Wingbuddy - Japan Great Discovery 2025
Departure: November 4, 2025
Return: November 18, 2025
My husband and I recently returned from the Wingbuddy organized tour: Japan Great Discovery 2025 departing on November 4, 2025. While we loved Japan, our experience with this tour company was unlike anything we had ever experienced before. We have travelled extensively and in a variety of ways, and are used to unexpected issues arising; however, this experience was well beyond that.
We booked with this tour company because it was Canadian and we wanted to support a Canadian business, and friends who had travelled to Greece and Thailand with the company had had great reviews about their travel. The Japan itinerary looked wonderful - busy, but with lots to see and do.
Our negative experience centres around three main issues:
1. Group size
2. Quality of the tour guide
3. The tour company/tour itinerary
Group Size
Despite the stated maximum group size for this tour on the Wingbuddy website (35), our group had 38 participants. Thirty-five is already a large and unmanageable number, but 38 was beyond reasonable. This was the root problem of much of the issues that we experienced during this tour.
In any tour group, there are going to be odd delays or people who arrive a few minutes late for a designated location or time, but when you are dealing with 38 people, and a tour guide with poorly developed leadership and communication skills, it was excessive. We lost so much valuable time at various sites and points of interest because we were waiting for people to catch up, counting and recounting people, repeating details about meeting sites...Our tour experience was not what it could have been.
Quality of the Tour Guide in Japan
Our tour guide, Aki, lacked effective leadership and communication skills. With a group of 38, this is even more important! While he was a nice man, he was overwhelmed with this assignment.
His English skills, particularly pronunciation, were not at the level required to lead an English tour group. We had difficulty understanding what he was saying and when members of the group would ask for clarification, or ask him to repeat, he would become frustrated. "Please listen!" or "I already told you that!" was a constant refrain directed to the tour participants. Despite our best efforts to tune our listening skills, we missed information, did not hear, or did not fully understand.
As his frustration level and lack of patience increased, he targeted certain individuals on the group tour.
Publicly berating and shaming grown adults in front of other members of the group happened a few times. This is unprofessional and unacceptable conduct that made everyone uncomfortable and unwilling to even ask a question. No one needs to be treated this way! If he felt that he needed to discuss a situation with someone, have a private conversation in order to maintain everyone's dignity. Again, the group size played into this.
In addition to poor pronunciation, his communication was not clear, focused or linear. Instead of presenting pertinent information in manageable chunks about what happening in the immediate future, he would go off on tangents about upcoming events in the next days or other things. Everyone was confused! When giving meeting times, we would have to clarify each time with him - "Are we meeting at 8:00 am or are we leaving at 8:00 am? These little details are important!
Effective group management techniques were not used or used haphazardly.
1. On the very first meeting day in Tokyo, there was no Wingbuddy signage, banner, flag, information board ... so, we got off to a late start. At every stop on the first day, we lost so much time trying to count 38 people and keep the walking group intact. As the tour days continued, we encouraged him to implement a "counting off" system where each person was assigned a number and we could just call out our numbers in order. That helped, but again, rounding up 38 people was difficult.
2. When he did use a flag or a sign to lead our walking group, it was not held high enough for people at the back of the group to actually see it. Note - during the trip, he lost his flag! Then, when he used the sign, it was held at chest level. What's the point? The only time it was truly visible, is when one of the group participants took control and held it up!
It is important to note that during one of our walks, three people got separated from the group and did not make it to the restaurant. The guide had to go back to try and locate them. This is a frightening and unacceptable situation for anyone in a foreign country.
AVOID! There are more issues than this, but you get the idea! read more