Go Ahead tours has been around for many yrs and does tours all over the world. There was a thread on Go Ahead on TA that ran for yrs with hundreds of postings. You can always find someone with a complaint but for the most part Go Ahead has good reviews. Understand that many UK tour operators net everything down and don't include a lot of meals. Not sure why your dealing with the Toronto office. The main north American office is near Boston. Its rare to have someone come to the office to book a tour.

As stated in the 2nd reply Go Ahead Tours has been around for years and is not a sham what so ever. Go Ahead Tours is part of EF Tours that has been used by schools throughout America and other countries for years. I and my wife have used them 5 times over the past 10 years. Tipping may be a pain, but it is required and you are informed up front. Nothing hidden there. The first responder knows zero about them. They provide you with a main tour guide and with local tour guides (tips are how the guides make money). Add $70 plus for tips. Of course do your own research.

a) I've taken tours myself, but each time I only booked once i was satisfied that I knew what was included in the base price and what wa soging to be extra. If this was not clear, I would not proceed.

b) I'm not sure that this wold matter one jot to me. But then I expect to be able to fend for myself, I have travel insurance and I make sure that I know how to contact them if needs be. I don't know what I would want to contact the tour operator's emergency support team for.

c) I don't understand this one, I'm afraid. The US has a tipping culture, so I'm not sure why you're complaining about their guidelines on tipping. Anyway, in my experience tours sometimes have drivers and separate directors/guides, with local guides being used as well for particular places. Sometimes there is only a driver, who also acts as tour director and a very limited guide. They are just trying to cover all eventualities, as things are dependent on the tour.

d) If the office in Toronto is open to the public then I would expect the times stated to be accurate. I don't think that the phones ringing is necessarily a con, because they could well have outsourced their customer service functions like so many companies have. Even if they haven't, it may not be based in Toronto, and calls may be diverted elsewhere if they are.

Hello from EF Go Ahead Tours!

We’re so glad that you have found our website and our tour offerings. As a part of one of the largest private education companies, we are proud to have over 50 years of experience in the travel industry.

Go Ahead tries to be as clear as possible about the pricing of our tour options on our website by highlighting how many hotel nights, meals, and sight seeing tours are included on each and every tour. You can find this information under “Tour Overview”, where you will also find included highlights and information on the tour pace.

When it comes to our tipping recommendations, our intention is to best prepare our travelers with suggestions on how much to tip the local experts they’ll encounter on tour. Those experts include a Tour Director, who stays with the tour group from beginning to end to handle the logistics of the itinerary, a local tour guide that is licensed to give historical and educational tours of each city on the tour, and a bus driver that efficiently and safely drives our travelers to and from these cities and attractions.

We’re also proud to provide 24/7 support to Go Ahead travelers while they’re on tour should any kind emergency arise. We have a dedicated team of trained specialists that can be reached either while on tour or within 24 hours of departure for tour. The details on this emergency phone number are provided to our travelers in the final mailing package sent prior to the tour’s departure, or travelers can call our 1-800 number and indicate that they are experiencing an on-tour emergency.

Lastly, as our website mentions, our phone lines are open 7 days a week so that we can be as accessible to our travelers as possible. However, our phone staff in our Boston and Denver offices are staffed to answer these calls over the weekends, which is why there may not have been any staff in our Toronto office when you stopped by on a Saturday.

We hope this information is helpful and we would love to see you on a Go Ahead tour with us in the future. If you’re near any of our offices anytime soon, we’re happy to give you a tour and introduce you to the Go Ahead team!

Best,

Go Ahead

I traveled to Sicily w Go Ahead a few years ago and it was a great trip

Looking into Puglia w them

Agree their website could be more user friendly

We just traveled with them for our honeymoon this month. While the tour itself was good, the customer service we received with our flights was not. If you have the option to book your own flights do it! Go Ahead scams you for upgrades and then does nothing when you don't receive the upgrade. Very disappointing and I do not recommend using them. I know there are more tour operators out there that are much better and we have learned our lesson now.

When you read reviews of tour companies all too frequently the big complaint is the air flights. I'm not sure what the tour operator has to do with your air portion other than booking the ticket. If you had an upgraded ticket most people would call the airline prior to travel to make sure that was in effect. I have traveled with go ahead a few times however I always book my own flights.

Yes this is a scam tour operator. They do not follow their own cancellation rules. According to their rules optional excursions can be cancelled up to 3 days prior to departure yet when we had to cancel our entire tour due to illness they made us pay 50% of everything including the excursions. They even had the nerve to say that if we had cancelled the excursions first and then a few days later the tour we would not have been charged 50% of the excursions. DO NOT BOOK WITH TH|EM !!

I know this is an old post, but I just came across it. I can't speak to the discrepancies in their tipping guidance or your dealings with their office, but I have been on tour with them twice and wouldn't hesitate to go again. First time was Walking the Amalfi Coast which was an AMAZING tour. Second was Walking the Emerald Isle, which was also good, but I didn't love it as much as the first one. I have called and talked to them on the phone and they are very helpful. You get full emergency contact information once you book, it's not a person, it's a phone number, call center type thing. But I was witness to one couple losing their luggage (fault of the airline) and GAT was on it like white on rice. The state-side people were on the phone with the airline tracking the luggage and then they were on the phone with our tour guide giving updates. It was lost for several days, so we had moved on from our original location, and they were going to deliver it to where ever we were. After a couple days of it being missing, the couple decided they really needed some good walking shoes and some underwear, and our tour guide told them where to go shopping.

The full itinerary is on the website, everything mentioned is included. It tells you which meals are included. It says what the optional excursions are (you can choose to go on those or not, you pay extra for those.)

One time we stopped on the way from one town to another at a restaurant for lunch, which was not included in the price. The restaurant was kind of in the middle of nowhere, so there were no other options if we stopped there. The tour guide told us on the bus that he wanted to stop at this restaurant that had good food, and how much it cost, and said that we needed to all agree if we wanted to stop there. Of course we all agreed because he said it had good food, and it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten. But if one person had said no, we would have driven on to find another place, It wasn't forced upon us.

No complaints here, definitely not a sham.