Tour Operators - Tucan Travel

Hi there. I work for Tucan Travel and I'm writing in response to the concerns expressed by Arigirl. I would like to reassure Arigirl that we took her complaint very seriously. As you would expect of any professional company, any allegation of inappropriate conduct is investigated thoroughly and properly. In order to protect the feelings and privacy of Arigirl I will not comment on the specifics of this complaint however I will say that it is clear to us that there were misunderstandings on both sides, most likely due to cultural differences and differences in communication styles. We have spoken to the guide concerned to get his point of view and have informed him about Arigirl's feelings about this matter. We have not had any other complaints about this guide or his conduct. The Trekking the Atlas tour covers areas of Morocco which in general receives few western visitors and local people have a more conservative style of dress and personal expression than western people. It is important for travellers to take this into consideration when travelling to Morocco and other parts of the Middle East. Morocco is an amazing country with beautiful landscapes, a fascinating mix of cultures and an amazing depth of history to explore - I hope that travellers will continue to enjoy this tour and this exciting country. Thanks, Cat.

Poor experience recently in south america- the tour leader had never visited any of the places before and could not speak spanish and didnt have a mobile and had to borrow a passengers mobile extensively..the back wheel of the truck fell off when we were travelling at high speed (no one was injured but a near miss major accident) ..would def not recommend them

I have used Tucan travel for a 2.5 month south american tour a few years ago and was curious to see if there was any balanced reviews of how bad their services are or whether clients (and my co-travellers) had decided not to waste more time on blogging them and giving a clear, 1st hand, picture of them. It seems the latter is the case. There is one advantage of travelling by land in south america (i.e. take any tour operator, apparently there is no panacea in that department, they are all equally sordid). If you can tolerate the exhorbitantly priced tour operator, travelling by land will give you the opportunity of seeing the most breath-taking scenery on the planet. (i.e. My 1st intercontinental flight was at the age of 6 months and for the past 40 years, I have visited approx. 100 of the U.N. member states' countries). Please note that travelling with Tucan offers you no security, help or peace of mind. You are as much on your own with Tucan as you would be by yourself. If you happen to have a medical issue in the middle of nowhere, as was my case, you will be left with your bag, on the side of the road with no assistance, contacts or help. The London office will not reply your emails, neither will the "tour leader". You will be forced to ask other fellow travellers for help and where the convoy is. No, Mr. Gannon. This is not a "whinge" site. You and the Tucan team fail to acknowledge the fact that your service is nonexistent and you shirk complete responsibility of the satisfaction and safety of your customers by trying to pull a spin on opinions and shift blame to your clients. As if the people sharing their "beautiful" experiences of Tucan are natural born whingers. And furthermore, God knows from which orifice you pull out your 99% customer satisfaction. Tucan's overwhelming results look as familiar as Saddam Hussein's 2002 poll victory. However, I have to admit the "tour leader" made it extensively clear on innumerable occasions that he would not give his opinion, experience or thoughts on anything and that he (and Tucan) were responsible for nothing. Net net: Tucan does not offer anything more than you would get out of doing the road trip yourself. Please expect MANY hidden costs. On the contrary, if you were to organise the same exact trip yourself, you would have an excess budget of 1000 GBP or more (Tucan's cut for "organising" your trip). My advice, save your hard-earned money from the disappointment Tucan will assuredly offer you. Organise your trip yourself for a real adventure, which will either be more comfortable for the same price or significantly cheaper for the same "product". Almost all of the above customer experiences and comments, I and other co-travellers, have known in some form or another. Needless to say, I completed my South American tour, but bit the bullet of losing my money to them and turn around their disastrous trip into a beautiful one by finishing the trip on my own. The choice is yours customers. You decide who is a better critic of Tucan customer services. The clients. Or the staff with their 99% "realistic and empirically-validated statistics".

Hi everyone, I am the owner and CEO of Tucan Travel. What a whinge site this seems to be! It is the nature of the web that people who have a bad experience (or what they perceive to be a bad experience)want to tell everyone on the internet. 99% of people who have a great time never complain or praise their tour operator. Please let our reputation stand for itself and accept that some people don\'t enjoy their holidays and occasionally we don\'t deliver what we promise, we too are humans. We have many thousands of very happy and repeat clients... Regards, Matt

The Tucan charged us £62 for a twin room for 2 person for extra night in Lima! we could book the same room online for less than half the price!! It is not completely unexpected to incur some sort of handling fee or mark-up when booking via a tour operator (although some might actually expect preferential rates) but when I was asked on the spot when booking on the phone whether I wanted to book an extra night through the tour operator I was assuming that the extra cost would be reasonable. I do not find a mark-up of over 100% to be that reasonable. the extra night in the hotel prior to departure. I understand that the difference in price might not necessarily be going into your pockets and might more be a question of the internet booking operators negotiating better rates with the hotel than you have done yourselves, but whatever the explanation it is disappointing.

