Odynovo Tours Co., Ltd

Heidi was very helpful throughout the planning process. She updated our trip a couple times as we finalized flight times and asked for some different activities.

While we were on the trip, everything went very smoothly. We had private transfers, our guides were very helpful with local recommendations, and everyone we interacted with was very friendly and helpful. An added bonus was having our guides help us through check in at the airports which was a different process than we were used to.

Overall, our trip to Thailand was amazing. We spent time in Bangkok at temples and different markets, time in Chiang Mai with elephants and hiking in the rainforest, and days in Phuket doing ocean activities. Our guides made each day transition smoothly and our accommodations were perfect. I would not have changed anything about the trip and would definitely use kimkim again for future travel!

I booked a trip for our family (two daughters, ages 9 and 11) and husband. My husband and I are both well-traveled (60+ countries, with and without travel agents, staying anywhere from camping/ hostels to 5-star relais chateaux properties). I used KimKim because I wanted to maximize our limited time and make the trip smoother with our girls. Over-all we had a fantastic trip and experienced the culture. We loved many of the recs the agent made: the onsen (3 nights! Worth it), which felt authentic, the Sumo experience, visiting the shrines and temples. We could have passed on visiting Akihabara area (overstimulating) and we added the Mpig cafe and TeamLabs (both shouldn’t be missed and so fun w kids) on our own. The agent was responsive, polite- we had no trouble contacting her. Despite a very successful trip, my over-all rating of KimKim is poor: The massive mark-up (over 30%!) was not justified.

Stupidly, I didn’t double-check prices before booking (in the past, when I’ve used agents, there has only been a 10% +/- markup and I assumed this was standard) and realized much later that there was an over 30% mark-up. I kept hoping the exorbitant price would be made up for by care and attention to detail, but sadly, this was not the case. Here are some examples:

* Booking through the agent made things worse
* We arrived in Tokyo at 9pm, tired and jet-lagged, and informed that our hotel was booked for 3 instead of 4 nights. The hotel was full, and the extra night couldn’t easily be added on, and we were told we would have to change rooms (and downgrade!). Additionally, they had no locked storage area- presenting some logistical challenges and burden. I knew what happened: The original itinerary I booked had us in Tokyo for 3 nights; however, the agent overlooked a small detail- that Sumo was not offered on Sundays (something clearly stated on the website-a red flag then), resulting in a whole itinerary change, adding a night in Tokyo. Apparently, my name was misspelled, and the 3+1 nights were not linked. They said they upgraded us for the 3-night stay, but the room they gave us was identical to the one in our itinerary photo, so that didn’t make sense. Regardless, it ended up working out- someone “cancelled”, we kept the room, but it was stressful and a very disappointing way to start the trip: not worth 30% markup!
* The agent sent us to the wrong location for the sushi-making experience. The new site was several blocks away, and the Sushi place said that they emailed us about the change, but, having not made the booking myself, I was never informed. We ran to the new site and made it a few minutes late.
* The agent sent us to the wrong location for the Samurai sword experience, and it wasn't booked long enough and was heavily overbooked (I think they made a mistake, as the staff looked stressed). This resulted in missing part of the experience. KimKim did refund us that portion of the experience without hesitation- they knew it was a screw up.
* For the Sumo experience, they emailed us photos, but because I didn’t make the reservation, the photos didn’t get sent directly to me, and I had to request them from the agent to get them- not a huge deal, but not VIP. Not worth paying an extra 30%!

* Luggage storage in Kyoto train station was like Hunger Games! We had to store our luggage for a day at the train station so we could make our tours and have time for lunch. I specifically asked the agent if it was easy to find lockers, knowing we had 5 pieces of luggage, and she reassured me they were readily available. Well, 30 minutes of frantically searching in the train station, we secured 5 lockers all apart from one another. Not a big deal, but certainly not worth 30% markup.

* Our two guides were kind, patient, and prompt but they were average in knowledge. They knew the brochure information but did not offer any in-depth knowledge of the areas. No one knew the best places to get food (my husband is vegetarian) or had that back-alley, in-the-know experience that exceptional guides have. Not worth the 30% markup.

* Food recs were non-existent. The agent offered no specific food recommendations based on personal experience, nor did the guides. No one had firsthand knowledge of the restaurants in the heavily touristed areas we were in. The onsen has a very challenging menu as well - we braved it one morning with the Japanese breakfast, but it was so fishy and pickled, it was inedible to us (I normally am an adventurous eater, but this was too much!). The western breakfast was price-fixed with soupy scrambled eggs, weird cuts of meat… For some, this might be a luxury, but for most Western folks, especially those with kids, this is not worth the money. It would’ve been nice to have that firsthand information and have someone give us some recs of nearby restaurants that were open early (very few were open before 9 or 10 am in Arashiyama). Again, all issues we expect while travelling, but by using an agent with a huge markup, these details needed to be managed.

