SouthAmerica.travel's local partners offer 4⭐ & 5⭐ tailor-made South America tours to Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Colombia, with discount flights to South America from anywhere. Choose from hundreds of travel ideas, ready to personalize to your travel style, or begin from scratch, and design the perfect custom vacation package with the advice and expertise of a local travel consultant.
SouthAmerica.travel Inc (southamerica.travel) has 764 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5.
Also known as
SouthAmerica.travel
Website
southamerica.travel
Category
Activities & Tours
Location
Hillsboro, Oregon
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
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The company replied to 4% of reviews.
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Most recent review: October 2024.
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SouthAmerica.travel-Chile & Argentina 1-15 September 2018
A very bad experience & I cannot understand how they have got good ratings elsewhere.
I arrived in Santiago after a 14 & a half hour flight at 8.00am & after a long wait at customs etc I was met by the guide. I asked to go to the hotel first to get cleaned up etc & was told that check in was at 3.00pm. He stated that the so called trip around the city usually started in the afternoon & he appeared to be totally incapable of making any kind of unilateral decision without phoning his employer. As this was on a Sunday there was no quick response & it was left to me to reorganise the time accordingly where a cursory trip around the capital was completed & I was left at the hotel.
In conclusion I am not going to waste my time going through all of the issues. It is enough to say that South.America.travel abdicated all responsibility down to inadequate (& I assume poorly paid) local guides who on the whole were not capable of carrying out their duties.
I trust the Company will contact me directly to discuss how they will rectify a situation where a customer was charged over $7000USD for a holiday that in my opinion was valued at the $2000USD mark.
Roddy Teague
Response from SouthAmerica.travel IncDec 4, 2018
Dear Mr Teague,
Thank you for your taking the time to provide us with feedback on your trip here and by phone since. We've analysed your feedback in detail and recognise that we fell short in some areas. Please accept our apologies for this.
We take full responsibility for our trips. During your time in South America, we took steps to put things right, however, we understand you were still unsatisfied with a number of elements of the trip. In recognition of this, we have offered a solution which you have now received. In addition to this, we have put in place measures that will improve things for future travellers. I wish to assure you that the local guides we use throughout South America are paid the industry accepted rates - we neither over nor underpay for services.
Again, thank you for your feedback. We will learn from this.
SouthAmerica.travel Team
BE
Bee
Worst experience ever
A utterly HUGE disappointment with regards to the bad service from Clara Tort - the sales manager from SouthAmerica.travel.
Our trip was from 11-28th June, covers Peru, Chile, Argentina & Brazil. Already stated in my email on customized tours, to focus on UNESCO sites & adventures like hiking/trekking from low to middle difficulty, at first she didn’t bother to reply my email, so I went on to the live chat with someone else in the agency & directed back to her again.
Informed her on my request for 1 non smoking room with 2 separate beds, 4-5stars hotels, and covers Easter Island, Atacama & lake region, but no vineyard & snorkeling/diving tours.
Have to go through, check & remind her several times on our requirements. Firstly she made a mistake of the traveling dates & stretch in all the way to July which clearly told her to cover June only. There after, flights confirmation but instead of coming back on the 28th June, she put us on 28th July.
During the trip, we realized she only added in Atacama & lake region & forgotten about Easter Island. We have to book our own flight tickets & accomodation to Easter Island, & forgo our hotel & tours in Santiago. Informed her days in advance of her mistake but she totally denied it. She mentioned to get back on the refund on 25th June but till today 3rd July, nothing from her.
Some of the hotels are 3 star (which we have informed before our booking on 4-5 star hotel only) which lack of amenities, very tiny rooms & bathroom, some even with many mosquitoes & bugs, and with a weather of 4 degrees but NO hot water to shower after a long day.
Some of the hotel transfer driver came to pick us up at the airport but don’t even know which hotel we stay in & for how many days, and flight details (date & timing). Some tour guides even asked for tips before the tour ended & informed us to pay for our tour which we have already paid way in advance.
