Testimonials

Dear Iain, That was a trip of life time that you planned for us throughout the Middle East. We had a wonderful time and everything was handled very well. Our Tour Leader was the best. We could not have asked for anybody better. He spoke good English, was very knowledgeable about the country. He always satisfies our needs with a smile. All of our hotels were very charming. The camel ride in the Sahara was fabulous and we really enjoyed all of our experiences. Our guides were very professionals and very knowledgeable. Everything was arranged well and exceeded our expectations. You are running a good operation and you have a wonderful staff. Thank you and if you need me for any references I would be very happy to be contacted.

Dear Akim, I don’t know where to start as I become overwhelmed just thinking of all that we experienced in 10 days. Having just arrived home a few hours ago, I am exhausted but had to let you know immediately that our trip to South Africa exceeded all my expectations. From the minute our guide picked us up, everything we experienced was a pleasure. After having done some reading before I came, I still felt ignorant to all the country has to offer and we learned so much. All of our guides were very well-informed and fascinating. The diversity in geography, culture and customs, architecture and really just about everything was so amazing. Everyone we met or even came across was warm and obliging. We felt very welcomed by our host. Thank you so much!

Dear Lori, I just wanted you to know what a wonderful trip my sisters and I had last week. We owe a lot to you and to all your guides, who were helpful in so many ways that we can never thank them enough. Always there whenever we seemed to need a hand. Their English was terrific and an added bonus. Our Guide in Dakar even loaned us a cell phone when we couldn’t find anyone at the Boutique Hotel to help us with an early wake up call. I will always think of him and the hard working, responsible and courteous man he is, when I think of Senegal. We also owe the guides a lot for there useful information and their tutoring in the history of the country. Our Mountain Guide was so terrific as he was available for that additional day we wanted and took us on a terrific hike to a water fall and raced up and down the trail so he could offer a hand to three women if they needed it. We will be recommending you and your services to other friends who are looking forward to have a similar experience we had with your company. Thanks so much for all your help.

Dear John, We would like to thank you for arranging an enjoyable and truly memorable Moroccan adventure for us. Morocco is a fascinating country! Our driver, Anis, was just the right choice for us. He is a thoughtful person and a skilled driver. Anis went out of his way to meet our needs and interests and we developed a friendship that we hope to continue via email. As an employee, he is a treasure for you to have! We greatly appreciated the invitation you extended to meet your family. Miriam, Yusef and the children are such a loving family. They welcomed us warmly and prepared a tasty Moroccan dinner with great respect for our dietary restrictions. It was a pleasure to see the beautifully furnished home that you grew up in and to meet your mother. Our only regret is that we did not listen to your warnings about the distances between places. Consequently, we spent too much time in the car in order to see so much of the country. Next time (when???) we will revise our itinerary. We will surely recommend you to friends who would like to visit Morocco. We wish you and your family a very happy Thanksgiving holiday. All the best,

Dear Iain, We have been remiss in not writing to you sooner to tell you how much we enjoyed our recent Kenya Journey. I must admit I was somewhat apprehensive as to whether someone would actually be there to meet us at the airport and whether our tour would meet our expectations. This is because our preplanning with you seemed far too easy and vague and because I had booked this trip entirely without recommendations, based solely on your web page. Once we got started on our tour, however, we realized that the planning was so easy because you knew how to make our trip magical for us. As soon as we were met at the airport by our driver, Aasir, we knew we were in capable and friendly hands. It was hard to believe he was the age of our children–he took such good care of us. Our local guides were fantastic, especially Adamu. As good as our other guides were, and they were all excellent, we wished we had hired Adamu for the whole trip as he was probably the best guide we had ever had. All of the hotels were good and some were excellent. Kareem, gave us a tour of the village, helped with our cooking lesson and kept us thoroughly amused. We had so many wonderful and varied experiences on our trip that its hard to single out any of them for special mention. I would say that the time in the desert stood out because none of us ever been to Africa. Thank you again,

