Brenda planned an excellent trip for me! Everything was planned and arranged perfectly ~ all I had…read moreto do was show up at the airport, hotel, and Disneyland because Brenda had everything reserved and in place for me! I highly recommend Sails and Sand Travel for any of your travel needs!

The agent is very knowledgeable and got me a great rate on my trip to Bali. She listened to what…read morewe wanted and worked some magic. She was in contact with us every step of the way. We have also booked an Alaskan cruise for this summer and a short Caribbean cruise around the holidays. Highly recommend

Everything. We have experienced each phase of Rick Steve's' work: his books:his tours, his store,…read morehis luggage,, his Monday night talks, his political position. One Saturday two months ago we were in his Edmonds store with my daughter, her husband and their two college age kids. We had maps out everywhere! Rick walked in and exclaimed "Wow, 3 generations of travelers. Great "

Do your own advance research before considering booking any travel or tour with Rick Steves'…read moreEurope. Once you do, you'll likely decide to look elsewhere. Hopefully this review helps others learn what we've painfully learned when dealing with the Rick Steves' tour team. Besides being objectively more expensive compared to our similar tours, unfortunately it's clear Rick Steves' Europe has lost touch with considering their customers' full travel and tour experience. My partner and I, along with two other couples, decided together to book Rick Steves' Scandinavia Tour. Unfortunately, about 60 days before the tour, one couple experienced an emergency medical event that necessitated them canceling their tour reservations. Rick Steves' 2026 cancelation policy, which we learned changes from year to year, states "Refundable Medical or Family Emergency ("Refundable Event"): A Refundable Event must first occur less than 60 days prior to your tour's start date or while on tour. It is RSE's sole discretion to determine if your situation is a Refundable Event." The key words here are "RSE's sole discretion". Before agreeing to grant our friends any refund, they put them through multiple iterations and questions, many private and somewhat personal. Finally, Rick Steves agreed to give them a 100% refund (less their $800 advance deposit). Let's just say Rick Steves' staff didn't show much sensitivity or caring before finally granting them their refund. My partner and my situation is far worse! "Less than 60 days prior" to our tour, my partner learned she needed an urgent medical procedure. At first, we were of the impression that we could still travel on the tour with our other remaining friends on this tour. Unfortunately, 18 days before the tour, we learned my partner's medical situation was far worse than we'd imagined and travel was out of the question - leaving our one remaining couple traveling alone. We'd were hit with a serious "Family Emergency", within 60 days prior to our tour's departure. Once they heard this news, together, we'd identified another couple to assume our place on this Rick Steves' tour. Initially, when I contacted Rick Steves, they said that might be possible for these friends to assume our tour space. A couple days later, Rick Steves' staff called and indicated our space had already been reallocated to their long-standing tour waitlist. Leaving the 1 of 3 remaining couples to travel on this tour alone. Despite Rick Steves' initially staff telling me our tour space was already reallocated, preventing our friend's friends going with them, again Rick Steves made it very difficult on us to receive any refund. Rick Steves' staff showed little to no sensitivity to our difficult medical situation and journey still ahead, or anyone's disappointments. Initially, Rick Steves' staff said simply a dated hospital discharge notice would suffice to secure a refund. Then No, they needed a physican's letter. I opted to visit Rick Steves' Edmond office to deliver this letter and to confirm a refund. Days later, based on their "sole discretion", Rick Steves staff decided to we'd had an emergency, but opted to refund only 50% of our tour expense (again, less our $800 deposit). In that email, despite what they'd indicated previously when we'd attempted to fill/transfer our tour space, they now made claims that they were not able to refill our space, and had incurred lost operating expenses, etc.... Knowing we'd object given the circumstances, assuming we'd simply accept it, Rick Steves' staff went to far to state "This decision is final". Upon questioning Rick Steves' decision and rationale, after waiting, I received an email from another associate with multiple conflicting claims and points - like now saying they couldn't transfer our tour space since one or more of the hotel room on the tour was already booked by another tour company. Hopefully this review helps others. FYI, the one remaining couple that took this tour alone, informed us they were less than impressed.

So far my experience with Bella Roda has been nothing short of amazing. From getting me extra…read morebonuses for my cruise to adjusting when my cruise was accidentally double booked, working with Rosa and her team has been smooth sailing. LOL. Enough puns and just work with them already

Rosa did suuuch an amazing job booking my Viking cruise she arranged my transfers and my personal…read moreafter stay in Rome! I wouldn't recommend anyone else!