* Hotel recs were hit and miss. We loved the onsen (except the breakfast) because it felt local and authentic. We slept so well! The Karaksa chain hotels were good hotels- clean, good breakfast, but I struggled with the locations. They were convenient next to the train station, but they were not close to cool areas of town, and there weren’t a lot of dining options near the hotel in Osaka.

Over-all, we had a wonderful trip but I would not book through KimKim again- If they are going to charge these prices, every small detail should be managed and they simply were not…. (and even then, 30+ % markup! I blame myself for being so gullible and not fact checking…) All of our tours/ experiences could have easily been booked through GetYourGuide or basic website searches- there was nothing special that KimKim offered that couldn’t be done on your own. Don’t make my mistake! Do your homework on pricing first.

Christine was personable patient and reliable. I wish she could plan my whole life! I enjoyed working with her

Japan was a trip of a lifetime! The Japanese sure know how to cook, loved all the food we tried! We especially appreciated how smooth our guides made the trip- Hal was a great historian in Kyoto to explain the history of Japan during the rule of the Sho-Gun. Safi was especially helpful explaining how the trains work in Tokyo and navigated us around Tokyo seamlessly and gave us a great recommendation for ramen in Harajuku. Tomi was very knowledgeable about the Toyota company foundings and provided a great recommendation for hitsumabushi in Nagoya. If we had a do-over, we probably would want to spend more time in Nagoya after having visited, it’s a lovely city and we appreciated the smaller size compared to Tokyo.

Hotel Reviews

The Thousand Kyoto

Kyoto

The lobby smelled nice when you enter, of lavender! We spent two nights here, loved the proximity to the train station. There is a very nice ramen restaurant that we found near the hotel to enjoy our thanksgiving dinner at. The hotel breakfasts, both Japanese and western style were yummy.

Authenticity & Character

Once we figured out how the iPad in the hotel controlled the room, that was a nice feature. It had lots of info on the restaurants in the hotel, services, room lights etc.

Location

Proximity to trains, made it very easy for our return trip home

Staff

All of the staff were great, very accommodating for letting us drop off our smaller luggage and hold at the desk while we explored Kyoto in the day time.

Cleanliness & Comfort

Everything was extremely clean

Hilton Nagoya Hotel

Naka-ku Nagoya

Very nice hotel, they had a cool train display for the holidays in the lobby! Staff were friendly and the breakfast was very good! We were only here one night and enjoyed our brief stay.

Authenticity & Character

Location

We were able to enjoy a nice walk to the train station from the hotel!

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Again, extremely clean room.

Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel, A Pan Pacific Partner Hotel

Loved the closeness to the Shibuya station for exploring around Tokyo. The staff were all extremely helpful when we had questions about setting up a cab or shipping our luggage to Kyoto. The bar on the 40th floor made really good cocktails and the Japanese breakfast was so yummy.

Authenticity & Character

Very modern hotel with lots of nice amenities

Location

Closeness to train station, food and shopping

Staff

Extremely polite and patient

Cleanliness & Comfort

Enjoyed the turn down service with tea and chocolates provided

Activity Reviews

Museums Exploration in Nagoya

Nagoya

My husband loved this! He was like a kid in a candy shop at the automobiles museum. It was very cool learning about how Toyota originally started as a textile company and then became an automobile maker- especially enjoyed how the Industries museum noted different events occurring in the world as they became a car maker company.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Full Day Mt. Fuji with Lake Kawaguchi & Oishi Park

Japan

Even though the weather was not the most cooperative, we had a good time. It was impressive to see how a 12,000 foot mountain can be completely hidden with what I’m assuming is snow clouds. Enjoyed the 400 stair walk to the pagoda that overlooks the Mt Fuji valley and learning about its construction during WW2 for missing and injured Japanese soldiers (was nice to get a Japanese perspective on events in the pacific theater). We bought some cool souvenirs and tried pizza with sweet potatoes as a topping!

Quality of Experience

The fall foliage was stunning- even though we could not see the mountain, we could still enjoy the fall foliage

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Having a private driver was nice, especially to be able to nap on the return trip to Tokyo while still adjusting to the jet lag. Again, very nice to do this with Safi again, we liked the continuity of the guides as she was with us in Tokyo.

Transport

Nice and smooth, the Alphards are nice vehicles to travel in.

Tokyo Day Tour with Tsukiji Outer Market & Senso-ji - East & Central

Tokyo

Loved trying the food- only thing I wish we would have done is to have had a smaller breakfast. We were both pretty full by the time we started exploring the fish market but were able to enjoy some really nice matcha and crab. I especially enjoyed the deep fried sweet potatoes in the market from Asakusa.

