Best of Taiwan 9 Days Tour Package

Customer Reviews

• BK

  Bruce

  · November 16th, 2024
  Dishonest and Incompetent Tour Company My family and I have just completed a 9-day guided tour of Taiwan run by Delightful Travel . In full disclosure, there were many problems with our tour that occurred as a result of dishonesty and multiple mistakes made by Delightful Travel. One issue was an extremely serious one, which was so significant that if Delightful Travel had properly disclosed this crucial information, we would not have even booked this tour with this company Delightful Travel lied about and greatly mischaracterized many aspects of the tour and also deliberately failed to disclose very important and critical information. The first deception was calling this a 9- day guided tour of Taiwan when it was actually a 6-day guided tour. The first and last days of the tour are arrival and departure days without any tour guides and the next to last day of the tour was a “free day” without any guided tours. Another significant deception by Delightful Travel is that they want you to believe that their tour company actually runs the whole tour because there is nothing on their website that indicates that 5 of the 6 days that are actually guided tours days are actually run by a Taiwan travel company called Edison Tours. Another deception is that Delightful Travel wants you to believe that the other travelers on your tour would be travelers that booked their tours through Delightful Travel because there is nothing on their website that indicates that it would be anything else. But the reality is that our "tour group" would actually be made up of people that came from many different tour companies and would be thrown together by their secret subcontractor, Edison Tours, in one large bilingual tour group. (Much more about how Delightful Travel deliberately hid the fact that this was a tour given in both Mandarin and English will be discussed later in this review.) Another deliberate deception occurred when I contacted Delightful Travel within 2 weeks of the beginning of our tour to ask how many people would be in our tour group, and they replied that there would be a total of 20 people. As it turned out, we had 31 people on our tour. While I can understand a small deviation in knowing the number of people on a tour, it seems very logical that within 2 weeks of the start of the tour that any competent tour company would have a much more precise knowledge of the number of people on a tour and not provide a number that is off by over 50%. But the most egregious deception by Delightful Travel was the company’s failure to disclose the fact that the 5-day guided tour around the island of Taiwan was not an tour conducted in English as the Delightful Travel website explicitly stated it would be, but instead It was actually a bilingual tour conducted in both Mandarin and English. On their very own Delightful Travel website, it states in the description of the tour that it is a “Professional English Land Tour”. Very interestingly though, when you look at the website of the subcontractor who is actually running the tour for Delightful Travel which is the Edison Tours website), you will see the tour description of their tour entitled " 5-Day Best of Taiwan: Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Kenting, Hualien" (which is the tour that Delightful Travel booked us on), in a section that follows the description of the tour on their website, it very prominently states as the very first item shown in a section entitled "Important Notice" the following: “Important Notice: Tour will be conducted in Mandarin and English." This raises a very significant question as to why Edison Tours decided that the number one fact that they wanted to make their customers aware of was that it would be a bilingual tour. But Delightful Travel decided that not only was it not important to reveal this fact, but they also decided to hide this fact by lying and plainly stating it was a "Professional English tour”. We have previously been on several multilingual tours and have greatly disliked these tours because there always seemed to be an imbalance between what was being said in one of languages compared to the other language. In fact, on one bilingual tour we took in South America, the part that was spoken in Spanish would sometimes go on for 5 minutes or more and then what was was supposed to be the same information in English lasted about 30 seconds. In addition to feeling that we were missing out on information, we consistently found it more difficult to follow the continuity of the information being presented because of the constant interruptions caused by the switching back and forth between 2 or 3 languages. We disliked these previous multilingual tour experiences so much that we vowed to never take such a tour again. But because of Delightful Travel's utter failure to disclose that this was a multilingual tour, we wound up booking a tour that we would NEVER have wanted to take. But the fact is that Delightful Travel materially misrepresented this tour and essentially tricked us into taking this tour, and by doing so, they ruined our Taiwan tour experience and enjoyment. And then, there were multiple other problems that occurred that probably would not have occurred if Delightful Travel was a competent tour company. The first problem was that despite promising to provide the final details of our tour 2 weeks prior to the start of the tour, it required five separate messages and one phone call to finally receive the information one week later than promised. The second problem was that despite contacting Delightful Travel 3 separate times (with the last 