should have mentioned it on the first night. ...read more We will be taking a tour next year, around 22 days of Scotland and Ireland at about the same time.

Good tour. Excellent guide. Pace wasn't as relaxed as indicated in tour description. Food was OK but not great.

A great tour. We had a very knowledgeable and organised tour guide who went the extra mile to ensure we were all looked after and we had an enjoyable time. Just need to allow extra money for the optional extras, if you don't most of them you 'miss out' on some great places and experiences.

Overall I had a fabulous time on 'The Grand Tour of Italy and Sicily', we had a fun group of people, a great tour director and driver and the tour far exceeded my expectations, particularly as I was travelling alone. I did almost all of the extra excursions and if I had my time over I would do less to allow a little more down/ shopping time. I am fit ...read more and active so did not have any issues physically, however there were a couple of people on our tour who were not as fit and had problems with steep stairs, no railings and uneven surfaces combined with poor balance. As a physiotherapist, I think it would be beneficial to highlight specific fitness levels required for each excursion so that people can make informed decisions about their ability to participate. The quality of our hotels was very good, however sometimes not quite as close to the city centre as I would have liked. I was also so excited to order an ekit data card, (recommended by Insight) but was bitterly disappointed with this as having loaded $70 onto it which I was assured would enable me to keep in contact easily with my family for a month, it worked briefly in the UK then not at all. I have since contacted ekit and been told that the apps on my ipad would have used all the data in the 2 days I used it. I was not warned of this at all. Our tour director told me he had never known one to work properly. In summary, a fabulous trip, great tour director and driver, lovely clean new bus with lots of leg room, visiting some truly stunning locations.

Great tour. Easy to book through Global Journeys, who are most helpful. Just need to be careful of the optional extras on tour. While some were a great experience there were a couple that were very expensive and not worth it. But overall an excellent tour that I would recommend to anyone.

What a great holiday. Insight are surely the masters of first class coach travel and Global Journeys made it all so easy. From the opulence of the Schonbrunn Palace in Austria to the details in the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia in Turkey this was indeed a holiday with a huge variation. If you do do this tour make sure you do the optional tour to ...read more Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina truly one of the highlights of the trip.

The tour guide was very knowledgeable on the history of the areas but tended to ramble on a bit much at times. The local guides were excellent. Krakow was very interesting with a big emphasis on the history of the Kings. The highlight for me was the Salt Mines - absolutely amazing! Auschwitz - what can one say. Warsaw was surprising with the amount ...read more of rebuilding of historical sites. Berlin appeared to me to be drab. The visit to Checkpoint Charlie was spoilt by the huge crowds in the museum and one could only shuffle and see very little. Prague was beautiful and more time could easily be spent there. The only major glitch was having to trundle our own luggage down the cobblestone road to Cesky Krumlov- real revolt on the return trip when passengers all refused to trundle uphill and transport was arranged. Vienna was beautiful but not enough time. The morning visit to the Brewery could easily be removed.

Excellent with only 21 people on the tour...40 seater coach...Not being notified of a change of itinerary was of concern. Had this not been picked up and queried prior to departure we would not have been advised until Oslo. This amendment to the advertised tour should have been flagged immediately the problem was evident. Overall a good tour with a ...read more knowledgeable guide who had been doing this tour for many years and was beginning to be robotic in his presentation. Driver was excellent.

This was our second tour with Insight and was as good as the first one. The tour guide, Joanna was lovely and very knowledgeable about the sites we visited. Her enthusiasm certainly enhanced the tour. We made some friends on both tours and felt very comfortable with the whole experience. We will certainly go on an organised tour again and use Global ...read more Journeys as our preferred travel agency. Thank you Georgie.

Tour Director was professional, knowledgeable,and approachable. We were not disappointed with the locales visited or the hotels stayed at. The dining experience was okay, but became a bit repetitive, and would like to see some variation. We did all but one of the optional tours, and mostly enjoyed them. The Irish cabaret in Dublin was let down by the ...read more atrocious seating, where we were jammed in like sardines. Only those close to the front had a good view, and we only saw bits and pieces from the waist up. The Scottish dinner and cabaret in Edinburgh is an example of how it could be done much better, ie individual tables.

Fantastic tour. Best tour director ever!

