We contracted with Guided Tours Israel to provide a 3 day Israel tour for 72 people in 2 buses with 4 experienced guides. We were promised the best guides because we booked it over a year in advance. However, the company overbooked tours for those dates and we received 1 experienced guide, and 3 guides who did not know the itinerary, could not manage time, did not wait for the tour participants at each stop to explain sites, and did not communicate well. One of the buses did not have a reasonable opportunity to get meals even with all day tours, and had to grab whatever snacks they could find. In addition, we had 2 bus drivers the first 2 days who were extremely unprofessional: yelling on their phone during the entire drives, stopping for gas, stopping to get food or drinks for themselves and eating while driving which is very unsafe, showing up very late one of the days for the tour, and late returning to the bus at some stops. The excuse that the owner of Guided tours Israel gave me for this was that they lost 80% of their guides and 90% of their bus drivers during COVID. Well if that was the case they should not have continued to book so many tours on the dates we booked a large group, and they should not have promised me their best guides which we deserved. Guided Tours Israel sacrificed the quality of our tours for their own profit and that is not something that is not acceptable. The owner did give one of our buses a partial refund which was less than we requested and thought was fair. However, it at least acknowledged the problems that I described with an apology. Each of our tour participants spent thousands of dollars on a Holy Land cruise only to have the visit to Israel ruined by Guided Tours Israel’s inexperienced guides and unprofessional bus drivers. I have organized hundreds of private tours from cruise ships, and 99% of them have gone very well. This one was a disaster and I do not trust this company to do what is best for the tour participants. I do not recommend you use them for these reasons.