Quality of Experience

Liked seeing all the activity in the market and trying Japanese snacks

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Safi was fantastic! We enjoyed running around the city with her, she’s a very fun person and easy to communicate with.

Transport

Loved riding all the trains

A lot of the events on our itinerary felt like tourist traps or promotional items that KimKim is paid to advertise. For example, on one occasion, we grabbed lunch at a random hotel, and did a food tour where one of the restaurants was staffed by people who barely spoke Japanese. Our tour guides were great; locals who were much more skilled at Japanese than English, for better and for worse, and offered us amazing recommendations for places to go and restaurants to eat at... only to take us to the restaurant booked by KimKim, which they had very little to say about. However, on one occasion, KimKim let us pick the restaurant we ate at, which was pretty amazing. That same tour hit a bunch of authentic temples, which while deeply over-commercialized, were great to see. I'm biased toward that tour because we saw more nature than shops. If there's a tree on Mount Fuji, we didn't drive anywhere near it... but Kiyomizu was breathtaking.

The reason for the stars off is primarily the amount of tour that felt like a cookie-cutter, copy-and-paste operation. We adjusted our itinerary to be close to family and friends, but the parts that we moved made me question our guide's experience. Because we were further away from the usual events, our typical day began a little after 7AM with an hour or more of transit. Sure, we incurred that when we asked to be further from some of them... but as an example, we were closer to Mt Fuji than her normal tour. She had us leave our hotel at 6AM sharp to be to Tokyo station in time to catch the shuttle... right back to where we started. Literally we drove past our city on the way back to Mount Fuji. This is the sort of thing I paid a planner *specifically* to prevent, and it wasn't an isolated incident: We had to leave the very next day at 7:25 AM to catch a bullet train between our two hotels... which allowed us to arrive *over two hours* before we were able to check in. After we were back in the city from the copy/paste itinerary, things smoothed out. But basically, just look up someone else's itinerary! KimKim won't do a good job on customizations.

My group had a lot of fun on this trip. The rating is because I genuinely believe we'd have had *more fun* if we just planned it all ourselves.

Hotel Reviews

Kyoto Tokyu Hotel

Kyoto

This hotel was pretty amazing, but it was more of a roller coaster. The breakfast bar was great; I'd have been blown away had I not just been at a Keio Plaza that set my expectations sky-high. This hotel's breakfast had most of the same stuff, though our other hotel literally had a soft serve ice cream machine... how do you compete with that? Additionally, this hotel's restaurants had very weird hours. Some were only open alternating Tuesdays/Thursdays, for example. The dinner restaurant required reservations... at a hotel. Otherwise, the amenities were on point, and I particularly appreciate the hotel shuttle to Kyoto Station. The rooms had a good deal of floor space but were short on furniture, meaning there weren't many places to set things, so luggage just had to sit on the floor. At least doing so left plenty of walkway. The fixtures (showers and toilets) were all great, there were no problems with water temperature or pressure, and the hotel had blackout curtains and other lighting control. The hotel paid a lot of attention to aesthetics; the lobby was stunningly beautiful. However, there was only one set of elevators in the whole hotel, so we managed to stop on every floor on our descent from level 6, just to watch people elect to wait for the next elevator.

Authenticity & Character

Stunning lobby, good Japanese breakfasts

Location

Very close to a cool temple, and within a comfortable commute of Kiyomizu and many others.

Staff

Helpful and friendly staff, very accommodating for English speakers

Cleanliness & Comfort

Beds were comfy and the whole hotel was very clean, neat, and pretty. More room to set stuff would have helped.

Keio Plaza Hotel Hachioji

Tokyo

This hotel's breakfast bar is carrying it. It was that wonderful. The hotel had water pressure problems and the shower flailed wildly between unpleasantly cool and painfully hot. But I worked around that by drawing a bath, and I'd do that every day for the breakfast bar, which blew the other hotel from our trip out of the water. The beds were comfortable, though on the firm side, which I believe many will appreciate. Beyond that, our experience was perfect. The rooms were small but there was space to put our stuff under tables and on a shelf above the beds' headboards, so we did better here than at our other hotel which had more floor space but no furniture to put things on.

Authenticity & Character

Features fancy Japanese toilets and modern lighting fixtures. Blackout curtains, good lighting control with multiple color temperatures. American hotels could learn a thing or two.

Location

We wanted to be in Hachioji specifically, so this was convenient for us. If you're vacationing mostly in Tokyo, this will not be convenient for you.

Staff

Very friendly and accommodating to English speakers.

Cleanliness & Comfort

Everything was neat and tidy. Housekeeping did great.

