It is a tour through one of the most beautiful and interesting countries on the planet. So I only point out the things that lead me to reduce the score down to 3/5. 1. Some days of the tour are overloaded with activities, leaving insufficient time. 2. Some of the most interesting activities are highly weather-dependent, and due to the short stays at various locations, it becomes a gamble whether they can take place. This applies especially to Franz Josef (all glacier activities) and Taupo (Tongariro Crossing). 3. Some of the accommodations were not good. 4. Twice, the overnight stay took place in a completely different location than planned. One particularly significant instance was staying in Waitomo instead of Raglan. As a result, we unnecessarily spent an additional three hours on the road. Furthermore, the accommodation in Waitomo was one of the worse ones. 5. Waitomo is a fixed stop on the route. However, there is only one optional activity (cave tour) available there. This led to a situation where those in our group who were not interested in the optional activity had to sit around for two hours in one of the most boring places in New Zealand. 6. The tour route is poorly planned in some parts. It turned out that there were two different itineraries for the group, which mainly differed in the exact route through the North Island. Unfortunately, the route that was actually taken was the less optimized one, involving unnecessary detours and therefore several extra hours on the road. 7. The travel description repeatedly mentioned a free morning at some of the locations. Not a single one of these happened. This was particularly disappointing for me in the case of Raglan, where we didn’t even stay overnight as planned, since I had been looking forward to trying surfing there. 8. The "Auckland part" of the tour is borderline outrageous. In the afternoon, you are dropped off at a hotel next to the highway, far from any interesting activities in Auckland. The guide then disappears and flies back to Wellington. Since the hotel does not have a restaurant or dining area, the group cannot even have a final breakfast together on the last day of the trip. The reason for choosing this hotel seemed to be its proximity—just 200 meters—from the Haka Tours company building.

This was our second time touring NZ with Haka Tours, and again it was an excellent trip - the itinerary is well-planned, the included activities are great, and our guide helped everyone schedule the optional activities so no one missed anything they wanted to do. Our guide Georgia was exceptional. It's not easy to keep 15 people on target to do all the fun stuff we crammed into the week, but she did it with skill, good nature, and always a smile. Haka Tours doesn't overstate the accommodations - we stayed at hostels and even those of us who upgraded to private rooms had to share bathrooms at most of the places. But they were clean, safe, and it's an economical way to see and do lots of things without breaking your bank.

We spent five days with your guide, Ama, and the whole family loved our time with her. The North Island is a special place, and her and my main contact, Grace, did an awesome job with our family, which included two teenagers, two 40 something adults, and two seniors. Some of the highlights were Mount Terawara helicopter ride and the Te Pa Tu cultural experience. To be honest, everything we did was special and enjoyable, and your company enhanced our trip in every way.

Thank you Haka tours for our amazing private tour with Nick Halkhoree. This was a Reverse Southern Wonder tour which far exceeded our expectations of accommodation, travel and guiding by Nick. Our experience of the South Island of New Zealand was awesome. The requests from us were always followed through with enthusiasm from Nick and we liked his encouragement to try new adventures. Thanks Nick and Haka Tours. The Millers. WA.

While New Zealand was spectacular the trip left a lot to be desired. There were 11 of us on the North Island portion. 8 of us had signed up for for an ADULT ONLY 40 and over trip; yet there was a family on the trip with 2 young teens that acted their young ages and didn't have any interest in the activities included in the trip negatively impacting the enjoyment of the trip for the rest of us. Our guide was nice and informative yet lacked some of the leadership skills to make it a stellar trip and some of his information, while interesting, was incorrect. Some activities were canceled due to weather and other extra curricular extension trips were canceled due to low number sign ups. Because Haka tours is being acquired by Intrepid, we were Guinea pigs for them to work out gliches, which there were many. One is getting refunds. Haka can't do it and says we need to go through Intrepid. I have sent emails- 2 weeks have gone by and NO response- typical Intrepid. I called and got the canned response- 'this is highly unusual for our company....' not from what our group encountered- they do NOT respond and are terrible communicators. I have gone on many trips with travel companies and this was the worst by far. I would NOT recommend Intrepid

10/10 experience for me : the locations we have visited, the country, the friendly and knowledgeable guide (Connor), the friendly group, the people back at the office were also helpful and efficient. The whole experience has been excellent from booking (the website provides good information and gives everything you need to know for your trip, and makes your booking really easy) to the last day of the tour. As a solo traveler I highly recommend this experience as you get to see so much of NZ with lovely people.