2 times occurring within a month of the start of our tour) with the details of our planned one-day early arrival date and our independent hotel booking, Delightful Travel failed to inform the people in Taiwan of the correct information. This resulted in the driver who picked us up at the airport upon our arrival taking us to the wrong hotel. Then on our next day in Taipei, we made the transfer from our first independently-booked hotel to the hotel that Delightful Travel had booked for us to officially start our tour in Taipei. When we arrived at the second hotel, they asked for the confirmation number of our reservation. They were very surprised when we told them that we did not receive a reservation confirmation number from Delightful Travel and, as a result, they had quite a bit of difficulty locating our reservations. But finally they were able to do so. If Delightful Travel had provided to us the hotel confirmation number, the check-in process would have been much easier and faster. On the Delightful Travel website, it states that all of the hotels used on the tour would be rated 4-Star or 5-star rated hotels and the hotels that we stayed at during the 5 days of the guided tour that was run by the subcontractor, Edison Tours, the hotels were all worthy of 4 or 5 star ratings. But the first Delightful Travel-chosen hotel in which we stayed was called Hotel Papa Whale. All four of our family members were very disappointed in the quality of this hotel and felt that it was greatly overrated as a 4 star hotel. Or to put it another way, if the Papa Whale hotel is rated as a 4 star hotel, then this is an insult to every other 4 star-rated hotel in the world. Another problem occurred at the end of our tour when we were checking into the hotel wherever we would be spending our last two nights in Taipei. Despite Delightful Travel knowing that my son and daughter were sharing a room that required two separate beds, the hotel had assigned a one bedded room to my son and daughter. The hotel reception stated that they had not received any request from Delightful Travel for a 2 bedded room. Fortunately, this problem was corrected relatively quickly, but it should never have occurred in the first place. All of the deception, the failure to disclose very important information, the many mistakes, and being tricked into taking a multilingual tour because of a deliberate lie by Delight Travel affected every aspect of our tour, including missing out on some of the information that we had hoped to have learned on our tour, and It severely affected our enjoyment of the tour. I would not recommend using Delightful Travel under any circumstances. POST SCRIPT: A couple of days after I posted the above review on the TourRadar website, Delightful Travel posted a response. In their response, they said they wanted to address all of my concerns. Delightful Travel must use a very unique method of counting or they have a very unique definition of the word “all” because in my review, there were 10 concerns that I discussed, and Delightful Travel responded to only 2 of them. And as expected, Delightful Travel replied with irrelevant attempts at explanation.and false statements. With regard to the tour being conducted in 2 different languages, Delightful Travel said that there was only one member of our tour group (out of a total of 31 people on our tour) who was not fluent in English..That’s a very surprising comment to make especially when you consider that no one from Delightful Travel was on our tour and consequently had no contact at all with any of the people on our tour. But since my family and I were actually on the tour and met our fellow travelers in person, we can definitively say that there were at least a half dozen people on our tour who spoke or understood very little English. This attempt to provide some sort of an explanation by Delightful Travel is so ridiculous because whether there was one person or 20 people on our tour who did not speak or understand English does not change the fact that the tour was conducted in both Mandarin and English, The only other “concern” that Delightful Travel decided to reply to had to do with the fact that they failed to arrange for 2 separate beds in one of the hotel rooms in which my son and daughter were staying. And then, Delightful Travel tried to use this explanation to proudly brag about helping to fix the room situation. Delightful Travel falsely claimed that they did not know that separate beds were needed or requested, As I had mentioned in my review above, .this is the same Delightful Travel company that could not competently arrange our airport arrival pickup despite 3 separate messages about our arrival details, and we wound up being taken to the wrong hotel. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Delightful Travel did not know about our preferences for hotel bedding arrangements. Delightful Travel states on their website that they have 20 years experience. Wouldn’t it be logical to expect any truly competent and experienced tour company to ask their clients about any preferences or requests regarding hotel bedding arrangements if they didn’t already know what they were? But apparently, 20 years of experience has taught Delightful Travel absolutely nothing, because they obviously did not care or bother to find out . Instead, they just incompetently booked any random bedding configuration. Then astonishingly enough, Delightful Travel had the temerity to very proudly congratulate themselves for having helped fix the very problem their own incompetence had caused.. Avoid this company.
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  Delightful Travel commented on this review

