Disgusting tour company but amazing country

Many Ukrainians have thought about going to Georgia this summer. There are many reasons for this: the inability to relax in the Crimea, difficulties in obtaining a Schengen visa, the growth of the dollar and the fall in purchasing power. In this regard, many Ukrainians who have a taste for travel, but can afford to relax only on a budget turned their eyes towards the Georgian tours of the Kote company. It was hard not to notice the company's advertising for users of social networks, it is quite sensible and persistent. It is worth typing “tours to Georgia from Ukraine” in the search engine and contextual advertising constantly offers the services of this company.

Having studied the program, the price / quality ratio of the declared services seems very tempting. However, "it was smooth on paper, but they forgot about the ravines, and you can walk on them."

So what was suggested. I quote the information indicated on the site and duplicated in the contract.

"one. Travel by comfortable bus along the entire route. Of course, everyone has their own idea of ​​comfort. Perhaps, in the view of the company, an uncomfortable bus is Ikarus or LAZ, the rest is the height of comfort. What we had. A double-decker bus, where it was quite possible to exist on the second floor. True, there was no footrest, the legs could only be stretched under the seat in front of the sitting comrade, but in general, nothing. The first floor is pure tin. According to the idea of ​​the creators of the bus, the first floor is a recreation area where you can go down, eat and then go up to your seat. On the first floor, people sit at tables of four, with their backs to each other (like in intercity trains). Naturally, there is no possibility to recline the back of the seat for such places, in addition, some of the passengers traveled backwards (whoever gets even a little motion sickness understands what it is, especially on such a long journey). No one warned anyone about the specifics of such places in advance and did not make a discount for tourists who got such places (at the same time, in modern tourism it is normal practice to give a discount even for the last places in a row, because the seats do not recline on them).

Further more. In the heat, the air conditioner stopped “pulling”, and if it was still tolerable on the second floor, then on the first floor it no longer saved at all. By definition, there was no way to open the hatch.

The biggest ambush is that when booking a tour, the company reports the seat number, but it is not possible to assess the degree of its comfort and generally acceptability for a particular tourist. In addition to conventional buses, this company uses the so-called "transformers", where the seats are laid out in the manner of shelves in a train. The travel agency through which I bought the tour warned me that the bus would be normal, not a transformer. However, not everyone is as lucky as me. Some of the tourists who bought the tour directly from Kota were assured by managers that they would travel by bus with the ability to sleep in a supine position.

And then the fun begins. Passing through the territory of the Russian Federation, our bus broke down. How we stood at night under the stars on the federal highway, where on the one hand there is a road, and on the other - a forest - the subject of a separate story. Everything was there - despair, panic, and rebellion. There was only one thing missing - the correct and professional work of the escort. The total downtime is 7 hours. Do you think we were somehow compensated for this time? What are you, what are you. Representatives of the company told us that it was FORCE MAJOR. Because at the bottom there is a postscript: “THE TOURIST COMPANY-OPERATOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WORK OF CUSTOMS AND BORDER SERVICES, AS WELL AS FOR TRAFFIC TRAFFIC REPAIRS AND WEATHER CONDITIONS.” Do you think they are not responsible for the fact that the authorities are repairing the roads and they have to go around? No, not only. In this case, this postscript to be honest should look like this: "The OPERATOR COMPANY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TECHNICAL CONDITION OF THE BUS." All time lost for repairs is deducted from the total travel time and is not compensated. No, compensation was promised to us, but that was it.

Read on. Promised: "A gift from the company - an excursion to the Botanical Garden." Again, honestly, it should be written in brackets “entrance tickets are paid additionally, an adult - 8 lari (80 UAH)”. The gift was understood as the fact that they took us and gave us a guide. Small, but a nuisance. Because people tuned in to the “gift”.

