Balkan mega tour

I am a travel agency manager. With tour operator I Travel (Dnipro, Ukraine), from April 28 to May 7, 2018, I went to the "MEGA promotional tour of the Balkans". I want to share my impressions of the trip.

“Guide” Irina, who went with us on an info tour, which can hardly be called a “guide”, behaved unprofessionally, did not fulfill her functions and duties, so the organization throughout the info tour was at zero, which resulted in sad and terrible consequences.

As a rule, the professional duties of the guide include: introduce yourself to the group, introduce the members of the tourist group to each other, explain and announce changes in the itinerary, make stops for lunch, ensure that the group arrives on time at the designated settlement along the route, acquaint with the culture , history, geography of the visited country, give information about the country, the hotel in which we will live.

On our trip, the guide did not introduce himself. The first three days of the journey on the bus, she didn’t say a single word to anyone: she didn’t say hello, she didn’t introduce people to each other who were traveling on the bus, and there were neither more nor less than 50 of us. It was not said where we were going, nor about the sights outside the bus window, nothing .... Complete silence. The "guide" did not have a selection of videos and music, visited countries. Throughout the journey, we listened to the chanson, which was included by the bus drivers. When passengers asked for information on the visited country, we were directed to read the Internet on our own.

Even when people first asked, then resented, Irina kept complete silence and indifference. With such success, we could go alone, why do we need such a "guide ???quot; And so it was throughout the promotional tour. "Guide" Irina, went on this tour with her boyfriend, maybe that's why Irina was interested in him, and not her direct work, for which she is paid a salary? All attention was given to him, and not her immediate work. Due to the fact that there was no organization, we only saw gas stations and toilets during the daytime. And, for some reason, gas stations were selected all along the way, those where there was only one toilet, and not two, three. Considering that there were 50 of us and everyone needed at least five minutes. In total, we lost 2-2.5 hours. And it happened more than once or twice, throughout the day. Because of this and poor organization, as well as a disinterested attitude on the part of the guide, we always got to customs for shift changes and again lost our precious time for rest and sightseeing. As a result of the fact that the tour operator turned out to be incompetent in the issue of a visa, because of one tourist from Belarus, we stood at the border for 4 hours, again losing our rest time. In addition, the “guide” Irina did not have the necessary documents for a quick border crossing, namely, a list of all those present on the bus, a settlement voucher, and insurance. As a result, we arrived in Macedonia not during the day, as we were promised, but late at night. We looked at two beautiful cities in the dark, these are Ohrid and Skopje. And we were allotted an hour for all this. And so, all along the way: according to the program, we looked at the cities at night, and we thoroughly surveyed the toilets and gas stations, long lines, in the daytime. Due to such shortcomings, the entire program of the tour went astray. For example, the group was allocated free time and there was an agreement to meet at a certain time on the bus. Not everyone was punctual, I had to wait for colleagues for an hour, two ... Guide Irina did not react to this in any way. She was simply indifferent that because of 2-3 people who were constantly late for the appointed time, the whole group was left without rest. She never made a remark to these people. We had to rest on the bus, and not according to the tour program, as we were originally told by the tour operator.

The tour program was not thought out, not professionally, because on the last day, our route ran to the city of Kopaonik. We still don't understand why we went there. We did not see this city, ski resort, ski lifts, nothing.

We drove 10 hours to the hotel in Kopaonik, without stopping. Arriving at the hotel late at night, at 22-00, checking in at 23-00, in the morning, at 09:00, we got on the bus and went to Ukraine, home, again, having traveled the same 10 hours, but already back. One wonders why we drove 10 hours if we could spend the night at the nearest transit hotel without spending so much time on the way there and back. Why we went to this city, I still do not understand.

But the worst and saddest thing is what happened on the way back. Our bus-transformer had an accident. At night, at 1:30, we slept sitting up, but were awakened by our guide, who said that our seats would be laid out and we would sleep lying down. We slept and were not protected. If I had laid my head in the other direction, then I would no longer be alive. The bus does not provide any protection when moving, as well as when falling from the second shelf. In a collision with a car, I fell off the second shelf. The abdomen was cut in the middle, internal bleeding, broken rib, rupture and removal of the spleen. A month has passed, but my condition is not improving, I am forced to drink pills in handfuls. It happened on a highway in Romania. I was operated on there and brought to Ukraine. So the management, HAY TRAVEL, neither the director, Nikita Plyasov, nor the guide Irina, never once asked how I was feeling, maybe I need help. Complete detachment from the situation. Having left a healthy person on a promotional tour, I returned disabled.

As a manager of a travel agency, I do not recommend the tours of the HAY TRAVEL tour operator. If you want to spend all 9 days sitting in a bus, then this tour is for you!!!

I express my gratitude to Svetlana Dolgoborodova for her responsiveness, participation and help. She was neither a guide, nor an escort, nor an agency director. She was an ordinary manager from the tour operator AI Travel.

I express my gratitude to Mikhail, a citizen of Romania, who knows Russian. An outsider who accidentally ended up in an emergency hospital in Romania, he helped me translate my condition to the doctor, and thanks to him I remained alive. I did not see either an interpreter or a consul in the hospital. Mikhail visited me several times a day in the hospital every day, brought food, bought medicines and still calls and asks about my health and condition.

I thank all the participants of the tour and the victims of this tour for their moral support.

Repeatedly went with many tour operators to advertisers, but this advertiser turned my whole life upside down. May 7, 2018 is my second birthday. To say that everything hurts me is to say nothing.

I, as a manager of an agency, will never advise my tourist to travel by night by a transforming bus, and I will never advise to go with the AY TRAVEL tour operator.

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