We have just completed the Amplified Tour of New Zealand. The trip on the whole was everything we expected and more. We met some great travel friends. The Tour bus never let us down. Our guide Mike tried to keep us entertained. Mostly the hostels were great, though we did upgrade to a private room. All the activities offered were so enjoyable, do as much as you can. It was easy to book more activities on the go via the Guide. My one and only disappointment was the Māori experience. No welcoming haka, no traditional clothing, traditional dinner cooked by a couple of backpackers and a video in the classroom until 10pm. Then a double room with bunk beds for the night?? Not sure what went wrong, although the lady was nice explaining the history. Overall, well done HAKA Tours. We will use you again

What an amazing trip! There was a wide range of activities from cultural to adventure activities and a few surprises, which we absolute gems, up the tour guide's sleeves. The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and helped everyone in every way he could. He made us all feel comfortable and it was amazing to see how much of a family we all became so quickly. I have travelled a fair bit around the world but this was the first time I have booked a tour. This was my second trip to New Zealand but I learnt so much. I will definitely be booking with the company in the future to do the South Island. The only criticism I have is that what is included and the additional activities on offer were different on different websites. My friend and I booked through Backpacker Deals, then when we went on the Haka Tours website we realised we had to contact the company to book stuff that wasn't on the other website.

Wonderful tour of the South Island of New Zealand. It started in Christchurch and encompassed many of the most scenic and beautiful sites of the island, including Christchurch, Ohau, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Wanaka and Franz Josef, and wonderful lakes and mountains in between. I will definitely plan on returning to this lovely country. Tour leader Adam was amazing at ensuring everyone had a good time. Some of the activities were weather dependent, but Adam did his utmost to try to get everyone as many activities as he could. Our traveling group was exceptional - I believe we all had a good time. Some travelers were more adventurous, and this tour provided activities for everyone - bungy jumping, skydiving, kayaking, hiking, sightseeing tours, exploring, etc. Accommodations were fine - perfect for the kind of trip where you don’t stay very long in the rooms, but very comfortable for sleeping. All in all, I thought this tour was an excellent introduction to New Zealand.

By far the worst travel experience of our entire lives. Since the pandemic this company does not have the bandwidth to deal with the returning tourists and offers guides and provides you with mere drivers or mentally unstable people, none of whom are accredited guides. Very poor preparedness overall, the "guides" arrives late, the van was leaking water from the roof, half the activities got cancelled, our guide abandonned the group mid trip because she had a personal mental crisis. THe group refused to replaced the guide....A complete, utter, and appalling disaster. It s a shame, because New Zealand is an absolute gorgeous country. Note that this trip was booked through Traverse Journeys, who got caught in the middle as they decided to partner with Haka Tour. Traverse Journeys has made reasonable efforts to remedy the situation, but the whole trip was so botched by Haka that nothing could be salvaged out of it.

