Voyages Jules Verne www.vjv.co.uk

I have just returned from a Jules Verne nine day trip to Jordan. The tour had plenty of content, The organisation was slick without being opressive. Our tour guide was local, spoke good English and was very knowledgable. All the hotels used were good, as were the meals.THe transport provided was of goos quality.

I had used this company a few years ago when we went to Pompeii. That was good as well.

I shall definitely use Jules Verne again.

We booked a canal cruise in the south of france. The cruise was run by Croisi Europe and was good.

We booked through Jules Verne though, to travel by Euro star and French TGV. to and from Avignon. JULES Verne did not appear to understand that these are both trains. When our "confirmed" booking changed they blamed the airline!! We were told to collect our baggage in the reclaim hall, go through customs and passport control at Avignon and then meet our rep in the arrival hall. As anyone travelling on the Euro star should know, passport control is at st Pancras, you carry your own luggage, and just get off at the stations in France like any other train. We did not meet the rep in the arrival hall as she was on the train with us. On the return we were advised check in at Avignon was an hour before the train. You do not check in for internal French trains, Jules Verne, you just go onto the platform and get on. So the hour and a half eArly Jules Verne took us to the station was silly.We were told by the Jules Verne, booking department that it is not possible to book seats on French trains. Non sense, On the Euro star we were booked in seats, but not together.

This is all to demonstrate Jules Verne don't understand train travel in Europe, and you be better off booking direct.

The rep was a pleasant traveling companion, but sadly a mine of misinformation, not having done the tour before. It is cherry season but it was not. You will get a lot of fish to eat on the cruise but we didn't, there are no mosquitos in the Camargue!!

Haven't been to India before and was sceptical. We were met at Delhi Airport by our guide and taken to our first hotel, so no stress. The whole of the tour went like clockwork, our guide was so knowledgeable and a very nice young man. All hotels were first class. Great value for money. Will and have recommended this to our friends and

to be able to say we visited the Taj Mahal and so many other famous sites within 8 days proves how well organised

the whole trip was.

Just returned from a 7 night trip to Cuba with JV. Cuba is a fascinating country but full of contradictions. Our guide, Ricardo, was very knowledgeable and we went to some great places, lots of time on the coach, but we had very little time to explore ourselves. There were 3 nights at the hotel Parque Central which is in a great location. The supply of things like water in the room and coffee pods for the coffee machine was a bit haphazard but once asked for were generally supplied. The main problem was lack of wifi - sometimes it would work but more often than not it wouldn't. I could not get onto a work related email account for 4 days. The food at most of the restaurants included in the tour were not good and there was no choice.

We spent two nights in Varadero, which is approached via a 30 mile causeway. We were the first guests to stay there after the hotel had reopened after hurricane damage. This is a lovely hotel but there are a few buts. My room which was spacious had a shower which flooded the room each time it was used. The room was on he ground floor and the balcony was surrounded by bushes which made it very attractive to insects and lizards but not for humans to sit on. I would recommend you get a room on the upper floor. There is a lovely beach, approached via a long boardwalk through mangroves. I had a treatment in the Spa which was very good. The main problem with this hotel is being bitten by insects - I was Bitten over 50 in times and this is despite using a repellent spray! The worst time was when we had breakfast by the pool on our last day. It was so bad that we could not stay and eat breakfast.

One night in Trinidad at the lovely Grand Hotel, this was definitely my favourite hotel and the one closest to a five star rating. There were a lot of people begging for money in Trinidad. I would agree with other comments I have seen, you are better to try and eat at restaurants which are not part of the tour. The choice and quality of food at these restaurants is significantly higher and very affordable.

Ricardo was a good guide but the tour was too planned for my taste.

Went on JV Polar holiday recently as the package looked good cruising Bergen to Tromso then a flight to Spitsbergen. Scenery lovely and got to see Northern lights. The only problem was lack of information from JV re transfers, flights as we had to be informed locally whilst on holiday re flight to Spitsbergen. We emailed JV and as yet had no response ( home now!). They company seem just to want to take your money and couldn't care less no local agent or tour rep. Everyone in group had differing information leading to a lot of confused people. The trip wasn't cheap so we had expected more information from the company and support. We realised whilst in Norway we could of booked via Hurtigruten which would of been cheaper and had local support.

This is the first and last time I'll use Jules Verne

I went on a tour of Cuba with VJV on the promise that it would be something more exclusive and insightful than going with a mainstream tour operator. How wrong I was. I feel stupid that I believed their marketing and glossy brochures.