I contacted Barbara about booking a group trip (10-20 people) and to get a quote. I sent her all…read morethe information I had found on Expedia so she could research options. She replied that I was looking for a "deal"... well of course I am! What person when booking a trip isn't looking for a deal? Should I be paying double? Her reply was rude, arrogant and extremely unprofessional. She wasn't willing to help me unless I was to pay a consulting fee, which is strange because every other travel agent/agency I have contacted is willing to do so. I wish I could rate her service/business as -5 stars. Unless you have a relationship with this woman, or are willing to pay her special "fee" don't bother to contact her.

Barbara's response time is incredibly slow. I looked back on my email history and my first email to…read moreher was sent on 4/5 but trip details wasn't finalized until 4/25. All she had to do was book lodging in 2 cities, train tickets between cities, and one tour. On top of slow response time, she offers little travel insight. She also charges a fee for her services, first time I have ever been charged by an agent, and felt stuck with her as a result. My next annoyance was lack of customer service. I called her to introduce myself and she blurted out all these things she wanted me to put in an email for her to start trip planning. Personally, it would have been more professional for her to provide me a quick questionnaire to fill out to make sure she had all the necessary information. Then as she was slowly booking things, at one point I had asked if she could put all this information into one summarized document. I'm not asking for much here... and her response was, "Unfortunately, they are all E-documents through separate emails. I suggest you print them all out as paper document to take with you, while keeping the bookings/confirmations in your email as back up." Hmm, weird because every travel agent I have worked with in the past always provided me a summary sheet without me even asking. Had she taken the extra 5-10 minutes to just PDF all the documents into one neat file for me because that was all these separate documents were, she might have actually come off as a professional instead of lazy. This just further agitated me that I had to dig through a bunch of back and forth correspondence with her to find these documents. When I arrive in Rome, my annoyance with Barbara just goes through the roof. My accommodations in Rome is not this cute modern apartment that I was shown but a gross old Italian mess with couches dating back to my grandmothers era. The place is so dusty that my husband and I were congested every night (it was fine once we were outside). At that point, I lost it and sent Barbara a pretty nasty email. After almost a full day of travel, I just wanted to relax and I was far from that. I asked her at one point in our correspondence, prior to my trip, if the place she booked was like an airbnb, which I did not want, and she assured me it was not and ran by a hotel group. It wasn't. It was basically some Italian guy who's father owned a couple units in this building and they were doing short-term rentals. I should know, I own a short-term rental so I am very familiar with all this. Upon my disappointment with the place, the guy tells me the hours he's available which on Sunday was like 12pm-7pm. Does this sound like a hotel management group? Shouldn't Barbara have researched into this a little farther if i specifically asked her if this was like an airbnb? Had she simply googled the name of this residence she would have seen on other sites that there are different apartments types but she only looked at TripAdvisor and there was not much reviews. Fact is, she did little to no due diligence and now I was stuck in something I would have never agreed to had I known the truth. I told her I was scared of what she put me in for the Venice portion of our trip but she cancelled that because they had issues with my credit card... a total blessing in disguise since that was probably another airbnb. Barbara suggested we do a late train to Venice and our arrival wouldn't be until 11pm so chances were I probably had no way of getting into the apartment because she didn't think to ask about all these details prior. Her knowledge of travel is either very antiquated or she's just careless or both. I don't know but either way I paid the price for it. I spent my first day in Rome scrambling and researching to find a new hotel for Venice. Barbara offers to help but I have lost all trust and faith in her. I also wonder if she only reached out because i started cc-ing my friend who referred me to her. Barbara calls me and tells me that my "expectations and price don't go hand in hand." Such a huge slap in the face when I was already boiling with anger in a crappy old apartment and it didn't make that much sense to me because I have stayed in Europe before and have always been able to find nicer hotels in this price range. Upon my review of our emails, I point out to her with our email as backup, that she misunderstood my budget and it was in fact DOUBLE of what she thought. Had she carefully read my email to her early on or clarified with me if she was unsure, this mess perhaps could have been avoided. I tell Barbara that I should be refunded for my accommodations in Rome because I specified to her early on I didn't want an old style place or something that was ran like an airbnb. She tells me if I feel this way, I should take it up with my credit card company. What a great way to end my vacation when I go home... argue charges because my travel agent didn't do her job.