My experience with Tucan Travel is that they are shoddy operators. We spent a month travelling through South America, most of it was booked before leaving(thankfully, we only booked 3 days with Tucan). Tucan travel refused to tell me which hotels we would be staying at as I wanted to leave contact details with my family, and any wonder why. We were assured they would be 3 star, nothing could be further from the truth. At one hotel the taxi driver had to drop us off two street away, so we had to carry our suitcases,as the road was not drivable. The tour guide should not be in the industry. For example,she took us to a restaurant, we only felt like a snack so we ordered chips and a drink (which we had to pay for). The owner of the restaurant was not happy about this, and in front of us, had stern words (in spanish) with the guide. We could make out enough that we should have spent more money. The guide did not give us the courtesy of telling us what the problem was. Our experience with other tour operators in South America was great. We even stayed at a B & B that provided far superior service. If you are looking at a tour operator in South America, DO NOT USE Tucan!

We booked a Discovery tour to Africa through Tucan travel. On the web page it say this tour is "guaranteed to depart". Knowing this we spent $4000.00 in airfare and bought trip insurance, etc and two months before departure they cancelled our trip. The insurance company is refusing to reinburse our airfare because "the tour being cancelled" wasn't a good enought reason. The company offered us our deposit back and a 15% discount on any other tour they had. The fees to switch our airfares are high and airfare has increase so we are basically screwed. Beware of booking through this company.

Unfortunately with any tour of this nature you must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. I have experienced 4 trips with Tucan covering Overland, Discovery and Adventure based tours. My first and second tour in Costa Rica was by far the best of the bunch by having an excellent Guide, first rate hotels, great group members and life changing experiences, which then encouraged me to book further. My third tour again was a good experience and well organised, although with a few dissagreements between the group(to be expected) The Tour Leader ran the whole trip like an military operation which did make you feel herded but well looked after, but to be honest following the fiasco of my last trip, preferred. Unfortunately I feel compelled to warn anybody considering booking with Tucan the possible downside that you can experience with these types of tours as it really is down to the luck of the draw! My most recent and probably my final Tucan journey was an overland trip from Bolivia to Rio, from day one was it was evident that the trip was badly organised. The Tucan Trip Leader was completely disorganised and couldn\'t speak spanish (Big requirement for South America!) Had fallen out with most of the original travellers on board the bus and was sleeping with one of the group (causing accusations of preferential treatment etc). She also became imbroiled with petty arguments and resorted to playground tatics including insulting travellers, throwing tantrums, crying and refusing to organise or help some members of the group and ostracising some altogether, including one very sick lady suffering from altitude sickness. Most activities were either missed or so badly organised nobody took part and on one occasion a riot nearly broke out over the standard of the food provided by the Leader and the general state of moral. Camping and food preperation equipment was substandard and filthy and no information was fothcoming about upcoming destinations until it finally transpired that the Tour leader had never been there. Finally 5 members of a group of 19 left the tour early incuding myself and braved the rest of Brazil alone (which turned out to be fabulous) Be warned and be prepared, but you never know it may turn out to be fabulous

I just wanted to say how very much both Ben and I enjoyed our tour with you. Mostafa, with his deep knowledge and love of Egypt and that dry sense of humour, is an absolute gem, and put us total newcomers at this sort of holiday at ease as soon as we met. The group dynamic was very much set as there were 7 people who were continuing from another tour who had gelled so well they had solidified (nothing wrong with that, just an observation), so the 4 who were just starting could well have been at a disadvantage. Of course it was present - it had to be - but Mostafa was miraculous at integrating each and every one of us, including old grumble guts here and his slightly autistic child. In fact - the group brought him out of himself wonderfully, and I saw things in him I had not seen before: quite incredible. Anyway - 125% satisfaction and enjoyment from the Daveys - and we are even thinking about doing another with you! Very many thanks to both you and Laura for putting up with my silly questions pre-tour, and to you all for designing such a well run, flawless, tour. Special thanks to Mostafa for being, well, Mostafa, without whom it must surely have been somewhat different. Must go and unpack, but I wanted to give you my thoughts now! With very best wishes - till next time, Andrew.

Since writing my last email, I feel sure that my guide has read it. Not only has he shown that he can change his atitude if confronted, but he can also be a nice guy and do a good job. Also my judgement of the accommodation was a little hasty. Now that I have finished the tour I can say that 2 out of 7 hotels were not good the other 5 were very good. Thank you

I did not enjoy my trip through Mexico with Tucan travel and I would not recommend the company to anyone. Our tour guide was rude and set a running pace to and from the transfers from hotel to bus station. Not even checking to see if we could keep up. He even made us walk with all our luggage to a hotel in the rain with no consultation to see if wanted to wait until shower had passed. When we got to each place he gave us a orientation tour which he did immediately, even after a 12 hour overnight bus trip. We had to walk six blocks to our hotel... at running pace. Then do the orientation tour... no time for a drink or any- thing. The quality of the accommodation was not three star... one was so damp it was like staying in a cave and another was dirty. Unprofessional tour guide and substandard accomodation is not my idea of a pleasant holiday. Don't travel with Tucan travel. It has put me off organised travel that is for sure.