Another interesting point is the time spent on the road. The firm promises 30 hours to Tbilisi. We really got 49 hours and the escort said that this was not the limit. When booking a tour, you are not warned that customs clearance is a matter of hours and hours. That the Ukrainian-Russian border can be crossed both 12 and 18 hours, we passed it in 7.5 hours and those accompanying us told us that “we were wildly lucky, we crossed the border so FAST”. All hours of waiting at the border are again deducted from your rest time. I will not say anything about giving a bribe at customs and knocking this bribe off tourists, who are interested - read in other reviews. This moment completely contradicted the first rule of Ostap Bender that "We must honor the criminal code." But our organizers, it seems, did not read either the "12 Chairs" or Art. 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Item 5 deserves special attention. Support from the company. But about this - separately. Because professionalism there and does not smell. And now - about the prices for the tour and their deft "juggling". So we had two identical tours called "Grand - tour to Georgia", one from Dnepropetrovsk, the other from Kyiv. From the Dnieper, according to early booking, the tour cost $ 194, from Kyiv - $ 225. I had to sit down in Kharkov, and since Kharkov was the place where the Ukraine-RF border crossed, I basically didn’t care. Of course, the cost of the tour from the Dnieper was as much as $30 (750 UAH) “tastier”. However, when I called the company, I found out that on August 13, a group was not recruited from the Dnieper, there people were going to the sea to Batumi. That is, I had a tour from Kyiv on August 14, which I paid for $ 225 by early booking. A few days before the departure, they called me and said that the group from Kyiv was not recruited, but there was an opportunity to go with a group from the Dnieper on the 13th. Or go by minibus, which will leave Kyiv on August 14. There is a separate dark story with this minibus, because the people of Kiev who were traveling with me had never heard of it. It begs the question: “Was there a boy?” The representative of the travel agency through which I bought the ticket advised me not to take the minibus. When I asked about my $30, they told me that since we are booking the tour now, I will not be compensated for the difference. The curtain.

And now about their wonderful employees and the work of the Kote company in terms of personnel management. It is noticeable that everything related to the work of employees in the office - conversations with clients, advertising, and so on, is delivered very well. Employees were obviously taught how to answer the phone, how to handle objections, how to convince them to buy a tour. Also, obviously a lot has been spent on advertising and promotion in social networks - everything is done professionally and efficiently. However, the owners of the company forget that the best advertising is people who have already been on the tour and they liked it. In any marketing paper, there are many variations on the same truth: a happy customer will bring two more, a disgruntled customer will turn ten away. Apparently, this is not obvious to the owners of Kote. Once you get on tour, no one else will try to make you like everything and if something goes wrong, no one will apologize. In this case, it is you who is a bad customer - a disgruntled and not positive grouch.

Immediately make a reservation who pleased - drivers and Georgian guides. The drivers are real professionals, they took us safe and sound, given the complexity of the road, honor and praise to them. Georgian guides Sergo and Yuri worked with full dedication and professionalism. But against their background, ours contrasted even more.

So, the promised "accompaniment from the company" was carried out by two characters. The first character is Ekaterina, who accompanied us to the border with Georgia and from the border on the way back. A girl of 20-25 years old spoke on the phone in a well-trained voice and made a good impression. Deceptive, however.

As someone with travel experience, I expected the chaperone to interact with the group in some way during the trip. At least in other tours where I was, they did. To introduce the group to each other, talk about the places that we pass and which we will visit, include an interesting movie and generally keep the group from getting bored and maintain the group spirit. But from the point of view of "Kote" all this is not included in the function of the escort. The voice of the escort was heard only on purely organizational issues (filling out the declaration, stops, etc.). The selection of films was very poor and did not include any films with Georgian themes. Periodically included music in the form of chanson or radio. I don't know whose choice it was, perhaps the drivers. But it was all tolerable. And then we broke down.

As I promised, I will talk about this episode, which was called “Russian Night” in the group (by analogy with “Georgian Night” in a Tbilisi restaurant), separately. So, somewhere on the territory of the Russian Federation on the federal highway, our bus breaks down at night. Drivers open the hood and begin to lie under the bus in an attempt to fix it. People disperse along the route. Then, like with Zadornov, it was getting dark ... After about two hours, people begin to be interested in Katya about our future prospects. Katya at this time, instead of communicating with tourists, maintaining the psychological state of the group and preventing panic, stands above the drivers with a flashlight. She snaps at tourists’ questions, saying that I don’t disturb the drivers, they know better, she is busy with repairs. At the third hour of downtime, a murmur begins that it is necessary to call for technical assistance. Katya snaps that the drivers know better. At the fourth hour, riot and panic begin.

What do we have. 70 people on a dark road in a foreign country far from the village. The water has run out. People are rioting, demanding to call technical support, the police, change the bus, check into a hotel, etc. Katya calls the director, hangs on the phone, continues to avoid contact with tourists, repeating the same phrase "The issue is being resolved", "At the moment the director is busy resolving the issue." This communication technique is called "broken record" and is effective in some cases, but not in this one. Listening to the same phrase to their questions, irritation grows more and more in the group. Somewhere at five o'clock, Katya, under the pressure of tourists, begins to make a roll call, before that, to control what people are doing on a dark track and whether they are all safe, apparently, was not part of her duties.

