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Reviews

• An expensive disappointment

  Zsuzsa P,

  Sep 6, 2024

  - Viator

  2.00

  So overall, I’m sharing my review with the mindset of paying a lot of money (800 usd for 2 persons) in a country where you can buy food for yourself out of 100 usd for a month and really good accomodations in this area for 1 night costs between 10-20 usd. Let me start with the basics: - Car: it was not cleaned, smelly and uncomfortable. We’re 180cm tall with longer legs, so sitting in the backseat for 3-4 hrs when our knees constantly hitting the front chairs is really not a good experience. Especially on a day when you leave the accomodation at 2am, get in the car and travel 2-3 hrs to observe the sunrise/hike the volcano, you’d probably use these hours to have some sleep. - Food: it was OK, most of the times we had chance to try local food, so we liked this part. Water was provided by the guide every day. One thing was really not OK, when we visited Bromo volcano. We had to leave our accomodation at 2pm and our official breakfast was provided only when we got back to our hotel at around 9am. In between 2 and 9pm we were sitting in a hütte-like place so we don’t freeze, but if we wanted to eat/drink stg, we had to buy it for ourselves - and the food/drink options were not really facinating (e.g. instant noodle soup). This is something that could have been planned better. - Accomodations: we had 3 different homestays during our trip. Honestly, this was the most disappointing part of our trip. Again, we did not have high expectations, but only 3 basics, such as cleanliness, having a window in the room facing to somewhere outside and at least having 2 blankets for 2 persons (we are very good friends for 25 years, and even if we’re OK to sleep in one bed -since our request to have tween beds was never considered by any accomodation - we’d sleep under separate blankets). None of these 3 basic requirements were met in any of the accomodations. In the 1st homestay the room was OK, there were windows and we even had a balcony facing to the forest, the room and bedsheets were dirty. But we got 2 blankets upon request. The 2nd accomodation was clean (the cleanest for instance out of the 3), but there were no windows. No, actually, there was one window facing to the inside staircase, and we could not move the window shades (not that if we would have ever wanted though). We wanted to get another blanket, but we should have payed for that. The 3rd homestay was far the worst. First we got a room that smelled like ashtray, so my friend went to complain. The 2nd room we got in another building smelled like mold. At this point we were like OK, so you can either sleep in an ashtrey or in a mouldy room. Overall about the tour: besides the details I shared, I must share one more disappointing thing about the overall organization of this trip. Fair enough, this is more like an unfortunate event that is outside of Viator’s control, but still, a company like this should have better and more transparent communication. Originally, we booked a 4 days 3 nights tour to visit 2 volcanos: Bromo and Ijen. These are the main attractions of Java, all tourists want to visit these special volcanos. We booked our trip on the 5th August (2 weeks before our trip). 1 day before we started our trip, the main officer shared a whatsapp message about the current situation of Ijen volcano - it is closed due to the current volcano activity. It turned out that Ijen is closed since 12th July, when some activity started and the governant has not opened it for visitors yet. The transparent communication would have been that Viator informs us about the situation right after we booked and pre-payed the whole trip, shares with us an alternative option if Ijen does not reopen by the time of our arrival and we have a choice whether we want the trip we booked or not, or re-book our trip to a shorter one (there are several other options on their website). The alternative option replacing Ijen was the following: we climbed to a small hill in front of Ijen to observe what we missed - although Ijen volcano was barely visible from that location. After this we went to a hotspring which was a nice area, fully empty, so it would have been calm and relaxing there, but we are from a country with full of thermal spas (we’re Hungarians from Budapest), so for us this hotspring was not really a thing and we couldn’t get excited about this too much. Another thing is the way how Viator treats their employees, which is far below any standards. While we were sleeping in our (not always clean/comfy) rooms, but at least we had a bed, toilet and shower, the guide, this poor guy was sleeping in the car. We weren’t sure if he had any chance to at least take a shower or if he got food every day (if he did, it was managed somewhere else, because he was never around when we ate). And, I have some basis of comparison here. For instance, I was in Uganda on a safari trip last summer (we payed for the basic one, nothing fancy) and our guide/driver had breakfast/lunch/dinner every time with us, which is actually a really good time to catch-up about basic life in that country or discussing the daily itinary. He had accomodation with us - probably a lower tier room than us, but still, he was treated the way how normal human being should be treated in a service business. We chose Viator because we believed a big company like this has the right standards in every country they operate, but it seems not to be true :( This trip is the perfect representstion of Java itself: if you’re a tourist, you can be sure that you won’t get what you paid for: prices are always higher vs. the reality, unfortunately these people in Java see tourists as equal to MONEY. People who come and visit a different culture and trying to expend their horizon can feel vulnerable and must rely on the companies they hire for organizing their desired trips. Exactly because of this, a tour company should look after their clients from all perspectives and make sure everyone who choses them and come to Java, will leave with good memories and amazing experiences with seeing the value for their money. Which was not true at all in our case.