UTO Vacation review: Travel company

Found a 9-Night hotel package deal through UTO Vacation on TravelZoo for $198 per person. We booked two rooms for our family of five and paid the full amount, $995 in January, only to find that the 9-day package only included 7 hotel nights.

UTO's initial ad promised a 5-star beach resort with the name to be released a month before the June 2023 trip date. In later correspondence, that was switched to "beach accessible" hotel. The hotel we ended up staying at was in the hills, more than a kilometer away from Kalim Beach, a 17-minute walk. The hotel only provided one free shuttle ride to Patong Beach at 10 am each day and warned that it filled up quickly. So much for "beach accessible."

Then, just a couple weeks before the start of the trip, UTO sent us a bill for an additional $350, claiming that the hotel didn't offer three-person rooms even though UTO listed "triple room" on our initial billing statement. UTO also tried charging us another $40 per person for "compulsory tips."

We refused to pay either of the charges.

Because of the poor location of the resort, we ended up leaving the hotel after just three nights, with no refund for the unused nights.

UTO Vacations was a nightmare to deal with and is the worst travel company we have ever used.