Rajat_Divya

We have just come back from Egypt and Jordan tour. The tour was good except for few issues which we feel could have been avoided. In the review we have tried to include everything. Our only suggestion would be to ask each and everything that you can think of while planning the tour. The review might be helpful in giving you all few ideas of what all details could be asked. 1. Meet & Assist - The representative was supposed to meet us at Cairo Airport and assist with the immigration. Instead we were left searching for the representative until we gave up looking for him and exited the airport and spotted him outside the airport - this is in sharp contrast to jordan where the rep was waiting inside the airport and helped us with the immigration process. While it is not important to help with the immigration procedures, it is necessary to be clear on whether the reps will be inside the airport or outside. 2. Grand Pyramids Hotel Cairo - while the hotel itself was okay, issues with the check-in severely affected our experience of Egypt. Since Memphis Tours knew that we were arriving at 7am and wanted to go to the hotel first to freshen up before going sightseeing. If the room was not available, it should have been informed to us immediately after landing rather than wasting 2 hours where we were continuously told that room would be ready in 5 minutes. This was still better than what happened on our return from Aswan. Even though our train was late by 3 hours, when we reached the hotel there was no room. I can understand that it was the hotel's fault but at the end of the day, we were made to wait another hour for a room. This time we were told things like "day use rooms are only available from 10am to 12pm" "it will be ready in 5 minutes" etc. All this was despite assurances that when we return from Aswan there would be no problems with the room and that the booking has been confirmed. 3. Guides & Tipping - Our guide in Cairo (Amani?) was much better than the guide in Luxor and Aswan (Ahmed). At times Ahmed did not even accompany us into the sights and only told us everything from some shade and then sat down in the cafe leaving us to explore on our own. We saw other guides patiently walking with the groups explaining each item as they came across them. Further, Amani was very good at telling us where to be careful and where to buy different things. Ahmed on the other hand forced us to tip various people throughout the trip and told us how much to tip different people - while we are happy to tip people for services, we are not okay with being told that tipping is mandatory and that too a certain minimum amount. While the overall tips were not a large amount, this ruins the experience of seeing the sights. Jordan we were not even provided with a guide for all sights. Only for Jerash and Petra the driver (Wasim) hired guides (which were very good). Other places wasim explained things to us and left us on our own -our itinerary mentioned that we will get a tour guide for both Jordan and Egypt. We were told that we could hire a licensed guide if we wanted - i see no reason why we should have been spending money hiring guides when we paid Memphis Tours for this service. Wasim could not come with us to many of the sites as only guides were allowed inside so we had to go on our own without any guide as promised by the Memphis tours. At this point, we actually felt cheated we were charged for the services which were not provided. 4. Petra Nights Tour - we were never told by Memphis that the Jordan tour would be covered by another agency. Even when we asked specifically before leaving for Amman, we were told that it is a Memphis representative that would meet us at Amman. Memphis needs to be very clear in communicating the fact that outside of Egypt they would tie up with another agency. Had we known that Memphis does not operate in Jordan, we might have preferred to book the Jordan part of the tour with someone else in order to avoid paying double commissions (Memphis and Petra Nights) 5. Cruise - we were happy with the quality of the cruise ship but not happy with the cruise schedule. The ship was sailing for only 1.5 days and we were forced to check in for 4 nights. Had we known that the cruise only sails for 1.5 days, we would have preferred to travel to Luxor 1 day later and leave Aswan 1 day earlier - the extra could have been utilized to see other sights. There is no point being on a cruise ship that is docked at the port for 2 days especially in between other ships - the rooms and the deck provide no views and a hotel room would have been a cheaper and better option. 6. Charges - we are amazed to see that Memphis tours wanted to charge for any changes as an extra - when we asked to be dropped to Luxor Museum (a 2 minute drive from Luxor Temple) instead of the cruise ship we were promptly informed it would be extra - considering the amounts paid for the tour, i don't think it was fair for Memphis Tours to charge for this. Also, we felt that Memphis charges too much for the two extras that we took - The Citadel (70 USD) and Nubian Village (400 EGP) - the pricing would have been justified if this was an additional day but we felt that since we had already paid for the car guide etc for that day, it was a small addition to the itinerary (1 hour trip) and the pricing should have been much much better. 7. Quality of Sights - the sightseeing itself was good and Memphis did a good job of arranging tickets etc in advance - we were never made to wait for these things at any sight and sightseeing was good. The only issue is that amount of time that we were sightseeing on any given day - looking at the itinerary we believed that we would have a full day of sightseeing but we realised that we were only seeing things for about 3 hours each day. This leaves for a lot of free time and Memphis should make more efforts to inform people about expected timings for different sights - this would allow people to decide whether they want to add more items to the day or whether they want the extra free time. 8. Tour Leader - it would be better if the Tour Leader (Mohamed) spent more effort on his English language skills - at times it was nearly impossible to communicate with him and for quite a few questions the response we got was "ok ok". Also, we want to mention that while we were in Luxor, we received a call from Mohamed at 12.30 in the night to check if everything was ok - this is not an acceptable time to call people to check if the tour is going ok. Some people might be okay receiving calls at such a late hour but most people are asleep at that hour. Overall, the tour would be an excellent experience if Memphis addresses the few minor issues noted above.