We have just completed a Tucan Adventure Tour of Peru with our adult family and it was nothing short of brilliant due to our guide, Corinna. She spoke fluent spanish, kept us fully up to date with what our activities were and couldn't be more helpful. We stayed at local accommodation which was better than we were expecting and she would sort any issues that arose. The hotels were mostly with in walking distance of the centres of the town. The excursions were well organised and we were extremely well looked after. Would recommend Tucan.

I would not recommend Tucan Travel to anyone. They are overpriced and our Tour Leader (not guide as he was so keen to point out) was rude, arrogant and unorganized to say the least. I traveled from La Paz to Puerto Iguaçu with Tucan in June 2010 and found the tour to be very bad. There was confusion over the start date of the tour and as a result we did not arrive until the morning of the tour departure. The 'Tour Leader' was very rude and called us his 'MIA’s'. From that moment on he treated us with nothing but contempt. The truck lunches were mediocre at best and even at that during our 2 week tour we missed out on 2 truck lunches. Nothing was ever explained to us before hand and everything seemed totally unorganized. Our tour leader left the tour for 2 days to go get a new passport at which point the truck driver was left in charge. These were the best two days of the tour. The truck driver was a total gentleman who have no problem answering any questions we had and was more than happy to translate menu’s etc for us non Spanish speaking of the group. If anyone is considering doing this trip I would recommend that they do it independently. They will meet much more people and be able to do it at a quarter of the price.

I was not impressed with my trip. We stayed at the worst places far away from everything, I had to arrange Optional excursions on my own because there werent minimum numbers in my group, i ended up paying more because of odd numbers in the group, Less meals were included than I was originally told and I felt like I was bossed around the whole trip. I will be traveling by my self from now on!

I travelled overland from Cape Town to Dar Es Salaam with Tucan Travel Budget Expeditions last year and had the time of my life! Excellent guide and driver, fantastic truck which was the envy of all other trucks, and I made brilliant friends. Be prepared to muck in with the cooking/cleaning though!

I travelled on the Trekking the Atlas tour in Morocco, which began in Marrakech and hiked its way through the Atlas to Mt. Toubkal. I found the hiking to be wonderful as well as the culture and the scenery. I was extremely disappointed by my guide's inappropriate sexual advances towards me. It made the trip very uncomfortable. Post excursion, I wrote a letter to Tucan Travel about this incident. Unfortunately, they did not take any responsibility and made it seem as though I was a naive tourist. So, if you are a woman and do not like to be sexually harassed on vacation, I would not recommend this trip.

My wife and I have recently completed two tours with Tucan (Sth America - Overland & Central America - Adventure). We have not undertaken a bus tour with a company since 1985, however have travelled extensively since. We mix with all ages, are fit and active and accept other people's views and were looking forward to this type of travel once again. How wrong we were - we would not recommend Tucan's American Overland tours to our worst enemy. Tucan is more than happy to receive hard earned money from older travellers (promoting itself as 18-45 max 55yrs) but should stick to 18-35's. If we had a $1 for every time we heard the tour leader/driver differentiate between 'normal passengers' and 'older passengers' we would be filthy rich. Evidently, it appears once you hit 40+ you do not fit into the 'genre' (ie drinking to all hours, loud music blaring at campsites after hours and music at unacceptable levels on the bus) to travel with Tucan. Our issues with the tour include (but are not limited to), smoking in food preparation and eating areas, smoking directly outside of the bus doors (impossible to do anything about this as the tour leader/driver were both smokers so endorsed this regime), drinking and noise in campsites to all hours, hijacking of the bus music system (with the tour leaders blessing) by the techno/dance crowd and 90% of food preparation by 10% of the tour group. Although Tucan state in their tour documentation that leaders/drivers may receive gratuities from certain restaurants, it appears to have reached a proportion bordering on farcical. This is something obviously driven by senior management within Tucan (and is part of leader/driver training) but when tours are manipulated so that all leaders/drivers are interested in is coaxing the group to attend so they can receive a freebie - things have gone beyond a joke. On one occasion we were subjected to bronx cheers when we attended a group function (we later learnt by attending, we fufilled the magical number which ensured Tucan reps, ie tour guide/diver received free meals and drinks). My advice to all readers is beware of the tour notes stating "tonight we will have a group dinner at a local restaurant". Try and be independent on this type of tour and the tour leader/driver will go out of their way to make you feel like a outcast. Having said that of the Overland Tour, our second tour which was an Adventure tour was far better suited to 40+ travellers. The tour leaders were great and the transport was with local buses with 2-3 star hotels and a smaller group. This type of tour would be my recommendation for older (40+) travellers if you have your heart set on this pretty ordinary company. I note with interest that on Tucan's website they request for votes for the American section of the World Travel Awards 2010, pity it appears to be a vote drawing competition and nothing to do with performance.