AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Our experience with Tropical Sky (TS) has been a living nightmare spanning…read more2.5yrs. With their reviews plummeting (3.1 on Trust Pilot), clearly we aren't the only ones. We booked our honeymoon with TS 04/20. COVID hit, we requested a refund but were scaremongered into rebooking + told we would likely lose all costs (10k) if we didn't. We shared concerns about COVID prolonging, they confirmed they would refund us if the rebooking was cancelled again. So, we rebooked to 04/21 thinking we had nothing to lose. As the time neared, we contacted TS about the booking being cancelled. As front line workers we realised COVID would prevail and didn't want to rebook a second time. TS stated they were awaiting Foreign Travel Advice + repeated that we will be refunded if it's cancelled. In 02/21 we received an invoice from TS who REBOOKED our holiday to 11/22. This neglected our clearly stated preferences + contradicted that "every effort has been made to either rebook or refund the client in accordance with their wishes." During COVID (submitted by TS to Companies House). The booking changed the destination + reduced it from 2 weeks to 5 nights, meeting their criteria for a 'significant change' + subsequently breaching their T&C's: "If circumstances are such that we are forced to make significant changes to your holiday, we will immediately contact you to discuss your preferences... In such circumstances, you will be given the option to accept the changes + any resulting change in price or opt for a cancellation + full refund." Customer service were initially confused, responding, "did you not rebook this yourself?" After weeks of attempting to gain answers, we finally received a response: "We did this in your best interest to maintain ATOL protection". We articulated ourselves in an assertive but calm manner + at no point did this warrant their unpleasant attitude (on 2 occasions we were hung up on mid conversation). We also noticed when we called from our mobiles the phone was picked up + hung up so only got through by hiding our caller ID. In 08/21 we formally complained + requested all data as per GDPR. They were only able to provide telephone recordings after 10/20 because their computer systems "changed". A striking coincidence that this is the timeframe evidence of their misinformation occurred. Their response to our complaint was: you aren't eligible for a refund because you made the decision to rebook the holiday. No acknowledgement given to the fact they had taken the liberty to rebook a second time. We were getting nowhere + in 02/22 attempted to rebook. TS acknowledged we wanted to reduce the budget and said of themselves "the facility of itinery changes without change fees is one of the most flexible in the industry". Unsurprisingly, they went back on this. After receiving disproportionate quotes, we researched the same holidays and dates ourselves + found prices to be quarter - half of the price cheaper. Their quotes also didn't match their own website guide prices for the same months (about £500-1000 out). They finally admitted they had added a "change of holiday fee of £100pp". We reminded that they promised to not add change fees. They then changed the reasoning of the additional costs to be a "downgrade fee". When we pointed out that 100pp still didn't account for the obscene overpricing, they said "we need to make money somehow". We asked for an itemised quote to trace this, they refused. They have made finding a holiday within our generous budget and open criteria impossible intentionally, so they keep our full deposit. We will be using every platform available to share our experiences. We hope this will protect prospectus customers from believing, as we did, that TS are a "friendly team" who "answer calls within three rings" + your money is "safe". So that TS can identify us our booking references are: TSR556967 + TSR617901. If TS wishes to resolve this we will only be too happy to move forwards + update our review. It is sadly more likely that we will have to take legal action.

The one agent I would avoid like the plague. Consistently failed to provide necessary and critical…read moreinformation in time, did not act in our best interests of our party of 3 and in the end a wedding that took a year to plan has had to be cancelled along with a 2 centre holiday to Cuba, you would have though that with a total spend of £9,300 it would have been in their interest to ensure customer service was key, in fact I've had better service at KFC. Staff seem to be constantly in disarray and lack ownership of delivering a service that they are getting paid for. Probably exclusive and high end holidays are not their forte, probably excel at package holidays to Ibiza. Save yourself the monumental experience of disappointment, stress and poor management of your booking and use anyone else but this shoddy outfit.

I believe this is the first review I've written but I feel I need to share my experience so other…read morepeople don't fall for the same mistakes that I did. My partner and I chose Hallmark to help us plan our 3 week winter break to Australia. We are quite independent with our planning but we thought we might need some assistance with this specific trip as it was Christmas time and we didn't want the stress of organising it ourselves.....how wrong we were. We had the pleasure of dealing with Charmaine when she actually turned up to our appointments, wasn't late or generally answered our calls or emails. We weren't needy by a long shot but were very disappointed to turn up to an appointment that had been booked weeks in advance to discuss our holiday only to arrive and the staff not know where Charmaine was until 10 minutes after our appointment start time before informing us that she wasn't able to turn up. This should have set alarm bells off in our head but we had read good things about the company so gave them the benefit of the doubt. For a time, it was going well and things started to take shape, we still had to wait days and sometimes weeks for responses on questions or confirmations and Charmaine refused to take our calls. The problems didn't truly start until they issued our tickets 2 weeks before our trip though. We enquired why these couldn't be released early to save the stress of rectifying any issues, but were informed it was out of their hands and everything would be fine. However, a very important part of our holiday was mis-booked or overlooked by Hallmark. On the car hire documentation my partner was the lead driver. We had mentioned in a previous meeting with Charmaine that I would be driving and my partner would not, this was acknowledged by Charmaine. To rectify the issue, they were asking that we paid £90, inferring that it was our mistake - but fortunately we found written proof and were able to persuade them otherwise after some very rude and blunt emails from Hallmark. To mitigate the costs to Hallmark I can only assume we were provided with an inferior standard of car. We also discovered in that meeting that the ferry time initially written in our plans had been booked for the incorrect time. Whilst on holiday, having driven 3+ hours from Port Fairy to Apollo Bay we arrived to find that the accommodation that Hallmark had booked for us had been cancelled back in April yet we had only received confirmation 2 weeks before we flew out. We were left having to find somewhere to stay on boxing day night, having contacted both emergency numbers for Hallmark and Gold Medal with no response. This took us some time and impacted our evening and the following day, Hallmark were unapologetic when informed and passed the blame to third parties. In addition, the way the day trips were booked seemed to make no sense. We ended up seeing the same stretch of road (1.5hrs) 6 times. We were staying in Cairns first and the trip that was recommended and booked for us was the Great Barrier Reef trip which is based out of Port Douglas. We then stayed in Port Douglas and the trip that was recommended and booked for us was the Kuranda Skyrail which is situated just outside of Cairns. This resulted in us having to get coach transfers for both trips that not only was charged at an additional cost but wasted hours of our holiday. There was no thought that went into arranging these for the benefit of the us the customer. Having chased up Hallmark for a refund for our accommodation we had to purchase whilst out in Australia multiple times, when we did finally receive it, it was simply put into our bank and a receipt sent in the post. There was no cover letter, no phone call and absolutely no sign of an apology for the inconvenience caused. Throughout everything we have found Hallmark very rude, unapologetic and they have certainly not taken any ownership of the issues we have encountered. Paying a professional business to arrange and book a once in a life time holiday should be a pleasure. We have used other companies in the past with no such issues, we would have been much better off planning it ourselves and the experience has put us off travel agents for the foreseeable future!

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