Classic Greece & Santorini

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• SK

  steven
  Written on February 8, 2017

  2.0 - Rather poor

  Skip this Encounter Company. They just outsource everything to GO Greece travel agent. You can save hefty middleman fees. Also they wanted to charge almost double the internet rate for a hotel for extension of stay. In Santorini, although they stated a four star hotel, El Greco, they replaced it with Theoxania Hotel, not an equivalent. Understanderbly, El Greco was closed but the local agent tried to argue that the hotels are the same. Please go google and reach your own conclusion. Theoxania is more like a B and B place or at best, a 3 star hotel.

  

  Encounters Travel commented on this review

  Dear Steven, Thank you for your review. I'm sorry that you weren't happy with the hotel change in Santorini. We received your email about this from Santorini after office hours on Thursday evening, and sent you a detailed response on Friday. This include an explanation for the change, an apology for the inconvenience and any disappointment, and an offer of immediate financial compensation to cover the full cost of the alternative place that you chose to move to. We didn't hear anything back from you, and resent that email to you today, before seeing this review. I have copied the salient points of our response to you here... Thank you for your email and update about your hotel in Santorini. I’m very sorry that firstly, the El Greco Hotel was closed and not available, and secondly that you weren’t happy with the Theoxania that we booked instead. Unfortunately as the winter season on Santorini is very quiet, many of the hotels there close completely. When necessary we therefore book alternatives that we feel provide a good experience suitable to the season. This means we aim more for smaller boutique style hotels that have a better location, being much closer to the shops and restaurants that are still open, rather than bigger more resort style places with swimming pools (which would not generally be used in winter anyway due to the cool weather). We stay in the capital Fira at this time of year as there is more open and going on there. The Theoxania has excellent reviews and we’ve had good feedback from people staying there before. We do explain on our website that hotels can change from time to time and that we can’t guarantee specific hotels on our group tours. However, I appreciate it’s a different style of place and I think that we could have communicated the winter changes better to you. We will be updating our tour notes and information to add the winter hotel and explain the situation on the islands in this season better. As a goodwill gesture, we will therefore be pleased to give you some financial compensation for this section of the tour, and I propose to arrange a refund for you accordingly. [this refund being the full online rate of the property you moved to for 2 nights]. We remain keen to provide this refund to you, and await a response to our emails to you so that we can arrange this. Once again I'm sorry for any disappointment and inconvenience caused by the winter island closures.

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