We booked a tour of both New Zealand islands called a New Zealand Fantasy with Traverse Journeys almost a year ago.It turned out to be a New Zealand nightmare. It was the worst travel experience of our lives. We’ve travelled extensively with several companies and have had mostly good experiences. Nothing comes close to the travesty we had with Traverse Journeys and Haka tours. We only had a total of 4 people (their minimum) in the tour. The owner of Traverse later told us that this is not profitable as they usually do larger tours. She contracted our tour to a company called Haka Tours who threw together last minute and untrained tour guides. The guide in the North Island was a nice person but hadn’t been to some of the areas we visited in over 30 years. He was more of a driver than a trained guide. We missed some of the key selling points from the Traverse Journeys advertising due to his lack of familiarity. The trip has very little leisure time and the ads are misleading. Most of the time is traveling in vans and rushing to the next location. The South Island guide was an absolute disaster. Her name was Deann Loader. She was extremely unprofessional. She disappeared for a day and a half and screamed at my wife when asked why she wasn’t around. She threatened to leave us with the other couple after her first meltdown. Two days later, the other couple had a medical issue with a pregnancy before we were to leave for the day’s events. They were a few minutes late at the van and Ms. Loader lost it. She showed no empathy or concern for the wife’s medical condition and actually brought her to tears. Worse yet, Ms. Loader locked the van and flew home after a verbal exchange with the husband. She left the four of us in rural New Zealand ( a pregnant woman and us in our mid sixties). Haka was irresponsible and not at all helpful when their guide abandoned us. David Coles from Haka told us they didn’t have the resources to replace the guide.. He also didn’t know when he could get us a driver as we were left in a remote location. He was more interested in our not giving Haka a negative review than finding us a ride. We rented a van and finished the trip ourselves. We later learned that the van shouldn’t have been rented as the brakes were failing. This NZ fantasy also included driving the faulty van on the other side of the road through treacherous mountain roads to parts unknown. We demanded a full refund from Ashley Blake, CEO of Traverse Journeys. She was sympathetic and offered us a modest refund. We settled for a fifty percent refund after we had to put in a claim with the credit card company. I would look elsewhere and steer clear from both of these organizations since long distance travel is hard enough.

Overall, this was a really good tour. However, there are some pro's and con's to be aware of. This tour was a great value for the cost. Fairly cheap but with a lot included. The additional excursions were fairly cheap as well but really fun. I feel like we saw and did so much within a one week span of time. The cultural Maori experience was particularly special. My partner and I are in our late 30's and we were worried we would be the oldest people by far but we were not. Many people on the tour were our age or right around our age. Most of the accommodations were centrally located. Some of the cons- Expect your typical hostel accommodations. Nothing special. We did the private room which was nicer. I was surprised that the free breakfasts that were included on this tour were basically the tour operator purchasing breakfast foods from the grocery (i.e. cereals, bread, e.t.c.) and transporting them to the hostels. Tours I had been on in the past included meals usually meant through the hotels or restaurants or something. Our tour guide didn't seem particularly enthused or upbeat during the entire tour.

First because of the guide. Connor was enthusiastic, funny and empathetic. He was always happy to share about some of his favourite places and fun facts with us. He was really organised, and was incredible in finding new ways for us to be entertained when events or activities were cancelled due to forecast reasons. He knew how to advise when in doubt of which activity to choose from but always let us be responsible for our own actions. I loved the Bay of Island, Hobbiton 😍, swimming with Dolphins. I LOVED all the activities we did regarding the Maori culture. Carving our own Pounamu and paddling a Waka are some of the highlights of my trip. I fell in love with this culture, with Aotearoa and I can't wait to come back. Spending the night in Kohutapu Lodge and eating the Maori traditional food was also amazing. Thank you for all this. I met incredible people and can't wait for my next trip!

This tour company overpromises and underdelivers. Transportation was not as represented - the bus was old, filthy, with no sound system and malfunctioning AC. Hostels were basic, not like photos, and primarily for 6-10 people rather than the 4-6 represented. One hostel smelled terrible and at the hostel in Christchurch, UrbanZ, the manager put us in a 10-person dorm of mixed sexes. And told our guide "Tom" from HQ had authorized it. Choose another company. It's a long way to travel and life is too short.

We did this tour in Jan 23, just got back. First 2 weeks was excellent. Great group of eclectic, insane, funny and lovely people. Runty our tour guide went to great lengths to ensure he accommodated our every need despite little support or guidance from Hakka. He bent over backwards to please us and provide alternative activities when planned ones were cancelled. Cancelling the glamping was super disappointing and totally inappropriate of Hakka especially as it had been sold as a highlight of the trip. The compensation offered was insulting but Runty took it upon himself to try to make things better. The second 2 weeks of the trip was a disaster weather wise, we didn’t get to do the planned activities so very disappointing. No one’s fault but again Runty tried to make the best of our trip offering alternatives he personally knew about. Hakka was calling on him for advice to advise other trip leaders. Overall Hakkas administration of the tour was poor, the bus itself was a banger, not good enough to transport people on a tour that cost as much as this and the accommodation was not consistent. I believe Runtys resourcefulness saved the day for us all but probably wouldn’t book with a company that sub contracts to Hakka again.