Kimkim Trip Reviews

Gabor was very helpful and tolerated our many questions and changes to the itinerary including a change of flight times at short notice, He called us during our trip to check that everything was OK.

It was the most amazing hike we ever did and Stephanie was of great help from the day we arrived in Cusco until the time we left. The hotels were really nice and all the people were very nice and friendly. One suggestion would be if you will be able to pair the hikers in the group based on abilities; our group was small and that was perfect. Thanks again for the wonderful trip!

Again, Stephanie went above and beyond to customized our trip based on our needs and she helped us from the time we arrived in Cusco until the day we left. Thanks Stephanie! It was a great pleasure to meet you!

We had a good guide, Joise. To improve, it would have been great if we had more communication from the travel agent.

Everything was good. Had a good driver and perfect guide. Would have liked to have more communication

This was my first experience using kimkim and I'm now a huge fan. I had a last-minute trip to plan and little time to do so and kimkim connected me with a wonderful travel agent. I felt completely confident sending funds to someone in another country I had never met because of the structure of kimkim and other's reviews. I would never have found this travel agent without kimkim but I'm so very glad I did. And I appreciated the ability to look at potential itineraries before making a choice --those examples made it easier to explain what I wanted to do and what we didn't mind missing.

Preeti was amazing. She really close attention to my requests and created a trip that was so much more than I could have on my own. Her knowledge of the area made such a difference--she gave me tips about "not-to-be-missed" sites off the beaten track that made our experience so much richer. I was (very) late in asking her to put the trip together and yet she took it in stride, working quickly and efficiently and staying in touch. She kept the fact I was traveling with a child in mind and created days that were great for both of us. This was a trip we will always remember, and I'm so grateful to Preeti for putting it together. We'll be back!

I was very impressed with the excursion and hotel bookings. As well as it Guide Ian, with Paradise Touring. He as extremely helpful and knowledgeable about our trip. I would highly recommend Kimkim and Ian for anyone I know traveling to South Africa. Thank you!!

Very easy to work with, and accommodating no matter how many times we asked him to revise our itnerary.

We had a difficult time sticking to the timeline as it seemed there was too much stuff for us to do in a day if we wanted to sleep in until about 8 and be at our hotel by 6 or 7 pm or so. Would be nice to have discussed how much we wanted to squeeze in one day. Otherwise, fantastic recommendations. All the restaurants, hotels, hikes, etc. were fantastic. Iceland is amazing.

Chris was prompt in responding to any questions and did a great job of booking all of our hotels and flights and relaying the information to me. The only improvement that could be made here is to add a feature for saving all of your booking numbers, confirmation numbers, etc. for each flight, hotel, car reservation, lagoon reservations in one place. It was kind of confusing trying to go back and forth between our itinerary and my emails. Because I had to book the massages at the lagoon, I screwed up and only booked one, but that was totally my fault! Little things like that got confusing - like what I had to do vs. what Chris did for us.

This was such a great experience!! All we had to do was follow the itinerary. It was so detailed and so easy to follow. Thank you so much kimkim!!

Chris was great!

Of course we had a wonderful time. The difficulties we had were 1. connecting with Ben after we arrived in Iceland. He didn't answer his phone, so we had to use the emergency phone number. 2. Enterprise Car Rental gave us a car which had two very worn rear wheels. We had a flat tire on the rear right side. We had to take the car to a mechanic, who said that the rear tires were illegal in Iceland and unsafe to drive on which is why we had the flat tire. This took time out of our trip, which was a disappointment. 3. We were promised that Heimir (sp?) would pick us up from Enterprise Rental when we returned our rental car and would drive us to our hotel. He had to back up of this agreement due to a delayed plane flight at the airport, so we were stuck. I asked him how I was supposed to return the GPS and he told us to leave our GPS with Grayline counter at the bus terminal when we were heading to the airport, but Grayline was not happy about this.

Fantastic communication and great advice from Nicole. The guide and driver were brilliant.

Had a great trip to Myanmar, guides were friendly and informative and the travel plan was exactly what I wanted

Wai went out of his way to help me. Last minute he arranged for some changes. He also noticed I had made a mistake with my flights and alerted to me to the fact in enough time to fix.

