OUR misadventures with PARAS Holidays. Review on Paras Holidays, Delhi

For All Those Whom IT May Concern.

Lessons we learnt on our Trip to Europe.

We as a group of 20 people(6 families all doctors except kids) started our talks with Ms Preeti from Paras holidays in mid April for a trip to Europe on 11 June. While negotiating we were told and offered many discounts and waivers and offers.

AT BOOKING: When Ms Preeti came to our place for advance payment and booking we made her a payment of 3 lac for 5 families and told her that sixth family is in consideration as their approval is subjected to NOC from their dept. we clearly told her this status. Despite this she made a voucher for sixth family telling us that this voucher does not mean anything and won’t amount for booking. It is just for her convenience so that she doesn’t have to come to Ghaziabad again for this. she very cunningly distributed 3 lac among six families rather than 5 and enter a booking for sixth family(which she later put in cancellation and non refund policy and seized 30000 rs) When asked to talk to senior person we were either not allowed, else our calls stopped to be picked.

PASS PORTS And other Documents: At the time of 2nd payments we handed over our passports and other documents( as listed by them for visa requirement) along with the 6 months bank statements. This was done 2 months prior to travel. Nearly after 40days we were told that 4 of our 17 passports are torn and damaged but we can still make a try and asked to come to Delhi for visa interview. Four of us were refused visa interviews. Paras people offered blank apologies for this situation and told us that will compensate for this later on.( Which they never did). We had to get an urgent passports made for 4 of us in TATKAAL which costed us 30 thousand Rs approx. They just simply damaged our passports, accepted this and got away without any compensation. We were made to get bank statements three times as they didn’t made us get this on right time.( one at booking, other at document collection, third at visa timing)

SEPARATE COACH. She promised to give us a separate coach for our group of 17 or 20 people. Which she later on refused stating that we are 17 and not 20 so it is not possible without giving us a chance to defend ourselves and that too on the eve of travel.

ITERINARY. Our group was booked on a tentative iterinary with lots of equivocal fine print which did not mention the offers and discounts. When asked for the same she told us that this is tentative only and our tailor-made iterinary would be given to us few days prior to departure .No iterinary was given to us till the penultimate day. In that iterinary our 2 day stay in Engel berg was shifted to Zurich in Switzerland without a word about the reason. As a result:-

1. This made us a 4 hour extra road travel for sightseeing for two consecutive days.

   
   




2. our fellow passengers had Engelberg in their printed iterinary but they were too boarded at Zürich along with us .the guide knew only about Zürich which meant only Zürich was booked two months prior keeping us in dark for two months.

   
   

GROUPS MERGED: Our was a group of 17. We were merged at Paris airport with 35apprtox 45 other people who were travelling on same iterinary. Next day another 25 odd tourist joined us who had come from London leg of their trip and joined to our group. Effectively we as a group grew from 17 to 100. Large group meant less individual attention and more time for mobilization and check out’s and check in’s at all the hotels and sightseeing and more rush and less service at restaurants. Such inconvenience tourists just to save money on part of PARAS.

TRAVEL GUIDE AND DRIVER: The Guide allotted to us Mr. Mridul Chakrabarty was very dominating and bossy type. The driver accompanying was YOSS from STAF CARS Holland. He treated us like kindergarten kids. Sabotaged the whole trip to his and his company’s advantage. Right from first day to last day he made us suffer in innumerable ways. He insulted us several times for being Indians and looked down upon our general conduct by comparing us time and again to Europeans(disregarding our socioeconomic and cultural differences. We expected a better understanding from an Indian Guide).Didn’t defended from the recurring wraths of ill mannered driver. Whenever there was a scope of any excursion or sightseeing out of iterinary, he was too keen and quoted hefty amounts from us as commission for self and driver. Rest all inclusive excursions and sightseeing he was less of a guide and more of Authoritarian. Very intolerant, rude and non sympathetic. The same attitude was with driver. it’s ok to be rigid about time on tight schedules but so much so that a mere delay of 5 minutes used to throw driver in full frenzy.( keep in mind that time he gave for sightseeing and photo spots didn’t considered the time to board and alight the bus by 50 people in their consideration.) Kids as well as grownups were too scared by this ill treatment(never got such treatment elsewhere.) felt like we are at disposal of their ill treatment in a foreign country) on the way driver even threatened to leave the tour and take away the bus if we didn’t follow his orders rigidly. Once the guide threatened a boy 0f 6 yrs by lifting him and threatening to leave his family and him out of the bus, just because he stood in a running bus.(Keep in mind the daily bus travel averaged 600 kms with a 15 min toilet break in between). When running short of time rather than asking driver to stretch his time he made the sightseeing shortened or just skip. Rather than guiding us on our vacation he tried to misguide by giving wrong information whenever we tried to visit a place out of iterinary without his accompaniment. Probably for the reason that we declined his many offers of out of iterinary excursion because unjustified hefty extra payment. Which led us huge inconvenience?

AIR PORT TRANSFERS: we were promised that a guide was to accompany us from Delhi to Paris. Nobody came along with us. Final day the guide left us in a market place and didn’t accompany us to airport. Or to way back New Delhi.

MEALS: before leaving we had fair idea of what we would be getting as our meals from our past experiences of Europe trips. But this got to a new low on this trip. The choice and preferences breakfast was poorly communicated to the hotels, we were made to stay. Not only Indian menu was conspicuously missing from the menu(that too when 90%of guests were from our group of over 100 people), it was cold, undercooked and bland. When complained about this to guide he in a very insulting way made us understand the meaning of continental breakfast and alike without even bothering to have a word with hotel staff. It was tough being vegetarian there with no support whatsoever from guide.(Was it too much to expect from a Guide)

HOTELS: The hotels tentative list give to us in beginning had approx three names for each stay. When pointed why the hotel were near the airports and not in the heart of cities, we were told that these are tentative choices and we would get decent hotels. Turned out that eventually all the hotels were either airport hotels or very far(approx 50 Kms) from cities. This cause d us to waste a lot of time and efforts in city excursions and eventually got limited feel of the city.(What’s the point of travelling 7000 kms by air and 600 kms by road and to be dumped in a city called Padova instead of Rome which was 60 kms from Rome allowing only 3 hours for Rome and Vatican City)? This happened in all 6 of our stays. So much so that we dint got a chance to see 2 of the cities where we were lodged(Florence and Zurich). Other four i.e. Paris Innsbruck, Venice and Rome were too separate from cities.(Cheap trick to save money on cost of tourist’s pleasure). For no reason our 2 day stay at Engelberg was scrapped and we were dumped at Zurich airport hotel.