Lyndsey helped me plan our 2015 wedding and I could not be more grateful for all her services. She…read morewas fantastic. She started working with me about 6 months before our wedding. At the start she had an extensive spreadsheet already set up. We started with an initial consultation where she asked me many questions about what we wanted for our wedding. She was great because I didn't know all the answers in the beginning and she left those items open for us to discuss at a later time. Lyndsey then set up weekly meetings with me to check in on progress. These were the most helpful to me because it kept everything on track and it broke down the event planning into easy, manageable steps. She would send me task lists weekly. She was also an excellent resource for finding vendors in the area. She found an excellent, cost-effective videographer for the wedding that worked out well. Lyndsey was very flexible. I could give her tasks to do or I would take tasks that I really wanted to do on my own. I think one of the best things is that because Lyndsey is so organized and flexible with changes it allowed me to focus on the creative part of planning the wedding, which is what I really wanted to do. She then made sure to set the timeline and keep things moving along. Perhaps the best part of my experience with Lyndsey was the days before and the day of the wedding. She arrived a couple of days before the wedding and helped to settle details, which allowed me to spend time with my family and friends. The day of the wedding was the best. Lyndsey enlisted the help of her husband and they took care of everything! They took care of paying everyone who needed to be paid. They made sure things stayed on schedule. As with any event, the best plans can sometimes not turn out, Lyndsey made it happen. For example, I learned weeks after the wedding that there was some miscommunication with the caterer about the time the event ended, even though I had clearly told her. I never knew about it the day of the event. Lyndsey took care of everything. I spent the day of our wedding so happy and so in the moment. I enjoyed every minute of that day. There is a funny story from our wedding. The best man, the DJ, and the priest were so impressed with how well organized everything was that they made comments during their homily, the best man's toast, and before one of our dances. That is a big compliment to Lyndsey and all her hard work to make the day go so well and be so memorable for my husband and I. We loved our wedding day!

I have used this agency for a couple trips now and have found their agent Christi to be…read moreknowledgable, friendly, and a hard worker looking out for you and your interests. I have learned many years ago that the services of a good travel agency most certainly make a trip successful. This is the case with Cruise Holidays of Silverdale...!!!!

We have booked several cruises with Cruise Holidays of Silverdale. All have been wonderful. The…read moreowner, Shannon Shattuck, makes sure everything is perfect, although we have talked to Alissa as well. Everyone is very competent and helpful. Even our taxi driver wanted to be on their mailing list ! :-) Yes, we will book again...

Amateurs. The "passport office" is 1 person in a cubicle in a shared office space. I waited 30…read moreminutes after arriving for my appointment, nobody showed up, I left. Try a professional company instead.

I'd advise going directly to the state department. (300 5th Ave) instead of this 3rd party. The…read morepeople I interacted with in the Seattle office were not up to speed on what the actual requirements were for renewing my passport, and cut off the transaction before completion, and they suggested I go directly to the state department. Which I did, and it took all of 20 minutes to get my passport renewed. They were stating I needed to get additional proof of identity before they could process my renewal (I of course didn't need this; the state department was very helpful and the list of things they said to bring in the confirmation email, was exactly what they needed to renew my passport.) The only reason I'm giving them 2 stars, is that they refunded my money so all I did was waste an hour. But, poor customer service in my opinion. Just go directly to the state department (all these guys do is help you fill out the application and send along to the state department anyway). If they are going to sell this service, they should at least be able to accurately tell you what to bring when you come in.

After spending hours scouring Expedia, Travelocity and Kayak, came up empty-handed. Are you tired…read moreof searching the web every day to score a good deal on your vacation or business travel? You will never look back after using Travel Services. I am so glad i found them and have never looked back. The staff is great and friendly. Mark was excellent to work with. He always responded to phone calls/emails promptly and was extremely clear and thorough with expectations. I was given great prices and a lot of great suggestions, I have wondered why I haven't gone to a travel agent before. If you are doing any complicated trip at all, go to this travel agent. Do yourself a favor: relax with a cold beverage while they search through the airline flight schedules and find you the best deals. They always find great rates (even better than Expedia at times). I highly recommend Travel Services by Mark and will definitely use his services in the future!

Travel Services (Mark Johnson) is absolutely brilliant when it come to helping clients with their…read morepersonal travel. He is a trusted adviser, friendly, patient, smart, and very skilled when it comes to making your dream travel plans. He's been repeatedly able to save his clients sizable amounts of time and money. Highly recommended!!!!