Linda did an exclent job of determining our needs and matching them with a great experience for our family.

Great communication and responsiveness by Linda. Thanks

I had a great first experience with KimKim. I told others about it before even going on my trip. I began to fear it was too good to be true.... no, it was great from start to finish. I was regularly surprised with more than expected... more supported and more amenities than I thought.

I generally interacted with Nicole. She was very responsive, often responding within the hour or early morning after a late night inquiry. She alerted me to a period of a few days where she would be unavailable. Our short notice trip went off without a hitch.

Without the help of Chris McCarty at Kim Kim, I would have been lost attempting to coordinate hotels and find sights around the coastline of Iceland. The timing from one location to another was perfect. This made a once in a lifetime trip as efficient as possible. Thank you

Planning (with Nathalie) was excellent and everything that had been arranged went off really well.

Excellent service and always on-hand and attentive

Planning and booking the trip was easy. KimKim connected us with a great tour provider, and always responded quickly to questions and requests.

It's rare to find a tour organizer really dedicated to creating a perfect experience, but that's the impression we had with Nicole and Haku. It's not the cheapest option, but hearing about others who had trekked with larger groups we are happy with our decision.

Our guide Josias was experienced, patient and a great companion for the 6 days. We stayed in comfortable lodges in epic locations, and really enjoyed the meal on the final night.

There were no hidden costs or surprises, and every detail was covered. This truly allowed us to enjoy one of the best hiking trails in the world.

Everything went really smoothly. Where there were minor hitches they either resolved themselves or Linda responded and sorted them quickly.

Just great. Linda was friendly by email, straightforward, and understood what I wanted from the trip. Responded quickly and made everything work well.

Very nice trip overall

The tours and hotels that the travel partner arranged for were excellent. I was very pleased with the individual tour operators. There was a massive breakdown in communication between the tour company that I was communicating with and the tour provider due to the fact that there were two or three companies in between them. The meeting times on our trip vouchers did not always match the meeting times on our overall itinerary. The tour operators called us the "ghost clients" because they didn't have any information about us and didn't even know if we were real clients.

This was most problematic on the mountain climbing tour because the tour operator provides a document to participants instructing them on equipment and supplies that they are supposed to bring. We were lucky to have the operator for a different tour so she was able to send us the document the night before our climb. We were told that lunches would be provided on full-day tours, but this was not the case for the mountain climb. We had gone to a market earlier and just brought whatever food we had. We brought hiking equipment that was sufficient for the climb, but that was purely by chance. The tour company also needed our passport numbers to register us with the government as climbers and to get us insurance for the climb. Nobody told us about this and i happened to have a copy of our passports. If not, we wouldn't have been able to climb.
Had we not met with the tour guide the day before, we would have been unable to complete the climb (other people were not permitted to climb if they were not properly outfitted).

Another tour only had the name of the third party travel agency and not our names, ages, or nationality. After the other tour issues, we went to the tour provider the evening before our tour and they were ecstatic because this allowed them to put us in the correct group with other people who spoke english.

On another day, our transfer from the port to our hotel was not there when our ferry arrived so we walked to the hotel.

The next day, our guide for the full-day tour was not at the hotel at either of the times we were provided (tour voucher and itinerary had different times). We tried calling the number listed on the voucher, but it was the number for another travel company who the kimkim travel partner had booked through. We found a poster for the tour provider and managed to get in touch with her. The third party tour company had told her that we would be arriving that day and she should pick us up at the port, not our hotel.

Overall, i used kimkim because i wanted the tour planning and booking process to go more smoothly. Due to the multiple layers of tour companies between us and the eventual tour operators, there was a tremendous lack of communication. I imagine the multiple layers also added cost. Were it not for proactive steps that we took during the trip, this could have spiraled into a complete disaster.

There were small errors that i picked up on during the planning process. There were the mismatched tour times. It's hard to say whether some of the other issues were her fault or whether it was further down the chain. If she had directly booked things for me, the way i thought this would work, it would be easier to determine where the breakdown occurred.

I only received the one company as an option. Not sure if KimKim restricts the replies to the first company or if only the one company was interested in responding but it would have been good to get multiple companies to reply.

James was great to work with and was VERY fast to respond to questions and concerns.