Few of the 4 hours tours, ended as early as 2 hours, and same goes to the 8 hours ended as early as 4/5 hours only.
No proper gear advised, with a freezing cold weather of minus 14/15 degrees!!
Worst traveling experience with an agency. Definitely won’t recommend it.
Response from SouthAmerica.travel IncJul 10, 2018
Thank you for the time you’ve taken to review our services - without our clients’ valuable feedback we cannot improve. We understand that you were not fully satisfied with our services on your trip to South America and agree there are things we and our operators can and shall improve immediately as outlined below. We have refunded the services you did not use in Santiago and had arranged two airport transfers free of charge. We have also noted some areas in which we can add to our pre-trip information which will benefit future travellers. We would also like to clarify that Easter Island was not part of the purchased package.
• Our travel consultants work weekends on an occasional basis only, and take the following Friday off. Clara was thus able to promptly respond to your Friday email on Monday.
• We apologize for the confusion on dates of flights. We are taking steps to ensure this does not happen again and are pleased this was corrected well in advance of the trip and without cost.
• As a custom itinerary specialist, all trips we put together are unique, with literally millions of ways in which we can create an itinerary, which is both very exciting and also extremely complex. We provide a detailed itinerary (and often multiple itineraries) for our clients and changes can be made at any point before and during booking. The client is free to accept the itinerary or request additions / changes.
Clara’s recommendations were based on 8 years of expertise in specializing in South America. As a consultant, she took your list of requested destinations and created a custom itinerary that she thought would work smoothly within your time available to travel. In this case, she did not include Easter Island. After the initial mention of this, it was never spoken about again. At any point had Clara understood how important this was to you to visit she could have easily replaced one included highlight with this destination. Upon receiving your request to visit Easter Island while already traveling, we provided 2 options with flights, hotels, activities and cost. In the end, you decided to book this on your own and we are glad you got to visit, whether through us or by your own arrangements.
• You had a mixture of hotels with different star ratings. It is our responsibility to make sure that if there is limited availability, we fully understand and explain what amenities and star category you are comfortable with, which we failed to do in this case. All hotels we used are known to us and well rated online. Some places in your trip, in particular rainforest areas such as Iguazu Falls, do have a certain level of insect life. Also it is necessary in remote locations to allow the water to run for a little while at some hotels before it is hot. We highly encourage our travelers to contact us during their trip if they are unhappy with their hotels or tours so that we can put things right straightaway. We wish we would have had the opportunity to do so in this case.
• We ask our transfer drivers to double check details at each stage. The driver erred and we apologize for this. Tipping is always optional. We’ve noted your comments on tipping and are discussing this with our local operators as we do not want our travelers to feel uncomfortable.
• The tour at the Iguazu Falls was shorter than planned due to the heavy rain. Timings of shared tours include pick-up and drop-offs as was the case in Rio de Janeiro which make the actual tour a bit shorter, however not significantly. For the Atacama Desert portion of the trip, we provide the recommendation of taking warm clothes, gloves and a jacket in our Before You Travel Guide. We also provide an indication of average temperatures and shall add that extremes can occur.
As a trusted South American custom travel package provider since 1999, we strive to ensure trips are high quality, run smoothly and that our guests have a wonderful time. We shall take all of the feedback that you have provided to improve our services both internally with our travel consultants and operations teams as well as our guides and suppliers. We appreciate your business and sincerely apologize for any inconveniences during your trip.
Best regards,
Bradley Nehring
C.O.O. SouthAmerica.travel
AY
Alysha Y.
