How to Choose A Travel Agency

　　There are several ways of finding a travel agency for your trip. The first way is recommend by friends. This way seems be most proper that you will have a more wonderful and happy trip, because your friends had the travel experience with this company.

　　But not every one has opportunities to ask from your frineds about the good travel agency and the destination you are going, because your friends have never been there either. So internet seems to be a popular and useful way through which you will try to choose a travel agency, and it looks very useful. But you also will have difficulties to find a good travel agency, because you will find many travel information and travel agencies from the internet, you don't know which travel agency is the one that offers you the proper price, best guide service, best drive service, best food and best touring. So I list some suggestions below for you, hope it can be helpful for you by choosing a travel agency from the internet.

　　For instance, you want to make a trip to Guizhou to see the minority villages and costumes or tribal festivals. Then you search on google or yahoo by the key words such as Guizhou travel, Guizhou minorities, Guizhou tribal festivals, Miao costumes, you will find many travel agencies and their websites, many of the websites look very beautiful, everyone says they are specialists of Guizhou tours, some are the local travel agencies of Guizhou, some are not from Guizhou, so here is the process:

　　1. Choosing the Guizhou local travel agencies, because in fact they are specialists of that region. The first reason is that they are more familiar with Guizhou than the other travel agencies from other provinces or cities; secondly, the price of the local agency is much lower, because there is only travel agency make your money, if you choose an agency from the other province, this agency has to ask his work partner in Guizhou to arrange your tour, so there will two companies make your money, the price will be much higher. Thirdly, the speed of arranging the tour by the local travel agency of Guizhou could be much shorter.

　　2. A tour is composed of hotels, meals, sights, guide, driver, shopping and the like. Everything is very important, but here I think the guide is most important. As rowing a boat, the guide is the person to carry out the trip and the plan, to give tourists information of the regions, a wonderful guide can make you a memerable trip, a poor guide service can waist your time, your money and disturb your good mood of traveling.

　　First of all, write to the agency for an itinerary and price, then just make a call directly to the tour operator and ask him who will be the guide and the guide's telephone number, make another call to the guide to ask him some specific questions about the region and himself, not only the questions on the itinerary, but also the specific questions beyond the itinerary, this way you can find whether the guide is good enough or not just by phone including his English level, his work experience, knowledge of the region. A good agency always like to tell you the guide's telephone, because they are confident of their guides and service. It's unnecessary to keep contacting the company unwilling to answer your questions dirctly by phone, because they are not specialists or trusted. If the agency has a student guide or less experience guide for your tour, even it's very cheap, I think it's worth nothing, because you waist your money and time, remember travel is to let you have a good mood and learn a lot from the region.

　　Secondly, comparing the hotels grade on the itinerary from different companies and their prices, so you can know why the price is high or low.
Thirdly, ask the tour operator where you will have your meals, at the local small restaurants or the hotels you will stay overnight, because the price and taste of those two places are totally different, this also can make a different price.
Fourthly, ask the tour opertor to send you a picture of the car or bus you will have so that you can find the car good or not.

　　3. This is not enough, you still need a most interesting and proper itinerary, a good tour operator can arrange a very interesting tour for you that is different from the other company's, but remember that the guide is the person to carry out your trip, so even if the tour operator were a very famous person, but he won't come with the trip or his guide is not good, or even he will come with the tour, but he won't introduce the destination information to you, or his price is very high, but you just stay at the low star hotel, small bus, poor food and the like, it's not worth making tour with such a tour operator, because you get less from them and you've paid too much. Because you still can find the real expert from that region with reasonable price and you will get more from his guiding.

　　4. The details of all the service for a trip are very important too, you may ask the tour operator and the guide what other extra details you will have on the tour, you will find the different answers, then you can know the service quality and who will be the real expert just by phone.

　　5. The driver is also very important, without the driver's good cooperation, it' s hard to have a nice trip, so be careful of the driver you will have, not all big travel agencies always have a good guide for your tour.

　　6. Finally, if you want to make the trip with a company, but you still not 100% trust their service, you need to take good care of your payment, you may try to pay them the deposit or half of the tour money, then pay them the rest when the tour comes to an end if your are satisfied with the trip. If the tour is terrible, you can refuse to pay the rest.

There should be more solutions, I just wish you a good trip to China and Guizhou.
All the best.
Chen Hualong

Welcome to see my Guizhou tribal festival travel webiste at http: // www.alongdiscovery.com/