  Dear Bruce, Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. We understand that the situation you described surrounding your Taiwan tour was disappointing and impacted your overall experience. I’d like to address each of your concerns... Show more
  Trip date: November 2024
• TC

  Teresita

  · March 11th, 2024
  This was packaged as a 9 day tour. Its actually 6 days.Other das were travel days and free time.
  Trip date: March 2024
• BK

  Brian

  · January 14th, 2024
  Alan Chou was an exceptionally good guide for the 5 day coach tour component. There was a 1 day tour for just the two of us up front with a free day in-between. Really a 7 day holiday with arrival and departure days making it sort of 9 days. Toroko Gorge was a highlight. Hotels were great, once you work out how to switch off all the lights. Tedious systems that would be OK in your own home once learned, but daft for such short stays. Still well worth 5 stars overall !!
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  Trip date: January 2024
• DK

  David

  · October 29th, 2023
  The trip was great. Eli at Delightful travel is such a delightful person to work with. Communication was great. They followed up every step of the way and problems are corrected immediately. I would definitely use tourradar and delightful travel again. However, the tour company used in taiwan can use some improvement. The guide named John and driver are definitely not used to western travelers.
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  Delightful Travel commented on this review

  Thank you for your kind words and feedback! We're delighted that you enjoyed your trip with Delightful Travel and our communication met your expectations. We'll address the concerns about the guide -John to ensure a better experience in the future. We... Show more
  Trip date: October 2023
• AC

  Alexander

  · September 29th, 2023
  It was well worth planning our trip around the 9-day tour with some days added on. The friendly meet and greet by Cathy at the airport made getting to and checking into the hotel effortless. The one-day tour preceding the main trip around the island was excellent. Our driver and guide Jacky (Jack) made the visits both informative and interesting, plus an opportunity to gain an understanding of life and economics for persons living in Taiwan. The next day we explored the immediate vicinity of our hotel plus the Museum The follow-on bus tour was superb. In all 1100 km round trip in an air-conditioned bus (with WIFI) driven by Eason Tseng – careful, courteous and conscientious, 27 fellow travellers of various nationalities and of course our guide Alan Chow who provided not only leadership coupled with an anecdotal commentary, but helpful advice. This tour around the island tour was comprehensive, an absolute must for any first time visitor to Taiwan. We extended our visit by a further four days using Taipei as our hub. Hotels throughout our stay were 5-star. While each offers a 1st class laundry service, they also provide a self-service cash operated laundry for the budget minded. They say first impressions are always lasting and they include: cleanliness - even in remote rural areas - yes you may find old vehicles and the like but no litter anywhere! Ease of getting around - if in doubt just ask - people are friendly and while only about 15% of the populous speak English there is always someone willing to help. Public transport - just buy a 2 or 3 day MRT pass (rail) or a multi-pass to include busses. Also taxi's are inexpensive. Better yet - our Westpac bank card (not Mastercard or Visa) - there are many banks with ATM plus the Family Mart ATMs give you direct access to your bank account back in Australia. You can check your balance and draw Taiwan $ cash directly - foreign transaction fee Au$5 regardless of the amount drawn. Furthermore the Taiwanese are scrupulously honest - no tourist mark-up, no tips.
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  Delightful Travel commented on this review

  Dear Alexander, Thank you for your glowing review! We're thrilled to hear that your 9-day tour of Taiwan, with added days, was a rewarding experience. It's wonderful to know that Cathy's airport welcome, Jacky's informative guidance, and the entire... Show more
  Trip date: September 2023