If you are looking to book a tour on Big Island, do NOT book with Wasabi Tours. I booked the Big Island in a Day tour through Viator for Saturday, May 28, 2022, and was surprised to find out we were unable to attend the tour without any notification. Many visitors book through 3rd parties and it is common for tour companies to meet at a designated pickup location. Wasabi, however, only conducts tours via hotel pickups and because they did not know our accommodation location, our tour left us without communication. Luckily, we were able to visit the same stops with our rental car so our trip was not ruined, but it definitely threw a wrench in our vacation plans. As a local from a neighboring island, I am extremely disappointed in the professionalism and lack of customer service I experienced — especially considering that tourism is Hawaii’s main economic engine. We were blamed for using a 3rd party search engine to book our tour, and were offered no alternatives to our situation. Moreover, not only were we not issued a refund for a tour we did not go on, we were unable to be rebooked on another tour or allowed to meet the group at one of their stops to join. If you have other options for tours, I recommend you book with another company or do your own sight seeing (which is way cheaper, more flexible, and arguably more authentic), because the service here is absolutely atrocious.
Odpowiedź od gospodarza
Jun 2022
Thank you for your feedback. We are disappointed to see your negative review because we strive to provide excellent customer service and clear communication to all of our guests.
First and foremost, we do not discourage our guests from using third party travel sites to book our tours. As a matter of fact, 60% of our existing reservations come through third party affiliates. This is evident with our top ratings on Viator and thousands of five star reviews across multiple platforms.
It appears that you booked this tour through a third party that partners with Viator and they didn't provide your cell phone number or email address in the booking. The only contact info we had was a toll free number and a generic business email address provided by them.
We sent THREE separate emails over a two week period prior to your tour date to this email address to inquire about your hotel location and contact number so we can promptly notify you the pickup details. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any response from anyone. The toll-free phone number led us to a customer service help desk that couldn't locate your reservation with the information we had available.
You called the night before the tour at 11 pm to confirm your tour which was outside of our business hours. You called again at 7 am on the day of the tour to provide your hotel info which by then our tour had already left the area. Due to the tour duration and packed itinerary, it’s not an option to join the tour in one of the stops without significantly delaying the tour for other guests.
When booking through a third party, we believe the customer has as much responsibility as the tour operator to reach out in advance of the tour date to confirm pickup location and time, especially if they haven’t heard from us due to incorrect/ lack of contact information provided at the time of the booking.
We declined your request for a refund because our cancellation policy is 24 hours or more in advance of the starting time. We offered to put you on standby as a courtesy for a tour on next day in case anyone cancel, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
We went above and beyond to attempt to reach you through available channels and offered alternative options when you missed the tour. Providing top rate customer service and clear communication to all of our guests is very important to us, and we proved that with the multiple attempts we made to contact you.