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A friend and I recently purchased a vacation through Latin Destinations or Solar Tours (as it is called in S. America) to Peru. The website advertises that they have been customizing vacations since 1984, which may lead some consumers (including myself) to believe that they could be trusted and knew what they were doing. I was mistaken and this was evident before, during, and after my trip. I have been in contact with Latin Destinations (April Stiles and Mariana Elejalde) and have been very disappointed with their level of customer care. I've been waiting for over a month for them to contact the Peruvian tour company they used (Condor Travel) to get some answers... thus far, NOTHING... except for the occasional insult and mediocre excuse.
Latin Destinations's website is very misleading and almost borders on false advertising. For example, your itinerary shows the amount of "nights" you'll be staying in each city. However, a "night" could be as little as a few hours. When I brought this up to Mariana, she stated "...hotels are booked per night, regardless if you are staying one hour or a full night." Why would someone pay to stay in a hotel for an hour (or in my case 3 hours & 5 hours), when they could sit in the airport for free? We wasted $189.00 USD for these two "nights" in our hotels when we could have just waited at the airport.
The actual itinerary to Machu Picchu (our main reason for visiting Peru) was very poorly planned. We had less than an hour before the park closed to walk around on our own. The next day, we had nothing to do but wait in Aguas Calientes (a small, unmemorable town with nothing to do) for our departing 930 PM train. It would seem that a well-versed tour company like Condor Travel would have scheduled our trip to Machu Picchu on this day, when we had the entire day from open to close.Instead, they gave us the entire day to sit in the lobby of our hotel because there was nowhere to go in Aguas Calientes. My friend and I felt so ripped off by our initial visit to Machu Picchu, we paid for another bus and entrance ticket so we could actually get a chance to walk around for ourselves and see the sites that our guide missed. That was ANOTHER $177.00 USD that didn't have to be spent, had Condor Travel made more efficient use of our time. Which leads to the additional $45.00 USD we spent to leave Aguas Calientes on an earlier train so we could get an earlier start on our 4 hour journey to Cusco. I would also like to note that we paid to take an upgraded Vista Dome train to and from Aguas Calientes. Instead, Condor Travel booked us on the lower tier back packer train on our return.
The cherry on top of this entire mess, has to be the customer service provided by Latin Destinations and Solar Tours. Their excuse for not telling me the relevant details of my trip (ex: what time they would be picking me up from my hotel or that we had to repack our 11-days worth of belongings into an overnight backpack during our stay in Aguas Calientes) was that I didn't add in their transportation services from the airport to hotel (basically, I didn't buy the extras they offered) and that I'm not the right type of traveler for their services. As Mariana stated, "The first part of your trip (Machu Picchu) is more for independent travelers that like to accommodate their itinerary without having someone telling them what to do all the time. For I can see you like more the organized from beginning to end type of trip, without worrying about details like luggage, and times. We can definitely make it smoother for independent travelers but it’s a bit hard sometimes to find the balance between those 2 type of services that can please all our clients in their different levels of independence." So basically, I don't have the right level of independence to fit their tours.
I sent Latin Destinations an email with a list of the above complaints on July 4th (2010) and apparently they're still "working" on it. Whatever that means. If I never hear from them, I wouldn't be surprised.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Trip Masters Latin is the worst travel company I have ever dealt with, and I travel extensively. I travel internationally quite a bit and am flexible when it comes to all aspects of travel that goes along with flight and hotel. This company was to secure my hotel reservation on a recent trip to Colombia. Mid way through my trip, they called to inform me that my 5 star hotel upgrade was overbooked and they would be putting me in a hostel in Cartegena. After nearly $100 in phone calls and a half a day lost in making new travel arrangements, we had a to book an entirely new hotel on our own for the remainder of our trip. After nearly 45 days of dealing with Trip Masters, they only credited me for about 30% of the additional costs I incurred. Their customer service was awful and their willingness to take ownership of the debacle on my trip. It was scary, frustrating and expensive to recover from their failure to deliver what they promised. They are completely inept and I encourage you to never trust them with your travel plans.
Kristen Houlker
I wanted to take the opportunity to address some of the grievances expressed on this board. For the record, I am an employee of Solar Tours, the parent company of Tripmasters, and Latin Destinations. As with many review sites, Complaints Board lists posts from the oldest first, which means people's first impression of a company is based on their oldest rather the most recent, and you can only respond at the end of all the posts in the string, as opposed to replying to the specific compliant. Therefore responses can easily be overlooked or obscured.
Additionally, some posts are completely irrelevant as is the case with the one posted by Bobby Regent above. This apparently pertains to some other company that holds seminars and has a membership model. This post has nothing to do with Solar Tours or its affiliates.
Further up there is a complaint by a traveler who felt they should have been charged less by a hotel because he was only staying for a few hours, or advised to wait in an airport in Peru for "5" hours at night. In fairness the traveler had other complaints, but the post is from 2010, and it would be difficult to address each one in detail, I would say however that in my experience there are no Hotels that will prorate your stay, and we would never suggest that any of customers spend 5 hours in an airport in a foreign country rather than stay in a clean and safe hotel. I am confident most of our customers feel the same way.