The tours provided are the same as those provided by all other major tour operators since they are all done by a Cuban travel agency. The hotels used are also all used by a number of other European tour operators in Cuba. What's the difference? Whereas they all had tour managers who offered briefings, they had guides who went around the museums explaining what you were seeing we had an escort. She accompanied us around, gave very general explanations but that was it. No one showed us around museums so we had to listen to what guides in other groups were being told to understand what we were looking at. Speaking other European languages here helps otherwise you just walk around aimlessely for 30 minutes.

The food provided is of the very lowest quality. This is apparently because this is what Cuba offers - which is a lie. We gave up going to the arranged meals due to the poor food quality and paid for our meals, and had some excellent meals both for lunch and dinner.

There was no programme for this tour. We knew which city or town we would sleep in that day and that was it. All information was given as you went on by the tour escort on the bus. One day we were told to be ready at 8am. We didn't know that we wouldn't be arriving back at the hotel until 7pm until around 5pm when we were stuck in a service station somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You couldn't plan very much and overall there was a feeling of each day being planned as it went along.

I have told VJV of our experiences and they apologised but with the reservation that they didn't agree with our complaints. It seems that once they have taken your money, they aren't much interested in you any longer until it comes for you to book your next holiday.

My advice: book flights, hotels and excursions yourself. In the long run you'll probably do a better job of it than VJV can.

I am reviewing the VJV 600 Mile trip from Aswan to Cairo on April; 26th 2016, not the MS Hamees, the river cruiser which is administered my Moevenpik and was excellently staffed and managed. The VJV guide described himself as an Egyptologist but I suspect that component of his tourism diploma probably consisted of two days of lectures, which he skipped. I have never encountered a guide whose skills set was so inequal to the demands of his job. VJV consistently provided the minimum, penny-pinching and cost cutting where the sums involved amounted to very little, whether this is symptomatic of the low numbers of tourists in Egypt at the moment, and the diminishment of profit margins, or of their standard offering for the trip, I don't know. We were denied a trip to the Temple of Edfu on the grounds that the local carriage drivers were asking for excessively high fares and the travel companies were all not visiting the temple for that reason. However, there was one person booked on the boat via another company who was visiting the temple (we'd have all had to sit on the boat waiting for her; aka ":morning at leisure"), with our guide, by carriage, so the explanation was self-evidently untrue. We mutinied and insisted we would fix the trip for ourselves if he didn't, and the total cost for the return trip and entrance to the temple came to under £5.00 - what price goodwill?

Unfortunately, the policy of fobbing the customer off with the minimum became very much a motif of the trip to such a degree that distant sites were pointed out from a moving coach as "something I mentioned yesterday" (this was at Tel El Armarna). At Karnak Temple (the second largest ancient religious site in the world, after the Angkor Wat Temple of Cambodia), after a perfunctory lecture in full sun (these were never given on the air-conditioned bus en route), we were permitted forty minutes to see the site. As those booking such a trip tend to be well informed regular travelers with some understanding of the subject matter, such standards were universally disapproved of. An Extension in Cairo proved no better with lacklustre guiding and the exclusion of site adjacent sites which would have cost little, or nothing to visit. VJV clearly can't be bothered when it comes to their Egyptian tours if they're hiring local staff of not just such laughably inept professionalism, but manifest incompetence and dishonesty. Not to be commended. As far as I can see, there is no advantage to booking a VJV Egyptian package tour, in fact you may end up seeing less while spending more. Travel with someone else or independently.

I have just had a terrible experience with VJV. I booked a holiday with them in February, then my dog was tested for cancer and the results would take longer than the date when I would have to pay the rest of the considerable amount of money that constituted the final payment. I pleaded with them to let me have a bit of time to make a final decision - I was afraid that come February my dog might need to have regular chemo and I just could not commit myself to being away at that time. The staff was most unsympathetic and totally refused to guarantee me anything.

Had the most amazing time! I traveled as a solo female and felt completely safe and looked after the whole time.

Can not recommend our tour guide Abhi enough!!!!! He was the best!  I have recommended this tour to all of my friends. The hotels where 5* and beautiful, our driver was so friendly. We saw and learnt so much. I will be booking future tours with them for sure!

Felt their response to my complaint about a local guide was very dismissive, given I was not the only traveller to write about her poor care. I was given no assurance they took my comments seriously, and I had noted her lack of care had ruined part of my trip. I had allergy and due to her lack of attention I was exposed to an allergen and was unwell for days, I got no help from her and also due to her poor communication I missed part of Ankor Wat, and this was such a disappointment as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I feel it unlikely I would use them again, despite in general a well organised trip, because of the company's reply to my letter, and the insulting voucher £25, I missed a key part of indochina trip and also had the stress of badly timed connecting flights on return, we barely made our flight home, the times were so tight that our luggage didn't make it, and i had to get it delivered to me later., meant hanging around when all I wanted to do was go to bed and sleep!