So grateful to Irish Tourism for helping us create a very memorable trip to ring in my sister's…read more30th! Tina was amazing, and she handled my many questions and various changes. I loved loved loved the bed & breakfast they arranged for us. I wish we could have stayed there the whole time. My advice is to stay in bed & breakfasts. You cannot beat the warm, kind atmosphere found at bed & breakfasts. Also, use them to book both your car and accommodations. They will not steer you wrong, and we tried to do it our own way and were entirely screwed over by Hertz/Thrifty/Dollar. Take the advice given to you by Irish Tourism. They are experts and will not lead you astray! Whatever they say goes! I understand the inclination to book your own trip, look for accommodations on your own, etc., but they live there and they know the area. We had enough trouble driving in Ireland. We would have been lost trying to decide if we should stay in Killkenny, Kildare, or Killarney. Just trust me! Use Irish Tourism. My aunt, cousin, and I have all used Irish Tourism for our Ireland trips, and we would all use them again!

We booked our May 2019 trip through The Irish Tourism Group as we thought it wise to get some help…read moreand guidance from professionals, to avoid pitfalls, right? Irishtourism.com arranged for us to pick up a Hertz rental car at the airport. Our agent pushed for us to get a minivan, but we didn't need that much room. She also pointed out how necessary she thought it was that we include the GPS navigational system for navigating those out-of-the-way Irish roads. We paid top dollar for the SUPER COVER insurance so we wouldn't have to worry about anything. Oddly enough though, Stephanie never thought to recommend that we purchase additional tire insurance, despite the fact that there is a raging protest going on in Ireland over Hertz' rip off tire scheme. It was covered in IrishCentral in January of this year: https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/huge-response-letters-irish-car-hire-rip-off-tourists. In fact, just google Ireland Hertz tire rip-off and you will come up with dozens of sources. Irish Tourism Group says we should have paid attention to the two lines in their email regarding Super Damage Waiver Insurance: (SDW) is Euro 21 per day (Euro 23.84 if you book direct with car rental company): Super Cover takes the excess to '0' ( SDW ) : Tyres, wheels, keys & fuel are not covered. It never occurred to us to ask Stephanie what this meant and if she thought it was important because we trusted her to advise us. This is why people go with travel agents, to guide them through the pot-holes of the trip. When we picked up the car at The Hertz rental, we were asked if we wanted to purchase the additional tire insurance. We declined as we had purchased the super duper package from the travel agency, why in the world would we need a separate policy for tires when we had full coverage? I'll tell you why- Driving on the left side of the road on narrow streets, it's surprisingly easy to bump the curb. We scuffed the chrome on the front left tire. The back left chrome was already scuffed upon pick-up and we were told not to worry about that one. When we returned the car to Hertz in South Dublin, we were charged $1000 in American money for "minor tyre damage" - The charming and glib Stephen assured us we would be getting money back on our card, he had to temporarily go with the most expensive assessment but it would definitely not be that much! And how lucky we were that we purchased the SUPER COVER insurance from Irish Tourism! We were covered through them and they would definitely reimburse us, they always do, but unfortunately Hertz couldn't submit the bill to them directly. We never got anything back from Hertz and Irish Tourism will not be reimbursing us - they said we should have bought the tire insurance . And I'm sure Hertz didn't replace the chrome plate with our $1000, since the already scuffed one on the back left hadn't been replaced. And that most necessary GPS navigational system? It was an antiquated early 2000s tomtom with delayed voice that kept causing us to miss our turns. We ended up using the GPS on our cell phones instead.