Booked our flights on the wrong day, poor customer service
I'll start off by saying everyone we personally dealt with was lovely however, our experience with South America Travel has now come to an end and we were horribly disappointed. These people, who we paid a good amount of money to hoping to ensure a smooth and stress free vacation to Peru, really made it a terrible trip which was awful as we only can afford one big trip a year. We got stuck in Cusco because this agency booked our plane tickets for the wrong day. Stranded in an area without a guide who speaks the language or even knowing if we were going to miss the rest of our trip was terrible. After we finally got a hole of someone at their office, someone picked us up and they put us in a crappy hotel and we just waited by the phone for a day to see what was to become of our trip. They didn't try to make it better by finding us a meal (which we had paid for in the Amazon part of our trip we missed most of) or even have someone their helping us and ensuring everything would be taken care of. Eventually they found another flight almost two days later and we lost most of our time in the Amazon (which I was looking forward to the most).
When we came back to the states, which at this point we still weren't sure if it would happen with their incompetence, we got an email from them apologizing for their error and saying this 'had never happened before.' They tell us that because they ruined that trip they want to make it up to us by planning a 'good vacation experience' for the following year with a 3-4 day trip comped to Columbia. Even though we were wary they assured us that they'd double check everything and send us every detail to ensure we could check that things were booked.
After talking it through we felt this was a viable option. Instead of making this booking experience easy, we went back and forth for months about flights as they could 'only offer' round trip flights with almost every flight being 15+ hours (which is ridiculous considering they're a travel agency and we're a direct 5-6 hour flight to there from the four airport options we gave JFK, BWI, PHL, EWR). My husband is 6'5" so a 15+ hour ride is just not a viable option. We gave them a three month window and four airports and they had no flight options that were direct. We asked if we could book the flights (and I even sent screen shots of shorter cheaper flights) and get reimbursed and that was all a no go.
In the end, they couldn't find anything that worked for a flight within their limitations and they comped us $1200. This isn't even a 1/6 of what we paid for our trip to Peri they ruined, nor would it amount to what the 'great trip' they offered would have cost. We have now cut ties with this company and I can't stress enough, do not book with this company. They're about profit and not about customer service. If I ever screwed up this bad with my own business I would do everything to make it up to the customer. Thankfully, we met some great people and guides in Peru along the way and they were the only saving grace of this trip. But be very wary when booking with this company. You don't want to be stranded in a foreign city, waiting by a phone in a crappy hotel to see if you're going to be able to get out of the country.
Response from SouthAmerica.travel IncNov 29, 2016
It’s true - we screwed up! We completely understand Ms. Yoder’s disappointment at missing the Amazon and her frustration organizing Cartagena as compensation.
We immediately refunded $570 USD for the missed day in the Amazon, as requested,.and began discussing ideas of additional compensation for their missed two-night Amazon stay. We believed a weekend excursion to Cartagena with flights would provide greater value (and more memories) than a cash reimbursement. However and unfortunately, our extended attempts to match the proper availability with these busy professionals’ availability never coincided, thus we offered them an additional cash refund of US$1200 to be able to select any options which fit their schedule.
As a company in business since 1999 helping tens of thousands of travelers plan custom trips to South America, we strive to ensure all trips run smoothly and that our guests have a wonderful time. Part of being a trusted partner in travel is admitting when things don’t go as planned, and we take full responsibility for what has occurred. Ms. Yoder is absolutely right that we should have caught error of the flight date, and the response in Peru should definitely have been substantially better. A situation such as this is extremely rare, and our desire is to offer the best option for compensation.
We realize that we can not undo the past, and that no form of monetary compensation can make up for lost experiences. This was an important experience for Ms. Yoder and her travel partner (we love the Amazon too!). We wish this story would have had a different ending and that we had been able to find something that would work for everyone. We hope that the $1770 refunded will enable Ms. Yoder and her companion to one day return to the Amazon.
SouthAmerica.travel has used this experience to improve our internal procedures, as we do with all such teachable moments, increasing safeguards and crosschecks to prevent such errors from happening again. As always, we continue to work on improving our service. We appreciate Ms. Yoder's honest feedback and offer our apology.
Bradley Nehring
C.O.O.
SouthAmerica.travel
EJ
Eunice J.
Would not book another trip with this company.
