Michael G.
CDV tour of Sicily 9/21
My wife and I recently (9/21) took Culture Discovery's 12 day tour of Sicily. Over the 12 days we stayed at three different inns that are part of the tour. Each of the three rooms we had were terrible. Two practically had no windows. Had we seen these rooms in advance we would not have gone on this tour. We discussed the issue with CDV management who were rude and indifferent. I would not recommend this company. Amazingly the company just replied to my review years after it was posted. This is consistent with my experience with their customer service. The reply is also inaccurate. I did contact the company DURING the tour and they still did nothing. I guess customer reviews are new to the company as they have “never” been aware of TrustPilot. The fact that they lied in the four year late response to my review to say that I did not contact them during the tour tells the story.
Response from Culture Discovery VacationsApr 12, 2026
[Edited after reviewer's THIRD edit of his review] We are truly sorry to only be seeing this now, and we apologize for the delay in responding. Every guest experience matters deeply to us, and this deserved a reply long before today. Looking back at all correspondence from that trip, our team was genuinely and extensively apologetic about the accommodation concerns. We only wish these concerns had been raised during the tour itself, as that would have given us the opportunity to help. We are sorry if any of that came across differently, as warmth and care for our guests is at the absolute core of who we are... something the thousands of 5-star reviews from our guests across all platforms reflect. Sadly we don't have the kind of presence on Trustpilot to compare against, like we have on sites like TripAdvisor, where hundreds of guests from this very trip and others have shared their experiences over the years. Our accommodations in rural Sicily are described in considerable detail on our website - not just the properties themselves, but the realities of traveling in remote, authentic areas that are hundreds of miles from the kind of chain hotel experience he described he expected in his FIRST version of the review that we saw today, almost 5 years later. Every guest also receives a 16-page pre-trip document covering every detail, including accommodations, required reading during the period in which a full refund is still available. We ask guests to read it precisely so there are no surprises. This trip took place in September 2021, immediate post-Covid, when international travel to Sicily had only reopened a matter of weeks before. The hospitality industry across Europe was operating at severely limited capacity, with most properties still closed entirely. The accommodation options available to anyone traveling in rural Sicily at that exact moment were extraordinarily limited by circumstances entirely beyond anyone's control - and any traveler who ventured abroad in September 2021 understood that going in. The idea that alternatives were readily available there at that moment is simply not grounded in reality. Had these concerns been raised during the trip, we would have done everything in our power to help, including arranging for him to stay in a larger tourist area if necessary, though that would have meant he could not continue with the group as we moved to our next locations. We would have found a way. We are therefore very surprised by his claim that concerns were raised during the tour, as we have no record of any such communication. We welcome him sharing any email or message from that time - we have kept all correspondence and are confident in what it shows. The offer stands openly and publicly. His characterization of our delayed response as "consistent with our customer service" (edit #2) is not logical, and illustrates the kind of unreasonable conclusions that run throughout this review. We were aware of Trustpilot but had never set up an active profile here, had zero reviews, and found this review entirely by chance. His suggestion that customer reviews are somehow "new" to us is absurd - we have hundreds of five star reviews on TripAdvisor alone, built over many years. To conclude that not having an active Trustpilot profile reflects our customer service standards is a significant stretch - and perhaps not surprising from someone whose expectations appeared fundamentally misaligned with everything we clearly communicated in advance. We responded within hours of finding this review, because that is actually who we are. We have now said everything we have to say, fully and transparently. We expect he will edit his review again, and at this point we will let our response speak for itself and trust readers to draw their own conclusions. We would encourage anyone reading this to visit our TripAdvisor, Google, or Facebook pages for a fuller picture of who we are. - Michael, Culture Discovery Vacations