2019 07 How to go with an Accord-tour to Amsterdam and not spoil your holiday. "Bright Ben

I was personally urged to write this review by the head of our group, Ira Belukha, adding the wish that it be as positive as possible. Let's see what happens.

This is not the first time my wife and I have traveled abroad with the Accord Tour and so far everything has been more or less acceptable. This time we chose "Hello honey... or 3 days in Amsterdam". We ordered six months in advance at a pretty tasty price and were looking forward to leaving. Despite the fact that the tour on the site appeared as guaranteed and everyone we called claimed that we would definitely go, a few days before the departure it disappeared from the list. No one told us about this, and when they themselves turned to the travel agency, we were confronted with the fact that the tour was canceled and offered a choice of Switzerland or “Bright Benelux: the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg!”. As it turned out, this tour is more eventful than the one we had previously chosen, and it turned out like a joke: “You were cheated: they foisted a more expensive thing than you wanted,” moreover, on the same dates and almost along the same route. Not everyone is so lucky. With us in the group, in particular, there were people who initially planned to go to Spain. If you have already been to many places, you may find yourself in a complete dead end.

Now about the tour itself.

2. TV at the beginning of the salon, one, small and dark. It is convenient to watch it from the first 5-7 "elite" rows. But the sound is "vigorous", hard, like in a movie theater, which will raise the dead to their feet. The selection of films was to the taste of the manager: the films are not bad, but many of them are completely off topic and intended for individual viewing, in particular, clearly with an 18+ restriction, despite the fact that there were children in the cabin. I had to contemplate, despite the protests of some passengers, some terrible fights with sharp screams and crackling in the cabin after a period of almost complete silence and listen to the revelations of the ladies about the desire to have sex. It was scary that because of the noise, the driver, who had all this hell rattling over his head, would get into an accident. When asked to stop the disgrace, the leader offered to vote and left everything as it was, since there were only 5 or 7 people against it, the rest were dozing or did not want to quarrel. Therefore, it is not always possible to relax and take a nap on the bus.

3. Hotels do not cause complaints, except for a stinky bed bug in the center of Brussels in some homeless area. The room was treated with some kind of terrible chemistry and the wife was seriously afraid that we might not wake up from this stench in the morning. In one of the rooms, our people found someone else's sock in the shower room. According to the manager, it was impossible to drive up to the hotel, so the whole tired group RUN WITH ALL THE SUITCASES FROM THE BUS TO THE HOTEL ONE KILOMETER (!!!) AT NIGHT, including a woman on crutches with a sore knee. I have never seen such gesture. In the morning, a one-kilometer run was repeated in reverse order, from the hotel to the bus. This is despite the fact that a large city bus runs freely near the hotel. Another run, 700 meters, with full gear, we were forced to perform in order to run at night to the hotel in a small place near Amsterdam.

4. There are no complaints about excursions: we had enough free ones and they should be minimal by default, and one paid one, which we had to buy so that we would be taken to Wroclaw, and not left somewhere on the road to wait for the bus, we left after 10 minutes and examined city ​​themselves, so as not to waste precious time.

5. Another important feature: on this tour, the company reserves the right to leave you for a couple of hours, God knows where, if you do not pay at least 10 euros for the delivery of your expensive body to another city. We paid for Wroclaw and everything was in order, they refused to pay for Antwerp and the manager Ira assured us that we would spend time in a shopping center on the outskirts of the city. The area in which we were left for 2 hours, from 20-00 to 22-00, that is, almost at night, turned out to be a large completely deserted area near the road junction, with many large STORES CLOSED FOR LATE TIME. That is, all the promises of the leader were almost true, except that we ended up outside the city, and all the shops could only be seen from the outside. The only working outlet was a small McDonald's, where we were kicked out because we had no desire to buy their fast food. I don’t know if the company is responsible for actually leaving tourists to their fate AT NIGHT IN ANOTHER DESERTED PLACE OUTSIDE THE CITY, but I don’t want to be in such a situation anymore and I won’t wish it to others.

6. At all sanitary stops along the route, the same scene was observed: nothing portends a storm, the bus makes a sharp maneuver away from the highway, stops, and only then the leader announces to the passengers that there will be a stop. This is the first time in my practice when stops are not warned in advance.

7. And the last. It's a big mistake to book return tickets home close to the announced return time. It is better to have 10-12 hours of reserve. Otherwise, you will have to, as in our tour, hastily hand over tickets online and look for a replacement.

After reading all this opus, you might think that everything was very bad. In fact, the experience of the tour is just wonderful, primarily because we used the tour as an inexpensive means of transportation to the right place, and then wandered around the cities ourselves.

The service in the hotels is acceptable or good, the food is not satisfactory, the excursions are acceptable.

Perhaps the team leader sincerely wanted everyone to be well, but did not always understand how to do this.

As for the behavior of the tour operator - a separate question. I really want to continue using his services, but it seems that the quality of his work is going down sharply, some kind of scam, mass deception begins, and a big scandal or bankruptcy is brewing. It's just not clear how to get on the tour that you have chosen under conditions of total swindle. Sadly.

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