Riviera Travel

Recently returned from South Africa, amazing trip.

Lots of early mornings and more travelling that I had originally thought but can now see why that was necessary. Perhaps a little rushed in places.

Tour reps - there were two, both were amazing, knowledgeable, approachable and nothing was to much trouble for them. Always there for you and very organised.

From the original booking to the end of the holiday I felt very well support by Riviera travel.

Like thousands of others I have been refused a refund for a river cruise which Riviera have cancelled. They are quoting ABTA rulings as a reason for breaking the law and ignoring their own terms and conditions. This company will have lost thousands of loyal customers. Fortunately the ABTA chief executive has appeared on the BBC denying the claims made by Riviera. ABTA website does not support Riviera either. How sad. How can anyone trust this company again

It is in tough times that shows up the integrity of any company. Unfortunately Riviera Travel has lost our trust after they cancelled our cruise holiday due to COVID19. They originally promised a full refund, first saying it will be 28 days instead of 14 days to process. But after 4 weeks of delay and excuses, they now refuse our refund & threatens bankruptcy to try force us to take their credit note. Do they not know with this threat, we are even less likely to want to book with them again. Avoid at all cost!

On 19th March the organisers of Oberammergau 2020 Passion Play (which only occurs every 10 years) postponed the Play until 2022. I have phoned Riviera twice over the past 10 days asking for my deposit to be refunded. They say they will provide me with options although I've informed them twice that I'm not interested in options due to the significant changes to this package deal. I feel Riviera are acting in an unreasonable and unfair manner and are trying to avoid refunding my deposit. Riviera cannot fulfil their contract agreement and this is a disgraceful way for them to treat an existing customer.

We were booked to travel with Riviera to the USA on 8th April 2020. FCO announcement advising against travel to the USA was made on 15th March at 11:45 am and consequently it has been clear that holidays to the USA will be cancelled.

Between 16th March and today (Friday 27th March) we have contacted Riviera 5 times by email and phone requesting a refund. We have had no response. Yesterday we submitted an official complaint by email. Again, nobody has got back to us.

Riviera may be busy but this delay seems deliberate. They have thousands of pounds of our money and cannot be bothered to get in touch.

Riviera’s customer service is highly unsatisfactory and they do not appear to be in the least interested in resolving matters. Very disappointed.

Just back from a Riviera tour of Sardinia. The overall holiday was good, and good value for money but the person who made the holiday so special was our tour rep she wa so knowledgeable about the areas we visited and what a personality she made us laugh from day one. RIVIERA you certainly have a star in this lady. Holiday on 28th September 2019.

So upset and extremely disappointed. We arrived early in the morning to check in for our flight to Helsinki with Finnair. Showing our passports and booking reference on our Riviera Travel Document we were told that our names were not on the passenger list and that we would have to pay for the flights. When we said they had been paid as part of our Riviera package the check-in girl then rang Finnair and asked me for my email address. Extremely shocked and upset we decided to ring the Riviera Emergency Out of Hours Helpline. After a nerve-racking wait the operator rang us back to say that we would now be accepted on the flight.(We were totally perplexed and stressed as we had just been receiving emails from Finnair asking for payment and then receipts for the flights...)

Once we had arrived at the first hotel in Helsinki we were very disappointed by our room as it was clearly a disabled room in which the sink, mirror, worktop etc were all at a very low level and very difficult for us to use. After we had notified her of this new problem our tour guide arranged for us to have a better room so we had to pack up again and carry all our luggage to the new room. She clearly recognised how exhausted and stressed we were and arranged a bottle of wine for our room as we were now too tired to go and explore Helsinki as planned.

The dreadful stress and exhaustion we had endured on that first day really took its toll on both of us, culminating in the theft of my purse in the centre of Riga on our last day. We found the pace of the trip very demanding with its early starts and long coach journey to Riga and felt that the size of the group (50) was too large. The guide tried hard in difficult circumstances (not helped by the wet weather) and was very helpful after the theft.

This was not the holiday we had saved up for and looked forward to and we feel that Riviera's handling of our complaints on our return was merely luke-warm.

Nice tour to Helsinki, Tallin and Riga. Sorry to say that the person I dealt with is sweet but hopeless. Can’t cope with a group. She doesn’t speak Estonian when in Estonia. She booked a restaurant meal 3 floors up when people couldn’t do stairs. She left people behind when walking with the group.

