Trip to Greece

Greece | Apr 24 - May 4, 2019

We have decided to break our review down into a review of Kimkim.com and Travel12, our local agent in Greece.

Kimkim.com

Pros: feeling of security from an American company and guarantee; beautiful itinerary provided free of charge; great communication platform.

Cons: no breakdown of cost provided; chance of being arranged with a bad travel agent; some judgment when questioning the cost.

Booked and completed a 10-day tour in Greece. Overall happy with the service. They put us in touch with a local agent. Kimkim reached out in our first few days to see how things were going. Our first agent was not helpful in explaining the price break down or in getting the price cheaper. The Kimkim agency helped us get a new agent. I did feel a little judged by the Kimkim agent when we explained we were not happy with the cost estimate provided. When you first start you take a short survey to provide the local agent with an idea of what you want. We chose the “mid-budget” option (other options budget and luxury). I forget the exact amount but around 100-150 a day. So we were expecting/hoping for around $1250 but we were provided a cost of $2000 and only 8 days of activities. This was a bit of a shock; when we tried to get a cost break down to see where the money was going to so that we could cut cost, we were told this would not be provided. When kimkim reached out we told them we were not happy with this. They at first tried to see if we could work with our first agent but we wanted to switch after some negative exchanges and unwanted/unauthorized changes to our itinerary. The kimkim rep was okay but they did make us feel a little judged by emphasizing that this was a custom tour but they did switch for us. We ended up paying around $1800 with 7 days of activities and 10 nights of hotel (3 travel days to different islands). The next travel agent provided a better breakdown but we never got a complete breakdown. We had a lovely vacation. Unsure if the travel agent treated us better because of kimkim but overall happy and will use the service again because of the guarantee and the assistance in finding a new agent.

Travel 12.

Pros: Responsive, cost-conscious, and flexible.

Tasos, was very responsive to our needs. He took the time to call us from Greece so we can understand what we were looking for and met us in person on our first day. One of the greatest benefit with Tasos is that you get access to the whole Travel 12 team. We could send them a What’s Up message or an email with any questions, double check tour times, and they did the same.

Tasos created a great itinerary that was customized to us. One of the experiences we were looking for were local Easter celebrations, and Tasos arranged for a private driver to take us to ancient Monastery in Pyrgos were the most beautiful celebrations were taking place.

Tasos was very cost conscious and took into consideration how much we wanted to spend on certain activities. On top of that, Travel 12 assumed all costs for any changes in the itinerary that were beyond our control (like a local protect that required Tasos to cancel our ferry ride and book a flight instead at no cost to us).

Travel 12’s professional driver Lampros was very nice, dressed very well, gave us a bunch of tips and local info, and even made a detour on our last day to show us a beautiful view of Athens. The whole team of Travel 12 was very caring and it was a great feeling of comfort.

Cons: The only con we could think of was that not all possibilities for upgrades were not communicated to us. We would have upgraded our ferry ride from Athens to Santorini if we knew that was an option.