Activity Reviews

Full Day Kyoto City Tour with Fushimi Inari-Taisha

Kyoto

This experience really made the trip for me. Kiyumizu was breathtaking; a real must-see among the temples. We actually hit multiple on this tour, and our guide was so friendly and accommodating; she made plenty of time for all the stuff we wanted to do. Dinner selection was on us, which was also stunning. If I ever book through KimKim again, I'd just tell them I want more of this. It was night and day in so many respects. We met the guide at our hotel, at an hour we set; she provided us bus passes so that we didn't have to worry about transit for these events (or anything else that day), we did everything we wanted at the temples, had a great meal, and left ecstatic.

Quality of Experience

Everything about it. The places, the guide, the pacing, the meetup.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

She was fantastically accommodating; beyond what I'd ever expect, especially given our other tours.

Transport

Transport was provided; everything was included.

Kimono Tea Ceremony at Kyoto Maikoya

Kyoto

Experience oozed authenticity; any deviation from that was carefully noted by our hostess. Good for tourists as there was time for photo shoots in our kimono, which was strongly encouraged. The place featured a small "zen garden" kind of structure for it, and while said garden was pretty much in the heart of the city where I'm not sure grass can actually grow, they made it work. Sitting on my knees is hard, but the hostess was very accommodating in that respect.

Quality of Experience

The authenticity of the experience, along with how sharable a moment it is (from a tourist point of view).

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Friendly and informative, with good English skills.

Transport

We brought ourselves, so N/A

Mt. Fuji & Arakurayama Sengen Park Standard Lunch Course (Round Trip from Shinjuku or Tokyo Station)

Japan

The tour guide was friendly, spoke great English, and took us through some basic Japanese language and culture lessons, which was cute. These stops were over-commercialized tourist traps that managed to be all about Mount Fuji while exhibiting surprisingly little nature (our final stop was better, as it was a shopping center located next to a very scenic lake). The stops on Fuji itself were just tourist traps that charge you (separately and individually) to so much as use the restroom (there *is* a free one on site, as well). I was told to avoid Mount Fuji because it's a tourist trap, and I accepted the risk because hey, I'm a tourist. What I didn't expect is some extremely poor planning on the part of KimKim that made the whole day a huge pain. We had to leave our hotel before breakfast opened (which would have been at 7AM) to make it to the meetup point on time (a bit after 8 AM). To add insult to injury, the bus we boarded in Tokyo passed within a few hundred meters of said hotel an hour later. I was livid. My party constituted three of the five individuals on this tour, and the other two were from a separate stop; KimKim should have arranged a stop for us. Breakfast was not provided on the tour, nor did we have time to catch any before departure. Lunch was some sad prepackaged meal offered at a random hotel along the way. I enjoyed our time by the lake, though.

Quality of Experience

Better scheduling with our existing itinerary.

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Guide was wonderful; friendly, informative, helpful, patient.

Transport

We were on a bus most of the time. How much walking we did was up to us, and we didn't need to worry about rail.

Master Tokyo's Must-Sees: 5-hour Tsukiji, Akihabara & Asakusa Highlights Tour

Tokyo

A lot of good sights, especially the thunder temple, and a good guide to tell us about them. Japan has largely over-commercialized these temples, but it doesn't feel so bad because it's all cheap, all done on the honor system (within the temples; stands around them are pretty touristy), and all deeply rooted in their culture (even most of the local shops and food stands). Some of the pacing could be improved; I'd rather walk and talk when possible, but this tour still left some wiggle room so we could do what we wanted in the area, and the guide made time for photos and helped us out with them. The tour also left us plenty of time to structure the rest of our day around it.

Quality of Experience

Flexible schedule, friendly guide, and good food at a quality restaurant.

Food

Food quality was good, quantity was acceptable, and timing was such that we could do what we liked in town afterward.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Guide was very friendly and helpful, spoke English pretty well, and did his best to make the experience great for us.

Transport

Guide told us where to go, we just had to provide bus fare

Tokyo Night Foodie Tour in Shinjuku

Tokyo

Our guide was great. The choice of eateries was questionable. The food selection was predetermined, rather than just setting a budget, so some members of our group left after eating very little (of the 8 pieces of sushi and 3 tempura that were offered at the first joint). The second joint seemed to be higher quality and was far more impressive. We actually bailed on the third place because it was just some type of ice cream and our group was falling asleep, nearly out of phone battery, by that point in the day.

Quality of Experience

Restaurant selection, food variety

Food

Variety, selection... these were two of the three worst restaurants we ate at on our whole trip. They weren't *bad,* there were just *better,* all around.

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Our guide was very friendly and informative. We learned a lot from him.

Transport

Most of this experience was just walking somewhere to eat two fistfuls of food, the pacing of meals and stops was terrible, and we had no time to adjust for things the group was actually enjoying.