The trip from Tallin to Riga is too far by bus despite the stop for lunch. The views are boring to say the least.She did not take charge when something went missing.

Hotels superb and towns were delightful. Just retrain the tour manager please.

Went on the Krakow tour in May, and can thoroughly recommend it. I've knocked off a star, however, because the included flight bookings, via Ryanair, for the two of us each provided for the full 20kg baggage allowance, which added around £90.00 to the cost. 40kg of luggage is a little over the top for three nights, don't you think? Would it not be possible to check in on line?

We have just returned from a tour of classical Spain, staying one night in Mijas, three in Seville and two in Granada. This is the third holiday we have had with Riviera and once again enjoyed it. Our Tour Manager was top quality and passed on so much information which I found interesting. She stayed quiet for parts of long, early morning journeys so we could snooze. I also liked that she reminded us before we left each hotel to think if we had emptied our safes, had passports, documents etc. Some may think this is treating us like school kids, but we appreciated the reminder. I heard her dealing with one difficult customer and thought she did well and was diplomatic. We had three guides for three visits which were included in the tour and we could not fault them. All had excellent English, including colloquial English, and a sense of humour. I found only one guide not so easy to follow as he spoke a bit too fast for me to grasp with his Spanish accent, but I did get most of it. Our coach driver was excellent and amenable and helped with loading cases. We thought the Mijas hotel, Ilunion Hacienda Del Sol, was certainly not worth its 4* rating. The rooms were dated and although clean on the surface, things like the tops of power points could have done with a clean. Also we had no mattress cover under the sheet thus were sleeping with only a think sheet between us and a mattress hundreds of others had slept on. There was nowhere near the hotel to eat in the evening and as we had taken the local bus into Mijas when we arrived we did not want to go back in the evening. The hotel food was very mediocre, luke warm and some was unidentifiable. The staff were not particularly helpful and did not understand what we were asking. The whole set up - the self service buffet area and the seating area reminded me of a school canteen. I am glad this was only a one night stay. However, we did comment to our tour manager who said she would pass on our concerns to Riviera. The other two hotels were fine and the last one particularly had been refurbished last year so we were told and the rooms were good and we had a very spacious bathroom. The second hotel, in Seville was in a very good position, with two good restaurants opposite and one round the corner, where we were taken for tapas tasting and stayed for a meal and returned another night. Lovely family owned/run small restaurant. The one we ate in opposite was also good and we saw the tour manager eating there, we thought that was a good recommendation? Our hotel in Granada was the best. On our last night we wanted somewhere near to eat and it was a fair walk into the restaurant area, so we looked in the hotel restaurant. The tour manager and coach driver were eating there and others said the food was reasonable, but there was nothing we liked the look of and the restaurant smelt unpleasantly of fish. We ate out but on our return we could still smell it in the entrance foyer. We thought everything generally was well organised, except maybe the way the Alhambra visit was organised, that there were two groups for the first tour of the day, but about 8 people had to have a 3.00pm tour which messed up their day as they had to be at the hotel for coach collection for the tour and could not meet at the venue. We would have liked more time at Cordoba - although the guide was excellent we were would have enjoyed longer free time. I suppose to have yet another one night stay would have been too much for some people. Also a bit more time in Ronda. In all although the tour is 6 nights one only gets 5.5 days as we left very early on our departure day. However, again the tour manager asked the hotel restaurant if they would provide a very early cold breakfast for us, which was good and enabled us to make up filled rolls to take with us, if we did not want to eat much so early in the morning. Included in the tour were three guided tours, one of Seville both on the coach and walking, one of the Moorish mosque in Seville and of the Alhambra Palace in Granada. We were advised of the quickest way to get tickets for other popular venues. Also included was a tapas tasting and a Flamenco evening including a drink of choice. This did not seem like a 'show' event with very dressed up, made up show dancers, but had a genuine authenticity about it. We did not stop at venues en route between our three hotels, which were tourist traps to make us spend money. They were places where we could get a drink, use the toilets and make purchases if we chose to. All in all we squeezed a lot in for the time we had and thoroughly enjoyed our holiday. One does have to be prepared to do a lot of walking to get the most out of it I think, but for those less able, taxis, local buses or simply people watching from a cafe were all easily available.