We demand to call the director on the speakerphone. The same answer "he is now busy resolving this issue." Finally, we achieve a telephone call from the director. As far as I understand, it was Vladimir Koteev, the owner of the Kote company. He promises that yes, they will call us a taxi, they will put us in a hotel and extend our stay in Georgia for the lost time.

In parallel, people are trying to somehow call for help and start to stop passing cars. By the way, only Caucasians stopped, not a single Russian stopped. People were responsive. The first to stop, the driver of the Mercedes, brought us water. God bless him, at night on the highway a man made a detour to bring water to strangers who were in trouble. The second stop, the truck driver, called the police. He spoke on the phone for a long time, they demanded from him to give his last name, first name and patronymic, and they did not really want to accept the call. Finally, the police arrived. Even two cars, because it turned out that we broke down on the border of two districts. The first policeman asked where we were going, when he heard that at sea he said: “Why are you rushing there? Is your own (pause), our sea not enough for you? He said that he has a Ukrainian surname and that he was not sold ice cream this year in Kherson because he is Russian (a very dubious story). In general, the police indicated their presence and even illuminated the process of repairing the bus by the drivers with their headlights, since our bus could no longer shine, the batteries were discharged.

What was positive in this moment with the repair is the stars. The Caucasian stars were stunningly bright against the vast velvet sky.

Katya promises that right now she will call a taxi and resettle us, but time is running out. How she called a taxi so none of the group heard (at least, according to my information). I am more than sure that her task was simply to play for time. However, she did well with her. Finally, the bus started up. After a few kilometers it broke down again. It was repaired for another hour, screwing up what was not screwed up the first time. The total adventure time is 7 hours. It was 7 hours that we could spend walking around the magical evening Tbilisi, as we were promised. 7 hours of our one and only life. As you may have guessed, no one apologized to us and did not compensate for anything.

The result of the accompanying Katya. A person is well trained to communicate with a client in the office and work in regular situations in clearly defined tasks. Being a leader and leading a group somewhere, influencing its mood until she can't do it. He does not know how to interact with people in conflict and extreme situations at all. People in such situations are afraid and avoided, trying to hide behind memorized formulations and imitation of violent activity on the phone. Communicative competence is very low, generally unacceptable for such work. And such a person is trusted to lead 70 people over several thousand kilometers.

On the territory of Georgia, another escort was waiting for us - Aleksey. I must say that here the communicative competence was at a high level. He immediately told us that what happened to us was force majeure, and in general, we could have been passing the Ukraine-RF border all this time, which we were so lucky to pass in 7.5 hours. Yes, the road cannot take 30 hours, but if we write the truth, who will go with us. And in general, let's switch to the positive and enjoy this magical country.

The general impression of Alexei is that he behaves as if he is hanging out with everyone, and is not at work. He works in a light stream, goes swimming with everyone, jumps first from a bridge, etc. To follow the tourists, to control that no one is left behind, pays little attention. No, sometimes he checked to see if everything was in place, and sometimes not, losing tourists along the way and stopping only after the screams of passengers. Those places where he brought us to eat were, to put it mildly, not the best in terms of price / quality ratio. But the owners of these establishments knew him well and welcomed him. Everything is clear here, there are no questions.

After moving to Batumi at night, we were first informed that they would be settled at 12 o'clock, then at 14.00. Upon check-in at the Surf hostel, it turned out that we were not provided with bed linen. That's it, a bare mattress and that's it. Like, there was a large group in front of you and the laundry is now in the wash. I turned to Alexei, who was sitting on the terrace and drinking tea, that this was a disgrace and that he should defend our interests, to which he shrugged: “What can I do?” Indeed, do not spoil the relationship with the owner of the hostel, defending the interests of tourists and proving that linen should have been given at the time of check-in, that people are tired after a night move and want to go to bed, and that since they have such a large flow of tourists, you need to have at least two sets underwear. As you may have guessed, no one apologized to us, neither the owner of the hostel, nor Alexei himself. What for? That evening we had a great time in the kitchen, discussing the historical perspective of Ukraine, the conversation was very interesting.

