Jordan on a Shoestring

14 Reviews

Excellent

36%

Good

50%

Average

14%

Rather Poor

0%

Bad

0%

• J

  JamesHudson
  Written on September 7, 2018

  2.5 - Average

  The tour guide was really aggressive about tips and the only place we eat at were crap

  

  Encounters Travel commented on this review

  Thanks for your feedback James. As you're aware we did an extensive follow up with you after your tour. Following your trip, your tour guide was suspended from working with us, and we have clarified the lunch arrangements. This includes agreeing some fixed price options with several local restaurants (less than you paid) while also making it very clear that these are optional and you can eat elsewhere if you wish. As a goodwill gesture following your guide's conduct, particularly about the tipping requests and the lunch arrangements, we also paid you a 50% refund of the price you paid for the tour, which we were pleased you were happy with. We're very confident the issues that happened on your tour were a one off and apologise again here for any impact they had on your enjoyment of the tour.

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• A

  Anonymous
  Written on April 11, 2018

  4.5 - Excellent

  The sights were pretty awesome but our guide Sami brought the history behind them to life with his explanations. He was more that just a tour guide, he was more of a host. Also, the people of Jordan were so nice. People passing by say “Welcome to Jordan” just out of the blue! This happened in the grocery store, market places and walking down the street. I’ve never had people in any other country say “Welcome to my country “. We tried to not stand out but our light coloring gave us away. I’m so glad my sister picked this tour. I’d love to go back again.

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• A

  Anonymous
  Written on April 11, 2018

  4.0 - Good

  The historical sites

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• TF

  Tim
  Written on April 7, 2018

  2.5 - Average

  There should be time right at the beginning for fellow travellers to get to know each other. Travellers should be allowed to do their own thing at stops. We were forced to listen to lengthy and overly detailed descriptions from our guide, for over an hour, and then given just ten or fifteen minutes to explore on our own. It was a listen to me, go where I go, look at what I tell you to, think what I want you to think tour, which utterly killed any adventure, excitement or independent enquiry.

  

  Encounters Travel commented on this review

  Hi Tim, Thank you for taking the time to get back to us with your feedback. I’m sorry that you weren’t happy with the way the guiding was managed on this tour. All guides do have their own individual style and as most are very proud of their country, they do want to get a lot of information across to you. There's always a balance to strike between doing that and giving free time to explore, and we have to be careful not to upset other people in the group by going too far the other way either. However, if you want to miss out on some of the explanations and history and just explore independently, you should be able to do that. That is within reason though, as the guide does need to be careful that they know where everyone is, sometimes because the sites are so big it can be easy to get lost and separated if you haven't been told where the guide is moving on to with the group next, and also on travelling days where we need to be careful to keep to a schedule so further visits later in the day aren't affected. We're having a chat with the guide on your tour just to make sure that they do allow some flexibility of the kind you obviously wanted more of. To get a fully flexible time where you can listen and explore independently as much as you like, we do run a lot of tailor-made tours which are much more suited to accommodating this than a group tour.

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• SJ

  Susan
  Written on March 19, 2018

  5.0 - Excellent

  The trip surpassed my expectations for Jordan. The scenery is spectactularly different, the guide was not just informative but fun and the Jordanian people are extremely welcoming. At no time did I feel unsafe as a female solo traveller. Would highly recommend.

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• 

  Maria Therese
  Written on February 17, 2018

  4.0 - Good

  The main reason why I am rating the trip as Good rather than excellent is not because the tour did not meet my expectations (on the contrary, I rate our tour guide Sammy and the places the tour covered as excellent) but the local Amman hotel is more like a 2-Star than a 3-Star as promised as the breakfast buffet was poor and one of the rooms originally assigned to me was in poor condition (stained carpetting, broken TV,)

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• NK

  Nathan
  Written on February 17, 2018

  4.0 - Good

  The overall tour was amazing. We saw everything in Jordan. Our tour guide Sami was filled with knowledge and had a wonderful sense of humour. He made our trip! The only downfall was our hotel in Amman (AL WALEED),breakfast was inedible or just full of empty serving plates and dirty. Half of our group got sick. I will gladly tell everyone I know about how amazing Jordan is! I would definitely use this tour company again, I'm confident that they will find another hotel for travellers in the future to avoid these kinds of complaints.

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• CW

  caroline
  Written on February 16, 2018

  4.5 - Excellent

  The tour was amazing. Our guide, Issa, was brilliant, really helpful and knew about all of the sites that we visited and he arranged lovely lunches for us each day. The hotels were fine, basic but clean and safe. It's a busy tour and you do a lot each day so you can make the most of a short holiday.

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• 

  Pierre-Yves
  Written on January 13, 2018

  4.0 - Good

  The people involved were quite nice and helpful, especially Sami the guide, of course. The places we visited were interesting for most. Petra and Little Petra were my personal highlights. The Amman hotel we went to, while quite fine (except for the carpets), was not the original mentionned in the latest tour doc, and there was nothing around to do on foot. This screwed up some alone time plans, including getting money out of an ATM. Brings loads of small bills. It is hard to get change no matter where you go. The food was nice, but somewhat repetitive and buffets are not for everyone @ 10-20JDs each.

  

  Encounters Travel commented on this review

  Dear Pierre, Thanks for taking the time to get back to us with your feedback and for choosing to travel with us in Jordan. I’m really pleased to hear that you had a good time on the tour and appreciated your guide Sami. Over the past year Sami has become one of our most popular guides in Jordan and it’s always good to hear such good feedback. With our scheduled group tours we don’t guarantee specific hotels as we do occasionally have to use alternate accommodations based on availability or recent customer feedback. We do try to make this clear on our website and within our tour notes, however I am sorry that this affected some of your plans for your free time in Amman. Overall I’m pleased to see that you had a good time on the tour. I hope that you’ll decide to join us again in the future.

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• NA

  Nicole
  Written on November 17, 2017

  3.5 - Good

  This was a great trip! Jordan was wonderful, especially Petra! Our guide, Sammy, was very knowledgable and personable. Hotels were ok. Another couple had an issue with their door not closing and the hotel wouldn't give them a new room. The only thing I would change is dining options - often we were only given the choice of one restaurant with a buffet and no a la carte options. These buffets tended to be pretty expensive and, as I'm not a big eater, I never got my money's worth.

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