We travelled from London, England and had booked tickets in England in advance. The tickets covered the blue route, the red route, the night bus and the boat, which we thought was excellent value.
Upon arrival on our first day, staff were friendly and helpful. We did the red route (City) in the morning and then the blue route (South Beach) in the afternoon. Our guide was named IVORY and he was exceptional. He had been doing this job for a while, but his enthusiasm and superb customer service felt like it was his first day. His knowledge of the city was second to none, is humour was infectious and his warmth for his customers was outstanding. We cannot praise him enough.
However, on our second day we took the blue route bus again as we wanted to go to the beach. Our experience this time was totally different. Our guide was called David and was everything that Ivory was not. He seemed totally disinterested in his job, spent most of his time on his phone, never smiled, never welcomed customers and made the experience a totally unenjoyable event. To our amazement, towards the end of the tour, he told everyone how little he got paid and how much they relied on tips. He even told us that if we had no cash, he could take cards! Just before the bus came to the end of the tour, he repeated this again. There was no way we were going to leave a tip (and we were not the only ones). IVORY never said anything about tips, but we gave him a tip as he was so good.
My tip to the company would be to get Ivory to train the rest of the staff.
Another problem we faced was when we wanted to start the boat tour, we checked with the member of staff at the ticket office. They told us what time the boat left, but neglected to tell us that the boat departed from a point several minutes walk again. In spite of us sitting by the jetty in full view of this member of staff, she still did not tell us that we were sitting in the wrong place and therefore we missed the next boat and had to wait another hour.
In conclusion, we have given the company a three star as Ivory and the boat tour were excellent, but David and the female member of staff were exceptionally poor.
Well done IVORY!