Why do we post “or similar” next to the names of the hotels on your trip?

The professionalism in these countries, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, often surprises us quite positively for the human quality of the service, care, details, experience. Certainly one of the aspects of our trip that will catch our attention at some point.

 

But there is also an aspect of local services, even in relation to big hotels, from famous international chains, which is not very or nothing professional. For example, regarding reservations. Because we know how it works, it is our responsibility, always aiming for your best possible experience during the trip, to score and alert you that problems with reservations can happen. It's neither frequent nor common, but it happens. This is a fact of these countries.

 

In our nearly 20 years of work in these countries, three times we had problems. (1) International chain hotel in a big city in India, on arrival with the group there were no reservations. With our experience we soon found out what was happening – a medical congress with the involvement of local politicians who overturned all reservations to host their guests – and we solved the problem precisely because we understood well how these things work in these countries, how problems of this type are solved together from our entire network of contacts. (2) Similar situation has already happened in a small hotel in a small town in India. Were also approx. 2 or 3 hours to resolve the situation 100%. It's not easy. But we can safely say that we understand the subject well. We have a lot of experience and, yes, we will always do our best to solve the unforeseen, practically “the possible and the impossible”. To this day, we have always resolved all such unforeseen events without our travellers being harmed. (3) Bhutan is notoriously even more delicate with regard to reserves. We often need to change hotels a few weeks before travel, within the hotels we use in each voucher. Because we prevent and monitor our bookings closely, very carefully, we never had problems that we didn't work around. So, we repeat, our travellers never had any problems, they always had the hotels we like to use and offer you in every valley, city, village on your trip!

 

The best way to work with this fact is: to be all aware. It's a matter of responsibility and, precisely, professionalism by those who have extensive experience and know very well how local service providers work in these countries.