Venture AshoreReviews of ventureashore.com

Our tour guide was polite and courteous; however, he was not as historically well versed or knowledgeable as we would have liked. Then again the tour was good, we saw what was on the list and had some free time. The Marella tours we could have booked were apparently exhausting so, this shorter trip which was only 4 of us in the end was well worth the investment. On balance I would use again but hope that our guide was a bit more enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

Good. Our guide was helpful and very knowledgeable. Office admin was very good Would use again

The trips were well organised and mostly enjoyable. Mostly interesting and educational.

We recently booked 3 cruise trips with Venture Ashore. They were very reasonably priced in comparison to the cruise liner trips, and very easy to book. We struggled in Rome to locate the guide / driver as he was outside the port - and quite a way from the suggested meeting point. We rang the contact number 3 times but no one answered!!! We eventually found the driver 20 mins after the tour was due to start by chance, and the other family on the trip had the same issue. This is our only complaint, the guides and tours were otherwise excellent, and only small groups so we felt like it was a really personal touch! All Three tour guides had amazing local knowledge and were very helpful on the trips. Would use Venture Ashore again, but improvements definitely need to made on the meeting points / contact details.

We booked a 3 tour package to Ireland and Scotland. 2 out of the 3 tours the Guide didn’t have a sign, so we had to spend some time looking for them at the meeting point. This caused a bit of panic as the start time was close. 2 out of the 3 guides were excellent but unfortunately 1 of the guides was well passed retirement age and kept loosing his train of thought, this was a bit embarrassing to listen too. He also had trouble with the”Mic” and we couldn’t hear him a lot of the time. Lots of the passengers kept calling out to him about this, suggesting he held it closer to his mouth, this caused a bit of an atmosphere. I felt uncomfortable. He clearly enjoyed his job but we feel it’s time for retirement. On the whole we enjoyed our trips and would book with this company again.

Very knowledgeable and friendly guide

Everything we needed

Just been on a msc cruise for a week to skagen ,oslo, copenhagen and bruges. booked hop on hop off buses for oslo and copenhagen and a shuttle bus to get from zebrugge to bruges all returns. ship docks at skegan you can walk - at oslo the buses were easy to find bascially 100yard walk to buses we had city sightseeing buses which were easy to find and msc staff and other buses staff helpfull, hard to get on the top of the buses as we had alot of chinese holiday people on our cruise who just push into queues in numbers but it was not worth an argument being on holiday this happened alot ?I Guess they are used to being like this. hop on hop off buses great but you have to pick say 2-3 stops as you cannot get round everything in oslo or copenhagen ,cities are massive and seem larger then London. we had no complaints until we got to zeebrugge our voucher stated there would be a venture rep who would show you where to catch your coach shuttle.? There was nobody and as others had booker excusions with msc when there are thousand of people at a port we kept asking port officials re venture bus and nobody seemed to know.and when your voucher states 10am or you might miss the bus if late having no rep was not helpful eventaully everybody who had booked this shuttle seemed to be standing outside about 37 people on out excursion wondering what to do, i think a couple even went back to the ship being fed up with waiting, after a couple of us walking to other buses asking if they knew where a venture bus wouls be we eventaully found a white coach which did have a venture sign approx 18 inches x 12 inchs the driver was sitting in his seat we asked him and he said yes this is your bus so went back to every body and eventaully got on, the bus had turned up dead on 10am. Not blameing the driver and we allthought the excursion had not been sorted out that well ,ie no rep ,panick to be there 15-30 min's before etc and then find nobody! suggest venture put a bit more into this shuttle and not save on wages having not rep ,it left everybody on the shuttle a little stressed having to sort out themselves having already paid. the driver was great and joval and a nice man giving plenty of insight into bruges, but would have exspected a venture rep to be there so suggest this is sorted /taken into consideration. one other small thing when you get your vouchers if you take a paper copy like us and do not us phones etc make sure the voucher has a qr code ans we did not have one on one of our vouchers to show and had to wait to get on one of the hop on buses last as we could not show it - it does not state this is needed in the venture info -ie states only take or show your excusion vouchers. on our wholes exsperiece cruise and excursion the brugges shuttle was our only let down and being on holiday at 64 could do without the hassle and stress.