Dear Akim I wanted to write to tell you what a fantastic journey we had. We loved Morocco, such a beautiful and inspiring country. The itinerary was great with a mixture of hard traveling days and relaxing times at the riads and especially Kasbah Omar. Yusef was great, we always felt taken care of, he was flexible, always positive and upbeat, always on time and always ready to share with us his knowledge and impressions of Morocco. The city guides were fantastic, particularly the Fes guide (Hisham) all incredibly knowledgable and insightful. The only problem we had, which Yusef was able to help us solve, was the food. I have to be honest with you, we quickly got very tired of the tagine based meals, all of which seemed to be identical with the same array of Moroccan salads and what seemed to us overcooked and underspiced tagines. Yusef was able to find us pizza, grilled fish, Thai and French meals. I’m sure Yusef informed you about the dinner we skipped at Stylia Palace in Marrekesh and the overpayment of our refund for the cooking class at Kasbah Omar. We just took the overpayment as a credit for the skipped dinner. We’ve told all of our friends about how great Morocco is and how great your company is and hopefully you’ll hear from some of them to book tours.

Dear John, Janet and I want to thank you for all work you did making our trip to China so wonderful. It was a spectacular time of year to be there. The countryside was quite green with huge fields of wildflowers everywhere. All of the arrangements you planned for us worked well. The accommodations were more than adequate and in most cases quite nice. Chang, our driver, was absolutely great. He is prompt, safe and quite helpful. We feel badly that he had a couple of very long days that we wish we could have spared him. All of our guides were informative and helpful. One guide in particular, Itimod in shanghai, was wonderful. She and my wife communicated very well with one another. Seeing a great old city from the eyes of a woman who grew up there is a great experience. We didn’t see many women guides which is a shame because we think that perspective would be a big hit particularly with American travelers. Thank you again for all you did for us. Distinctive Travel is a first rate travel service. We will certainly recommend your services should any of our friends express interest in visiting one of your exotic destinations

Dear Akim, I am writing to tell you how wonderful our combo trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & Thailand was, and to express our appreciation for all your efforts to make it work out so well. The guides and the driver were excellent in every way. The hotels were quite comfortable and accommodating to our needs. The weather was good too. (Ok, you can’t take credit for that.) A real highlight was having dinner with the locals at the end of the trip. Thanks so much for helping our family have a trip of a life time Happy new year to you and your family.

Iain, We are now back in the states and we are over our jet lag and have gotten all of our things caught up. We wanted to write to you to let you know how happy we were with our trip to India. It was fantastic because of the extra effort Our guideArjun took to make things right for us. Things like suggesting we shop at the super store for our wine and water, driving at a very decent speed and very safe, pointing out sights we might have missed, suggesting pleasant places for reasonable dinners and taking us to them, always on time, having a sense of humor, even keeping track of some sunglasses. Yes he was wonderful and we really enjoyed our time with him. Thanks for all of your services,

Dear Akim, There is little we can add to the host of glowing testimonials that precede ours. Suffice to say that our trip was one of the most exciting and provocative vacations we have ever taken. The fact that our luggage never arrived Jordan didn’t even dent our experience. We simply stopped by the nearest Medina and went “native”. Bill was even asked for directions while standing in front of our hotel in Amman. Thanks to you and your staff, we now have a thousand and one glorious memories.

Hello Lori, Here my thoughts on our visit to Spain . Overall we had a lovely time and everyone was very hospitable and friendly. Our driver –Juan was absolutely fantastic.. Always on time and always willing to help out when we ran into problems, Our cities guides were terrific as well. The hotels were beautiful. We had an amazing trip. I will highly recommend your agency to my friends and colleagues. Thanks again,

Dear John, We are safely back in the US and I want to thank you for planning such a wonderful trip for us. The itinerary was terrific, and gave us a little bit of everything. We now know what we prefer and what we will do again next time. Our guide Anis was wonderful- he is a very nice guy and was very professional, knowledgeable and protective but also a lot of fun. He was the perfect choice for us, because my 16 year old and 17 year old kids had a lot in common with him and felt very comfortable talking to a guy who was closer to their age than mine. He is also very mature so I felt comfortable with him as well. He was very attentive and flexible. We found the Moroccan people to be warm and welcoming and the country itself is just beautiful. The highlight of our trip was the Ourika Valley and Casbah Omar – we could easily see ourselves returning there! I initially did not think we would like Rick’s Cafe, thinking it would be too touristy, but it was a beautiful place and lot of fun. Our trip was the perfect Moroccan experience and I think we got an excellent overall view of the country and its culture. My only regret is that it was so short! I will highly recommend your agency to my friends and colleagues. Thanks again.