The complaint we would most like to reply to is from Mr. Krishnan above. Since it is relatively current, and we were able to research the matter, and can reply with some clarity. Apparently there was an error on the part of our fulfillment department, and for that we apologized, and took full responsibility. However, Mr. Krishnan neglected to clarify that although the accommodations the hotel ultimately provided were not of the same quality as the rooms he had booked, it did accommodate his party of 7, and the $330.05 bill for the night was paid for by Solar tours. We also offered a credit of and additional $100 as compensation for their inconvenience, but Mr. Krishnan felt this was inadequate, but unfortunately that in addition to the hotel bill was as much as we could do. Therefore, we would take issue with Mr. Krishnan's statement that he was not compensated, and that Latin Destinations was unresponsive to his complaint, but we also regret that were errors on our part that caused any inconvenience to Mr. Krishnan, and his party, and I am happy to have had the opportunity to clarify the events from our perspective.
We made reservations to Costa Rica this winter through Latin Destinations. Be careful as to what they promise and send to you. In Arenal volcano area, we had booked 3 cottages for 2 nights in a nice spa and we got our confirmation and vouchers for it. But they had booked us for only one night. We had gone out sight seeing and came back in the night to see that our rooms were no longer ours and we were stuck with no place to go as it was the Christmas vacation. Calling them did not help. After 5 hours of trying to find alternate accomodations, finally the hotel was kind enough to get a small spare room for us to spend the night.
Although Latin Destinations promised us compensation for this, after making numerous calls, Latin Destinations and their parent company Solar tours still have not got back to us.
Based on our experience, we will never use them again. Avoid using them if you want a hassle free vacation.
Ramesh krishnan
During the seminar we are told that as a member of Legacy destinations we are guarranteed to the lowest prices for airfare and accomodation anywhere in the world. if we find prices lower than Legacy offer us that they will then beat those prices by 10% A membership for life!
As I have several international and national business trips coming up soon and in addition our family plans to travel this year we pay close attention to the facts being stated. We ask all the pertinent questions and find the answers very encouraging. One of those "if it sounds to good to be true then it ussually is" situations.
Despite our gut reaction, we ask more questions and based on that decide to take a chance. My wife and decide to go "all in" at over $8000.00 membership for us and our immediate family. I choose to open a new credit card to finance the amount, I should have zero problem as my credit is well over 800 points. One of their reps returns half an hour later and tells me my application has been denied, I find this most odd. We decide to split the amount on 2 of our existing credit cards and begin the process.
After 15 minutes my thoughts of my declined credit app and the overall expense cause me to rethink the whole thing and we opt to bow out. We Inform the rep who then calls in the big guns and coral us. The negotiation begins.
Our new offer is a buy back of the free $1400.00 credit originally offered to get us there and less free weeks in Timeshare facilities. Our payable amount for this about $3700.00. We decide to go for it.
We are told that we have a grace period of 3 days once our membership has been processed to bow out of the whole deal. My wife and i figure this will give us a chance tro test the theory by doing our own price and availablility searches online.
We get confirmation of our membership, we begin our testing during our 3 day grace period. Our findings are alarming. Not only do we find way cheaper offers online for fights and accomodation but when we call the Legacy reservation agent to aquire their availability and prices we find that they do not have accomodation in the 3 seperate locations we are interested in.
The reservation agent gives us a 1800 number to call corporate, an automated service. We get a message from a Mr Greg Bernstein asking us if he can help us. my wife deals with him and he promises us he will make us happy. We tell him our existing concerns and he tells us we spoke to him in time to cancel our membership and get a refund. He asks us to wait a few days to give him time to find us what we are looking for.
That was over two weeks ago and nothing from him yet. I have tried calling him several times, I have left several messages. I have also called the 1800 number for corporate and left messages. ZERO response!
In addition we found it rather odd that Mr.Bernstein has a Yahoo email address? Surely he would have a legacy email address?
Always listen to your gut, it never lies. Conmen on the other hand have no problem as the truth is a matter of perspective!
In addition to all this Last week I recieve a credit card in the mail. The credit card I supposedly did not qualify for? Misspelled name to boot. I contacted the CC company and cancelled it. A dip in my credit score the result. My question is WTF. What happened here, another lie? I am at a loss. All we want is out, our money back and to be able to warn all those out there that this company which claims to be a A+ rated BBB business is not even Better Business Bureau accredited. One lie after the next
Buyer be warned!
Dear Travelers,
We have found this complaint after making some research and we were very sorry to read them.
Latin Destinations is a brand of Tripmasters.com, the direct consumer division of Solar Tours Inc., a major wholesaler and tour operator since 1984 and among the top travel producers to Latin America with a very high rate of repeat business. Solar Tours is ranked with an A+ at the BBB.
We will be more than glad to assist you on your future travels if you give us another chance.
Best regards,
LastinDestinations.com
We also had an awful experience with LatinDestinations for a trip to Panama.
There were problems with mis-booked hotels, bookings were made so that we could not participate in tours because of time lines and there was NO support.
We have lodged a complaint with LatinDestinations in July, supported by pictures/dates/names/details and have not heard back. Each time we call or e-mail they are still "working on it".
This company has been my worst travel nightmare in years of international travel with several trips yearly.
STAY AWAY!
SMH