We have travelled with Sino Irish a few times and always been very happy with them. Breda & Michael…read moreFitzpatrick

From the owner: At Sino Irish Travel, we offer high quality tours to China and beyond at fantastic value for money,…read morewith departures from Dublin, Cork and Shannon. Our aim is to give you the best quality tour and the holiday of a lifetime. We have been organising regular tours to China etc. since 1986 with outstanding success. Just ask anyone who has travelled with us! From March to November we have regular departures for many of our tours, ranging from 9 -18 days. The tour programme for each tour has been carefully compiled to take in the most spectacular features/highlights of each city/region with specially selected 4/5 star hotels throughout. We also offer special airfares to all destinations in China, the Far East and South East Asia at very competitive prices.

Buy Full Coverage Trip Insurance! Summary: We were unable to…read moretake the trip, but 3 stars because we got some of our money back, however the company's aggressive posture and predatory no-refund policy were off-putting. We booked with Camino Ways (CW) in mid-February of 2025 with plans to travel with them on the Camino in late May of 2025. We were disappointed to see that, like the other tour operators on the Camino, CW only offered non-refundable trips if you are forced to cancel for any reason less than 30 days before your trip (more on this later). Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with a medical condition that prevented travel just a day before our flight to Spain. Although we booked nonrefundable flights with both United and Iberia, both airlines extended us full 100% credit for later travel. However, just like the hyper-aggressive and corporate AirBnB, Camino Ways, held firm with their policy, telling us we should rely on trip insurance (turns out that our trip insurance did not cover tours) and told us we couldn't get anything back but that we could substitute a family member in our place (?!). Ultimately, after more haggling with them, CW did issue a partial credit (no refund) for use in the next 24 months. Not sure we can use that, but it seemed like the best we could get from them, sadly. Finally, we were also reminded that "all of the other tour operators on the Camino have the same policy" when it comes to nonrefundable trips....this was said as if it were some kind of moral or ethical defense of CW's policy! Of course, this is no such thing, this is merely collusion between a limited number of operators to take advantage of Pilgrims and tourists wanting help planning a trip on the Camino. Another term for this would be an Oligarchy, control by a few companies who enforce predatory and aggressive terms.....

They offered great service till they made my bookings. I had 22 nights with them planned. They kept…read moreurging me to pay the deposit to confirm the bookings because everything would get filled up quickly so I gave them the deposit. But once I receive the bookings, I noticed they had my ONLY rest night in the wrong town and that would mess up 2/3 of my 22 night journey. So with all that rushing now I have the wrong bookings with them. Realizing this I immediately began emailing them with titles of URGENCY please respond. I set up a call back with them. They usually call me back, this time they did NOT. Also I wasn't allowed to schedule any more call backs- all the time slots suddenly shown as taken. After 4 days of this I warned them in emails that I will make my own bookings. I saved 2 YEARS of vacation time and money for this trip and I wanted the proper experience (I did not want to be taxied around as Caminoways had warned me about this happing to me if I did NOT make my deposit quickly). It took 6 days for them to finally get back to me and when they did, they told me the reason was because they were busy making other bookings (they actually said this) it was why they didn't respond (for sure my properties wouldn't be available and it was apparent the people at Caminoways didn't care). They said they could 'likely get me into or near the towns on the trail and figure something out". Luckily after 4 days of waiting, and taking 2 days off of work, to do the work of booking I was very thankful I had done what I did. I had ALL my own bookings so after hiking my 20 miles/day average I knew I did NOT have to be waiting for a taxi at night and again in the morning- this wasn't the experience I wanted and was the reason I paid them the deposit in the first place. I also made ALL my own connections (trains and shuttle services) and ALL my luggage transfers. Of the 22 nights I booked myself, I had to change some towns around because of the 4 day delay some towns were already full (but I was able to add or subtract some hiking distance- something Camino ways told me they would never do for me at our "planning stage" because they only can book specific towns so I would have been taxied by Caminoways for sure). I told (and emailed) Caminoways all this, and mentioned that I only used 2 of the same properties off their list. Despite all this Caminoways would not refund me, even partially. I have American Express so I disputed the charge (a lot of work again uploading documents) yet Caminoways got to kept every penny because of their cancellation policy that was attached to the deposit. I never had a company treat me like, to make that kind of a mistake, not be responsive for 6 days and keep everything despite doing nothing but making me extra work. Update: Since posting this review elsewhere Caminoways lied about both the timeline they got back to me and also about their mistake- 2 VERY key factors about my bookings. They also came up with excuses to sound good/concerned for me (haha). The sad part is there is nothing to stop these type of companies from doing this to consumers. Don't believe only me, just look at the other bad reviews of people who did end up using them and the problems they faced there. Caminoways responded to them to saying how they will use their terrible experiences to improve but over time people continue to complain about serious problems. This company can take honest people's hard earned money and give bad to no service (I am a nurse but no matter your profession we all give of ourselves and save up both our money and time for trips like this to reward ourselves) With their greedy ways they attempt to sound concerned and defend themselves. I will look at reviews totally different now after this $800 loss. Beware!