Compared to other Insight Country Roads Tours that we have taken, we hardly ever went on anything other than a highway/expressway and appeared to spend too much time selling their option excursions and changing the itinerary to accommodate these excursions. For instance, we spent our second day out of Paris (3rd day of the tour) entirely as a free day ...read more in Dijon ( a nice city but hardly requires a full day to walk around the old centre of town), when by the itinerary, we were supposed to go on a drive to a country village and wine tasting. These activities had been squashed into the afternoon of the day before resulting in traveling long distances on the expressway and getting into our accommodation late, about 6:30 or later. The next day those taking the optional excursion filled in their day nicely. They need to take a look at our other tour with Albatross, which indeed did travel on Country Roads.

Great tour with plenty of own time to explore, quality accommodation and a fantastic tour Guide (Beatta) and terrific driver (Tamas).

Apart from some bad weather the tour was very good. Best part was Portugal. Tour should be extended 2 days to enjoy Salamanca for 2 nights. Accommodation was superb throughout. Our guide was good but at times could have provided more information. Lots of silent periods in the coach when we compared with a subsequent Trafalgar Tour. Arrived late at some ...read more destinations - suspect lunch breaks could have been shorter to prevent that - say 40 minutes not 1 hour.

This was our first organised tour and it exceeded our expectations. Our tour guide, Dahan was great, his general knowledge of his country and his particular knowledge of every site we visited was amazing. The tour was busy but it had to be to see everything, the people were lovely, the hotels excellent and the food very good. We will visit Turkey again ...read more on the strength of this tour, we were so impressed with the land and the people. Thank you Insight, Global Journeys and especially Georgie for organising everything for us. (Ed: Review based on slightly different itinerary. Trip name and itinerary updated this season)

This was my first overseas tour - 16 Day Grand Tour of Italy & Sicily. I was totally amazed how well organised the tour was and how everything ran so smoothly. The Insight tour coach was so very comfortable and as we were told, extra leg room was fantastic. Our Tour Guide, Chris, was so helpful in every way and very informative. Our coach driver Michele ...read more was an amazing driver - considering traffic in Italy can be very tight. Special mention to Georgie who was so helpful in every way organising our amazing trip, all professionally organised. I would highly recommend Global Journeys to organise your travel and I definitely would travel with Insight Vacations again.

Interesting countries visited and lots of variety. An interesting feature of this trip was that for the first three days we were accompanied by John Boulding, CEO of Insight and by Brett Tolman, CEO of the Travel Corporation, of which we were told Insight is one of 15 companies. These men particitated in all our activities and shared meals with us, ...read more they questioned us on all our opinions of the tour. It was surprising to find that such serior executives really wanted to find out how their business operated at the consumer level.

This was the first coach tour company that we had been on as we normally do it on our own. We have high expectations of the quality of our vacations which are twice a year. Insight were extraordinary in every way - service, comfort, organization, and the accommodation were all top notch. The knowledge of our talented Tour Guide and Coach Driver whom ...read more we always felt safe with. They also accommodated for our boys 12 and 13 years of age, one of their best trips they said. Daniel our Tour Guide always made sure they felt included. We had 32 on our trip, Max is 40 people anyway so loads of leg room, and our personal belongs on the coach were always safe as the driver is with the coach the whole time, if not its locked up. So good - we finished this tour on Jan 9th this year (2013) and already booked next one to Turkey in September. So confident I'm taking the boys on my own as I feel in safe hands on this tour . Thanks Frances for all your patience and assistance.

Insight had a well paced tour with a variety of experiences. The optional events, tours were marvelous. Cultural events outstanding for restaurant, entertainment and food. Tour guide excellent, friendly, efficient, knowledgeabl and she shared her own experiences growing up in the region and made us feel special. I am sure she deflected problems before ...read more they arose as there were none apparent. Lost luggage dealt with well by hotel and tour staff. The effort made to accommodate the Christmas season, with celebratory meals, and ensuring we were well entertained and fed in cities with eateries and things otherwise closed for feast days. Advertised as a Christmas market tour and we had ample time for this. Info about words in Czech, Slovak, German and Hungarian would have been good, and info about church service times would have been appreciated. Midnight mass at cathedral was a safe bet and we went.