ChinaTour.com Reviews 371

The hotels, the tours, the arrangements...they were all excellent!

Agent was rude. There seemed to be a problem with language, poor English, not understanding what I was trying to say. They booked my flight before asking if I was adding the extension and then charged me extra to add the extension. Not a good experience.

Of course I was skeptical! Too good to be true. However, everything from the agents who booked our trip, the flights, the guides that met us when we landed, showed us Beijing and Shanghai, hotels that were Hilton diamond quality, memorable, educational, easy/fun tours, everything was terrific. Took care over us the entire trip. Not everything was perfect or top notch, but mostly and definitely not one negative thing to say. Have every confidence in booking with these folks! We stayed an extra week after the tour and visited several World Heritage parks not on the tour. China is SAFE, friendly, helpful and with a smart phone, you can translate anything. So, glad we stayed extra time on our own.

Let me start off by saying that we were expecting this trip to be an email scam. The package price was super reasonable. In fact, there is no way one could travel to China, stay at nice hotels, eat, and travel to the areas we did without paying at least twice the price. Heck, we couldn't have even gotten flights for that cheap. So, the trip was a real bargain.

When we received our Visas in the mail the week prior to our flight, we figured the trip was really going to happen.

Before I get into details about the tours, let me start with the flight. Our flight, which was scheduled to be 16 hours in the air, turned into a 27 hour trip because Russia was not letting US flights over their airspace. The additional time meant an additional stop, refueling, and a fresh crew, hence the extended travel time.

Although it was no fault of the tour company, we arrived just hours before the first day of tours. We landed in the wee hours of the morning and was relieved to find our driver waiting for us when we got off the plane. That was a great way of starting our trip and confirmation that having a tour package was not all bad.

We were hesitant to go on the trip at first because none of us had ever taken a packaged tour before. I was envisioning a large busload of people, which sounds like a living hell to me. Our group, thankfully, was just 12 people, which was a relief, and we got along real well with everyone in our group. We even took a side trip with several of them one evening, which was a personal highlight.

Our first guide was Annie. Although Annie was personable, she was very difficult to understand. She didn't have the command over the English language that we had hoped, and it appeared she was new at the job and wasn't quite ready to lead. In addition, the sound system in the bus had an echo effect that compounded the problem. Every conversation required strained attention.

We were with Annie for the first two days of our trip, in Beijing, where we went to The Great Wall, which was fantastic! We wasted valuable time at the Jade Museum, one of several stops that make the trip so inexpensive. Another such stop was at a Traditional Chinese Medicine Center, where we were quickly disappointed to find that this was just another opportunity to relieve the tourists of their money. It's a shame since it could have been so much more. We expected to hear about a variety of interesting topics but instead witnessed the hard sell of herbs to improve your health.

Also on the agenda was the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, which were just as crazy-overrun with tourists as Tiananmen Square, to the point of being overwhelming. We felt that our tour guide really let us down with limited information and context on those stops. I don't think our 15-year-old got a grasp of the significance from any of the tours on the first two days.

We also visited a pearl factory, which provided some good information but also lasted a bit too long. Beside the lunches that were provided at the pearl factory and the jade museum, the food was uniformly delicious.

When we flew to Shanghai, we had our second tour guide, John. He was fantastic! If we had had him for the entire trip, we would have rated this trip 5 stars. We could ask him anything about China and he was open to discuss anything we asked. Our group of 12 asked him all kinds of questions, and it was educational to understand world views from the China point of view. John led us for the rest of the trip, and for that we are thankful.

We walked on our own on the streets of Shanghai, which is like the US version of Wall Street. We found Shanghai much more interesting than Beijing. Then we traveled to Suzhou, and later Hanghou. The Hangzhou causeway boat ride was one of the highlights of the trip. We could have toured the market there for several more hours.

The silk spinning factory was interesting, though we would have liked to spend more time looking at the displays rather than shopping. We didn't care for any of the sales stops, but the bamboo clothing stop was the most interesting.

Another highlight of the trip was the national park at Huangshan, which was a $149/person addition to the trip. It was worth it! What a beautiful park, even in the wind and rain. Another trip highlight.

The old streets in Huangshan City were less interesting than the other, being a bit too touristy for our tastes.