I assume 4Star South America changed it's name. My fellow travelers joked that with the type of service we received the company would never make it to 5Star South America, so I guess the new name means it lost all it's Stars.
On travel days when we flew between destinations, the group was booked on 2 or 3 different flights, with hours between those flight, so we spent those entire days just sitting in airports waiting for portions of our group to depart and arrive.
When we arrived at our last destination, Rio de Janiero for the Winner's Parade, the tour director was joined by an uncalled for amount of collegues and they pretty much forgot about the tour group in order to party with the locals in Rio and the Sambadrome. My tour mates commented that they felt like the entire tour was just to fund their party.
I had been to Carnival before that trip and was aware of the laid back, festive atmosphere of the country at that time of year, but I had to agree with my tour mates, we paid for a service and we were not given that service. The fact that it happened at the end of the tour left no time for 4Star South America to redeem themselves in our eyes and make up for the terrible last impression with which we ended the tour.
Response from SouthAmerica.travel IncMay 12, 2014
Dear Eunice,
Update: We want to let you know that we have incorporated your feedback to improve our services and the professional quality of our tour guides in Rio Carnival. During future Carnival parades, all present guides from all groups and from all tour operators will together be there for all guests in the tourist sector of the Samba-drome. All guides will be able to handle questions from all guests. With this change, all guests will have the freedom to move around and dance or get a snack, while there will always be clearly identifiable guides in sight for your guidance.
We appreciate you submitting your honest feedback, and we're truly sorry to hear that your vacation in Brazil was so negatively affected by your experience at Rio Carnival. We know that Rio Carnival can be hectic -- and that is part of the excitement and appeal of the festival! -- but we're sorry that you felt uncomfortable and that the tour director's attitude seemed unprofessional.
From our records, TC Paula N. was in charge of the tour group, and it was her responsibility to make sure that the group was transferred to the Sambadromo and taken to their seats. However, once in the Sambadromo, travelers are allowed to move freely about the stadium to get snacks etc, and can leave at any time to go home via the hotel shuttle buses. The TC is not expected to monitor the group closely throughout the show. Also, in the tourist sector of the stadium, there are employees in clearly-marked uniforms who are there to help anyone who has a question. They are also stationed at the shuttle bus area to help passengers find the correct shuttle bus to their hotel.
We're sorry to hear that you didn't receive the service that you expected. Again, we appreciate your honest feedback and we will continue to try our hardest to make sure that Rio Carnival is a safe and fun environment for all of our travelers.
Sincerely,
SouthAmerica.travel
CZ
Christina Z.
Everything was great until the end of the trip.
After we left our Hotel in Santiago Chile (Hotel Galerias) and were on the plane we realized that we had left souvenirs and jewelry in the safe in our room so as soon as we had phone reception we called the hotel to make arrangements to have the items shipped to us and they said there was nothing in the safe so I called my representative from south American travel and she could do nothing even though this was the hotel they had recommended and booked for us. The items were worth over $10,000.00 and we never received anything for the replacement of them. Never trust leaving things in a safe in the Hotel (Hotel Galerias) in Santiago Chile. The employees are not honest or trustworthy.
Response from SouthAmerica.travel IncMay 12, 2014
Dear Christina,
Update - During a recent trip to Chile, our managers visited this hotel and discussed with the hotel staff to see if we could solve this matter. Unfortunately, nothing new was discovered, but we wanted to let you know anyways. We understand what a shock it must have been to lose your valuables during your trip in Chile.
Thank you for submitting your honest feedback about our company. We're sorry to hear that the missing items in the hotel safe were never recovered and that problem, understandably, made your trip a negative experience.
Unfortunately, hotels generally only claim responsibility for the proper functioning of their safes. Also, we no longer work with that hotel in Santiago.
We hope that you were able to share stories and memories about the rest of your trip to South America. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts about our company and for allowing us the opportunity to respond.
Sincerely,
SouthAmerica.travel
