We booked a trip to Iceland with Vantage. They called it a deluxe trip with four-star hotels, presumably the highest rating in Iceland. The trip was a disaster:
The guide barely spoke English. Iceland was having a heatwave for the first time in 100 years and the driver would not put on the A/C on the bus. Several of us had to request numerously every single time, and he would reluctantly oblige. The tour consisted of one visit to a museum. All other museums were pointed out from the window of the bus. We stopped at a couple of churches so that.... the guide could sing with her choir! The accommodations were horrendous. One four-star hotel was a high-school dormitory! another was a small room without a/c room on a farm. Could have been very charming, but if you
opened the window for some air, you would smell manure and the flies would come in. With or without the window closed, we could not sleep for three nights. The food (breakfast and dinner) was disgusting, and since most of the hotels were far from the city, you couldn't even order a cab, which would have been prohibitive anyway. One night, we were told that we would go to a first rate restaurant and were asked whether we wanted beef or fish. By then, everyone was fed up with fish and most opted for the beef. It was totally inedible, could not even be cut with a sharp knife. We complained to the guide, and I asked her to call Vantage and see whether they could arrange to take us to a better restaurant. The answer was an emphatic NO. Since lunch was not included, every single lunch cafeteria (with exorbitant prices) was conveniently next to a huge tourist store. There, the guide would go swimming in a nearby public swimming pool and give us plenty of time for shopping. We certainly do not travel to a far away country to shop, but to see the sights. To say that this was the worst trip of our lives is an understatement. When we got back to the US, we wrote to customer service and got this response: "remember that Vantage’s tours are cultural experiences, not ordinary vacations. Reviewing the scores taken from the surveys completed at the end of the tours, the Iceland tour does rate at an 88%". We even wrote the president of Vantage and got nothing. Our advice: do NOT use Vantage Travel ever and tell your friends and family the same. We did.


Recommended: No

Best Suited For: Couples
Tour format: Various
Tour length: Over a Week
Tour type: Group