Overall the trip was a complete success. The success of your trip will depend a lot on your tour guide. By the end I really appreciated the benefits of being on a guided tour. We didn't need to worry about anything--no car rental, no trying to read maps, no tolls, no language barrier. A guided tour was the way to go, so I am happy we went. I think you will, too.

The China trip was very good. The tour guides in Beijing and X’ian were good. Not so much the one in Shanghai. Shanghai was my favorite city though and the hotel was magnificent. I had an $80 charge for a $7.50 cup of soup and wasn’t able to get credit for it though. It is difficult to contact the hotel from the US.

Excellent value for the money. Hotel accommodations were all better that we expected. Buffet breakfast was excellent at all of the hotels. We visited the local businesses as part of the tour. They were informative, however we spent a lot of time there - waiting for the last person in the group to decide whether or not to buy something. We must have been at silk factory for 2-3 hours. We did many of the extras that were offered (Golden Dynasty, Shanghai Acrobats, rickshaw ride and a couple others. All were well worth the additional price. We had two different tour guides who were very good. One gave us all a piece of paper with his cell number on it so we could call him if we got lost. Both spoke excellent English. We might even do this tour again some time in the future. Definitely recommend it for someone who wants to see China.

I’ve traveled to many countries, your tour guides are one of the best. The information of lifestyles, history, and friendliness for a traveler I found exceptional.
Downsides for me I felt that the lunch/dinner meals where ever we ate the menu was the same it became triedsome. Eating China’s breakfast cuisene was a wonderful experience.
I certainly felt that favors of this magnificent place called China through my eyes.
Perhaps I could visit another part of this wonderous country some day.

I will not hesitate in recommending your group tour to any one. However, you must disclose the cost in detail. My group of twenty people were confused when we were told that our 100 dollars per person tips to tour guide and driver were collected to share with you (management).

highly recommend. best tour I've had in a long time and it wasn't even on my list. Very happy that tour, breakfast, accommodation and flights were all included.

the reservation process was extremely simple and easy to follow

I enjoyed the tour very much!
The only thing was the tour guide didn't have time to take me to the optional tour that I reserved.

This trip was amazing! The guides were very knowledgeable and informative and the sites seen were historical and beautiful. We had scheduled excursions each day along with optional add ons which were not included in the price but we did all of them and are very happy we did. We had freedom to explore on our own with suggestions from hotel personnel and our guide. We walked or used taxi’s to get around easily. The hotels were exceptional with Impressive breakfast buffets. We went to a bamboo, tea, silk and jade factory where there was an opportunity to purchase. The only place I felt pressure to buy was at the jade factory, but I’m very happy I did, I love my bracelet and it’s my favorite souvenir from China. I highly recommend this tour.

I cannot express enough satisfaction with the company and the tour that we took thru Intertrips/Chinatour.
cost-5 start
itinerary -5 star
hotels -5 star
meals_traditional Chinese food,acceptable
overall everything is great,you cannot the price for the quality of this tour.Everything was great.

Everything was great except trip to silk factory it was very interesting but too long to much time and a planed rip off and the other was trip to jade palace again too much time for a sort vacation and also a planned rip off affair.

Amazing Tour! I have no complaints what so ever, very happy with my China Tour.

The China part of the tour was very well organized and the hotels were great, tour guide Henry very organized and knowledgeable, we would travel with them again to China. The Thailand part of the trip was not so good. Hotel not in a great area, although the staff were very good. Some of our transfers were well organized, others not so much.

The value was incredible! could never have done as much at the same cost. The mandatory factory visits were the only draw backs but thats how they keep the cost so little.

Great experience, wonderful places, really nice people!!!

Our whole vacation was just as advertised, no complaints.

Definitely am glad that we took this 9 day trip to China in March 2018! For just under $1,000/person we received so much bang for our buck...visa, round trip flights from Houston to Beijing and Beijing to Shanghai, wonderful hotel accommodations including full delicious breakfasts each morning, sight seeing tours with bus transfers and guide, and more! I've heard the government subsidizes the trip costs to get visitors over there, and it worked as we went and had a great time spending money where we wanted on optional tours (all that we did were excellent!) as well as nice souvenirs. We had a fantastic time in the cities we visited (Beijing, Shanghai, Hanzhou and Suzhou), and we can't wait to take advantage of another one of their trips!