Dear Akim, We had a marvelous time and want to thank you and Mahmoud, our driver. Egypt Highlights was amazing. The people were warm and friendly and the hotels in which we stayed were lovely. We enjoyed every minute of it. The Nile Cruise spiced up the journey for us. All the different guides that we had were very professional. The food was excellent. All your planning made the trip very comfortable. Thank you for your services. You were efficient and the trip was exactly as planned for our wonderful Egypt journey. We are already recommending your company to our friends and family. All the best-

Dear Iain, Thank you for reminding me to email you. The Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & Thailand trip was fantastic. It was amazingly hassle-free and extremely enjoyable. I particularly loved the accommodation which was stunning and wonderfully authentic. The people were friendly, all the trips were well-organized, the travel was easy, the food scrumptious, the shopping great. Thank you so much for organizing it all so well. I have recommended your company to many people. I work in a Travel Medicine and I have talked to many of my patients about your company. I hope that they find you easily and enjoy their tour as much as we did. With very best wishes,

Dear Akim, We have just come back home from our holidays. Following our trip to Morocco we spent few days in the South of Spain that you planed for us Visiting Morocco was an exciting and unforgettable experience: the people, the landscapes, the cities, the food, everything was just wonderful. We absolutely enjoyed it. As mentioned by Distinctive International advertisements, we are back home “with plenty of tales of Arabian days and nights”; I can still smell the spices, the flowers, the fresh of the Ourika valley. By the way, Mr Kamal kindness and hospitality at the Kasbah Omar has to be highlighted. He also helped us in exploring the beautiful Ourika valley leading us in two wonderful walks. The trip went on as planned. Riads and hotels were great, as well as restaurants and foods in our dinners. Guides and visits were very well coordinated. Everything on time and the trip fulfilled every word committed by Mr Elanbassi in the package we bought. “Mustapha”, the driver that spent with us the whole visit, was perfect; always on time, ready to help us in every question we asked, excellent driver, at all times taking care of our safety and comfort. Meeting Mustapha is part of the nice memories we have from our trip. Summing up and for the requested feedback, I would qualified my holidays and Distinctive Travel with a 100. Hope to visit Morocco again! Regards,

Hi Lori, Well, we are home again. It was a wonderful trip. We learned so much about both Tunisia and UAE, about which we knew so little before. Our driver, Abdo in Tunisia, was superb. You have a great employee in Abdo – 5 star service! He was not only a great driver, but was eager to help us see all the places we wanted to visit, even if they were not in the itinerary. He made some wonderful suggestions for lunch. He was always waiting for us in the morning, eager to begin the day’s activities. He helped act as a “guide” when we were not in the cities. We shared many stories about our respective families, and found a common interest in BMW cars. All guides in UAE were good. Hassan was like a university professor (which he may well be). He taught us about history and culture way back to more than 5000 years ago. We learned so much from him I felt we should be paying tuition. We also liked Fatah. The hotels were excellent. Overall we were extremely satisfied with both trips. We have already started to recommend You and your services to our friends, and will give them your name. (Shukran) Thank you for a wonderful time.

Akim: I just wanted to follow up on our trip you planned for us throughout Europe. First of all we had a wonderful time and everything was handled very well. Our drivers in all destinations were the best. We could not have asked for anybody better. They spoke good English, and were very knowledgeable about Europe. Our guide in Spain kept us very safe and informed and was very very accommodating and respectful. We would highly recommend you and your company anytime. All of our hotels were very nice. Everything was arranged well. Italy, Andalusia Spain were fabulous and we really enjoyed all of our experiences. Thank you and if you need me for any references I would be glad to be contacted. All the best.