ChinaTour.comReviews of chinatour.com

Great tour to view China

Wasn't able to take the trip due to health reasons. But I had bought the insurance. The insurance didn't even cover the cost of the air fair upgrade. Very disappointing.. I got 800.00 per person back after paying over 4000.00 I have learned my lesson. Never again

Tour guide would not take credit card for any optional tours and wanted cash only. Everyone on the trip was scrambling for cash....had we know that credit cards would not be accepted we could have been prepared and brought cash. Poor communication made for unhappy tourists.

The timing of the flights was so bad and we paid for 3 nights and 2 days in Puckett and had to leave after one day because the flights had been wrongly booked. THAILAND was beautiful, but was spoiled by wrong arrangements by your company. We wanted to go to China next year bit am a little dubious to use your Company again.

For the price it was good. The first half the tour guide was bad real bad. The second half great tour guide not enough time at the wall at ALL. To much time at places trying gvto get us to buy things. Then not enough time at under ground market. Good was ok cold good warm driinks and rushed.

In all fairness you can’t compare with upscale tour with first class centrally located hotels and knowledgeable tour guides but the price was unbeatable and you’re getting a lot for a little

This was a great tour for the money with above average hotels, some 4+ stars, in a packed week itinerary. Loved the historical sites we went to which was a very good sampling of interesting & historic destination sites (The Great Wall, Tiannenman Square, Forbidden City, Lingering Gardens in Beijing and in Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzhou region such as Grand Canal boat ride, West Lake off the Su Causeway, Green Tea Village, historic Shanghai China Town and the modern skyline architectural wonders of downtown Shanghai). The big plus on our tour were our two tour guides (one for Beijing, one for Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzhou, both were a cut above with much to provide us by way of history, current affairs and personal insights). This review only gets a 3 stars because honestly, a LOT of the trip was designed to spend money. They set up tours of factories or institutes to sell products - some very high pressure sales, particularly the Chinese Medicine Institute where they sold supplements. While all the factory/institute tours (silk, jade and pearl factories plus the Green Tea Village and the Chinese Medicine Institute) included an educational component for 20-30 mins. on how those products were made, the 45-75 mins. after was ALL about purchasing and spending money at quality places with prices at times higher than what one could find some of those items of like quality in the US. Salesladies were like sticky rice and you never had time to peruse and shop independent of their suggestions or to talk with your family member to decide what really was of interest. The men at the Chinese Medicine Institute were ridiculously high pressure, and with one's feet being washed and given a very good foot massage while they made their individualized pitch to you, you were a captive audience with no easy escape. We honestly didn't know if we'd get out of there unless we gave them a credit card! Scary stuff. Only in a movie have I seen such tactics. IF there had been transparency from the tour operator about exactly what they were planning with these "tours" --excessive consumer spending-- it wouldn't have been so irritating. But by the 3rd day we started to get the picture pretty clearly. All other stops besides the great sights to see involved some 30-55 mins. of shopping as well. Where they didn't give us as much time that we would have loved to find bargains was in Shanghai in the historic China Town. There you could really get some fantastic buys on unique items of good quality, but they scheduled us only 35 mins. before businesses were closing for the day. So, bottomline, the country is definitely a good place to see one of the ancient 7 Wonders of the World and the mix of socialism/capitalism and spirit of communism & history of Chairman Mao blending into an interesting cultural shift of modern-day China. Read the "rules" before you go as unless you get your own cell phone/internet service, using anything in-country like a chip or their internet providers block Gmail and Facebook. So word to the wise, go in with your eyes open if you use InterTrips (ChinaTour.com) out of California, understanding it is as much about helping their economy as it is seeing the sites.

Tour itself was good. Advance prep was lousy. Seemed like constantly shifting personnel dropping the ball. E.g., the pictures of our passports were lost. They were attached to an email with other attachments that were not lost. That apparently led to our visas being delayed until our departure week. That kind of stress makes a poor departure start. And it seemed that every time I called for information or updates, a new person was now the “responsible” party.