Breakfasts in Batumi were a separate item of our program. If in Tbilisi and Kazbegi the hostel fed people, then in Batumi at breakfast, which was included in the price, the company decided to save money and cook it on its own. On the first day, Aleksey simply put the bags of food on the table. He did not make sure that everyone had at least a chair and a plate. Since spreading butter on bread is “not a man’s business,” he found among the girls the one who agreed to do this and hit the road. The next two for Sveta (that was the name of the girl) took the initiative and offered to cook breakfast normally. Thanks to her we had a good breakfast, thank you very much. But not thanks to Alexei, who did not even bother to buy groceries since the evening. As time passed while he woke up and went to the store, breakfast was postponed for an hour. Good for those who, like me, went to the sea before breakfast and bad for those who went there after breakfast. But who cared.

The final chord was in Kazbegi. According to the plan, we were supposed to arrive there at night and in the morning part of the group goes to Mount Gergeti on foot, and part rides in jeeps for an additional fee. The departure was scheduled for 6 am. Katya, who by that time was already with us, informed the owner of the guest house that no one wanted to go by car, although no one asked us. From the very beginning, I wanted to go by car, and when I heard the conversation between the owner and Katya, I said that there were those who wanted to go by car. It rained at night, which is not uncommon in these places. In the morning Alexey got up, looked that it was raining and that hiking up the mountain was not real and went to bed. According to the logic of the development of events, it is already clear that the idea to bypass the tourists, to offer options, for example, to go to everyone in jeeps later, did not occur to him. As a result, those tourists who were able to organize themselves, find cars and go to the mountain, had the opportunity to admire the stunning view and visit the church on the mountain. Who did not have time - he was late and did not see Kazbek at all. I was lucky, I was there. When we returned from the mountain, we found Alexei, who asked in surprise: “Did you go to the mountain?”

The result of the accompanying Alexei. A positive and sociable person, but at the same time completely irresponsible with complete confidence in his own impunity. He puts his benefit, his vacation and relations with the host far above the interests of tourists.

However, are these two characters really that bad on their own? Every time I see the good or bad work of the personnel of any organization, I see behind it the work of the personnel manager, the policy of the company, etc. Kote clearly does not bother to teach its employees how to effectively interact with people and work in the interests of the client. What for? After all, for this you need to hire a personnel manager, a psychologist who will conduct the necessary trainings, etc. And People eats and so.

So what do we have. If you decide to visit the wonderful country of Georgia, using the bus tour from the Kote company, you should carefully consider the following points.

1. The comfort of your travel place is a matter of chance, which is extremely problematic to influence. You can get a comfortable seat, or maybe a place without the ability to recline or located with your back forward. You can be easily misled about the type of bus.

2. The company is not responsible for the technical condition of the bus and related bus repairs, considering this as force majeure. The repair time will certainly be the time of your trip and you will not be compensated in any way.

3. In general, forget about any possible compensation for any situations arising through the fault of the company.

4. Toilets at sanitary stops in most cases will amaze you with the high cost and lack of cleanliness.

5. Eateries where they will stop for food will not be selected on the principle of optimal price / quality ratio. The only criterion is that drivers are known and loved here.

6. Time on the road may significantly exceed the stated. Even if not, it will exceed it. Stock up on patience, entertainment and food.

7. No one will try to drive closer to drop you off at the settlement, you may have to walk several blocks. Try to distribute the weight of the bags so that they can be carried or rolled long enough, and possibly downhill.

8. In general, forget that the escort will adhere to your interests and defend them.

Who are the tours of the Kote operator suitable for? These are incorrigible optimists, in love with travel and Georgia, for whom the quality of service is the tenth thing, and there is no money for an airplane flight. People for whom the main thing is to stay positive and enjoy the trip, regardless of what.

Undoubtedly positive aspects in using these tours are that:

1. Georgia is a chic country. Beautiful, strong, with amazingly hospitable people. Georgia will please you with a truly fraternal attitude towards Ukraine and Ukrainians.

2. Who are the pros in the "Cat" are the drivers, so you, most likely, sooner or later, one way or another, will get there.

3. Since the majority of tourists are those same incorrigible optimists, you will travel in good company, have an unforgettable time and make new acquaintances with positive people.

To go or not is up to you. I think that even if they told me all the nuances in advance, I would still go, because Georgia is worth it. Probably because I am that incorrigible optimist. But when making a decision, do not look at the Kote advertisement, read the reviews on the Internet and weigh how much this Kote is for you.

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