Kobad B.

We had booked RUSSIA - SCANDINAVIA vacation with Neem holidays. Firstly, we were given Visa's a day prior of the departure, also there were a few families who unfortunately couldn't travel with us, as they didn't receive their visa's on time, they were asked to travel in the month of august and were also told that if they cancelled the tour, they'd have to pay cancellation fees, why should they suffer because of the company's mistake? We departed on 20th May 2018, It was a group tour with very good co vacationeers... But the tour operator made it a disaster. They could hardly deliver even 50% of what they promised. Food planned was woeful with hardly any spread. We were told earlier that we would fly either by Emirates or Air India but then we landed up with Turkish Airlines, as the ticketing was also done by *AKBAR TRAVELS* Most hotels stay's were a disaster, also coming to the hotels, the bookings were done through *KUONI* just a day before the stay, and because of them wanting cheap hotel rates, we were the one's who had to suffer. It so happened that the room arrangements were so messed up that if we are a family of four, we were given four seperate single rooms on different floors the room size was so small that not even an extra single mattress would fit in and that too, the check in was at 2300hrs how can you let your wife and daughter aged 16 years sleep in different rooms and different floors!, the distribution of rooms were very disoriented in St Petersburg the hotel was a hostel category with sub standard packed breakfast against a promised minimum 3 star hotel stay with proper breakfast n dinners. Also due to climatic changes the temperatures had risen at places the hotel had only Non AC rooms they didn't even have provisions for enough table fans, for everyone, it was too hot to sleep in the night. Coming to the restraunts there was altercation with RESTAURANT people due to the sub standard food, will come to one of the incidents later, in the latter part of the paragraph, when we travelled from one country to another, we were given halts at such places where we ended up spending three times more than the actual food price, and since we would be hungry we would have no option but to pay and eat whatever was available, now coming to the restaurant at st petersburg, named *CARDAMOM* was one of the worst restraunts we have been to during the full vacation, it had the most poor services, including the food and the basic etiquette of the staff, they would rudely ask us to get out everytime we came there, and once when we asked them why they couldn't be more polite in their approach, they started arguing with us and the argument heated up to such a level where the chefs, manager and the rest of the staff, ran into the kitchen to bring knives and hockey sticks to beat us, *IS THIS THE SERVICE, WE EXPECT FROM ANY RESTAURANT*? Also when this event took place, *two senior managers* of *neem holiday's* were present with their groups and none of them were ready to help us and were least bothered about any events that took place. When we tried to get in touch with the tour operator management they never picked up our calls nor responded... who ever responded was very rude, we also called the owner *MR MANISH AGRAWAL.* a couple of times but he refused to answer or respond on WhatsApp, even though we had gone with reference of his very close business associate the cruises that were promised were changed at the last minute and we were made to wait for 3 hours at the port with our families, it seemed like we were late for our cruise on purpose, as the bus driver made us reach late, the thing is, they wanted cheaper tickets, again, so they never even informed us about the delay, and also ofcourse, since neem travel did'nt leave even one chance to dissapoint us, the cruise that we were asked to go to, took us to a port that was 6-7 hours away from copenhagen by road, whereas in the itenarary it was mentioned that we would be boarding a particular cruise that would directly take us to copenhagen and due to this, we were also forced to do sight seeing, and not discover the place at all, the most important thing is even the tour itenerary was not kept as promised with misses every where and we could not visit many places as mentioned in the itenerary, also most of the sight seeing being optional was not at all great, infact when we booked through neem travels we were forced into taking all 10 optional tours and when we found out that other family's in the tour were given options to not take particular optional tours, we took our names off from a particular tour but as i metioned neem travels never fails to disappoint anybody, i was given my refund after 2 months that too after making 50-60 calls and leaving a ton of messages to the *VICE PRESIDENT* of *NEEM HOLIDAYS*and also the *SALES AND ACCOUNTING STAFF* Also the food at most restraunts, except for one, *GANDHI RESTRAUNT, COPENHAGEN* served us the same food over and over again, also when we inquired about the poor services rendered at most of these restraunts, we were told in front of our tour MANAGER *MR HARMESH PATHARE, That compared to other travel agencies, neem had done alot of *COST CUTTING* and therefore due to the less cost we were served almost the same food everywhere, that was atrocious, also when we checked about our package rates with other members, we found out that people traveling from banglore were given cheaper rates and also were given free flight tickets from banglore to mumbai, both the times, overall the planning was a disaster by the tour operator with many unpleasant incidents enroute... It was a complete mess of our vacation due to Neem holidays, *SO FREINDS*Please don't make any mistake to fall into their trap also for references do visit their website and read their awful reviews that i unfortunately didn't do, because of my reference and later suffered, spending approximately 8 Lakhs, on their Package, Never would i recommend, *Neem holidays* to any one.