Very good and well organized but too expensive for what it was

Didn’t get the opportunity to book travel the consultant said, ‘don’t travel to Egypt during Ramadan”. She stated that the “guides will be more sensitive because of fasting” and it more of “family time and they are not as welcoming to foreigners” (yes, that word was used?!). Phone consult last 4 minutes and that was the end of our experience with Black Tomato. The whole interaction was quite sad that the idea of exposing a ‘foreigner’ to something unique and different should be avoided.

Found them to be very difficult to communicate with – unresponsive, scattered. Not what I expected from what is sold as a luxury agency.

Thanks you +6615665889 Nuttawat Sriart

I am very disappointed in my experience with Black Tomato. I had done all of my research and wanted to set up a call with them to plan my honeymoon. It took them two weeks to respond to me via email, and then they claimed their responses went to my junk mail (which they didn’t). Then, when a travel agent, Mikaella, finally got back to me, they scheduled a call with me for that afternoon and then never showed up to the call. If I’m going to spend that much on a luxury vacation, I need someone who is responsive.

My wife and I booked a trip to South America (Peru / Chile) with Black Tomato from December 20th 2021 – January 9th 2022. Unfortunately my wife came down with COVID for the Chile part of our trip which we are not blaming on Black Tomato – that was out of their control. What we are reviewing below is the quality of the Peru trip, value of the trip, quality of customer service, and how they handled our situation on the ground. We booked our trip with Tom, Grace and Oliver was communicating with us at the end. We have not heard from Tom since we have made these comments to the Black Tomato team. I want to make this clear – this would have been a 3 star if not for the way the team has handled our issues after finishing our trip. The team is not taking accountability and blaming the customer (my wife and I). Definitely not representative of a luxury service. However, the main issues with this agency is the fact that they organize cookie cutter trips at an insane markup without clarifying, asking or understanding what their customer wants. Main overarching issues: – Lack of understanding what we really wanted with our trip – No transparency with costs. Not only do they not provide an itemised invoice for your trip, they will not check on where you are willing to spend your money. The team did not double check what type of rooms we would want, but just charged us blindly for the most expensive rooms. – Just lack of a luxury experience when we were on the ground vs what we paid for. Specific examples: – We were super clear that we didn’t want guides – yet we got a guide everywhere we went. This completely changed the tone of our trip. Yes it’s nice to not have to think about transport but the guides don’t need to be there with us 24/7. For example – our guide sat with us at lunch, would not stop talking on our romantic hikes. We have no issue with the guide, what we were angry about was that we communicated that we were independent travellers to the Black Tomato team and they STILL put us with one without double checking which changed the entire feel of our trip. Just because it worked for other clients, doesn’t mean it will for us. They just did not listen. – A breakdown of all the prices is a non-negotiable in this day in age. We trusted Black Tomato to show us a general breakdown of hotels vs activities and we ended up getting a trip we just didn’t want because of possible extra charges (more expensive rooms, paying for the guides etc). We never asked for the fanciest rooms and they ended up booking rooms that were $3,000 more expensive than the rooms we could have gotten. – Stress of having to tip the guides —> Because there was a guide on the ground with us, we had to stress about tipping them. We are always super generous but the Black Tomato team should have communicated this to us before our trip OR included petty cash in our overall price. Again lack of communication before the trip. – We communicated we do not like fancy restaurants with tiny courses at the very beginning and without asking they booked us the most fancy restaurants in Lima (probably because their other clients ask for this). Again – just because it worked for others, doesn’t mean it will for us. If we didn’t double check our restaurants we would have been stuck with those reservations.The team clearly did not listen to us and if we didn’t check with them beforehand, we would’ve had these fancy restaurants books. Again, example of just not knowing their client. – Wait time for travel —> Machu Pichu to Cusco was such an unorganized day. Too many transport transitions and too much waiting. If this is the only way then at least brief us beforehand. Also, if this is such a luxurious trip – then they should have made it super easy for us to get from point A to point B. – We made it clear we don’t like touristy stuff. Why is our one day in Cusco supposed to be with a guide viewing cathedral – we ended up cancelling the guide in Cusco the day of which stressed us out. – The team planned to have us n quarantine for New Year’s Eve (when we planned to be in Santiago)? There was no thought that went into this planning. Although we didn’t make it to Chile – who would think this was a good idea? Again DO NOT TRUST THEM to give you the best itinerary – if you use them YOU should be making EVERY decision and just tell them what to do but then again, what is the point of a luxury travel agency if you have to do that? – Without giving us good options on the ground once we had COVID – we ended up getting stuck in Peru paying for a US$400 / night quarantine room. They did not give us good options or help us as we were navigating the COVID situation in Lima. We ended up figuring this out on our own after we got quarantined during New Years. Again, us getting COVID was not the issue – it was the way they handled it. If we did not use Black Tomato we would have had a better experience.

Recently my family took a trip to Toronto and Niagara with black tomato, it was overall a very average experience – something an individual can easily book him/herself with 1/3 the cost. – Agent missed the fact St Lawrence market doesn’t open the day they arranged us to go (not acceptable) – The drive time was miss calculated so we missed the cruise in Toronto after driving back from Niagara on the lake back to Toronto – Details are missed, never got the travel packet agent said will be in our hotel room after check in; we requested fresh fruits for my parents but were not arranged – We took the trip to celebrate my dad recover from cancer and surprisingly there was zero extra from the agent not even a congratulations in the hotel room – The day we arrived there was a big Caribbean festival in the city but was never mentioned to us so we missed it – Costs are on par with top operators but quality isn’t so not worth your money in general. There are better value service out there Oh boy how disappointed we are – there is little attention to details

They put us in a hotel with 10% occupancy. It was on an island and we had to pay for the very expensive, very average meals. Of course, I got salmonella poisoning. Also, the hotel was on an island with just ok snorkeling and the staff was uninterested in understanding the tides and the best places to head. There was not much else to do/see on the island. Other travelers went to a similar island where to observe sea turtle hatchlings. This was not suggested to us. Also, BT does not help confirm you have the proper visas (my previous agent actually got the visas for you!) and does not notify travelers about internal flight baggage restrictions. If we had used their tour operators pick-up time, we would have missed our flight home. I shouldn’t have to double check those kind of details. I said I didn’t want to write review, but they kept asking for it, so here it is. Mass market experience in luxury packaging.

Disappointed in Black Tomato. Reasons why we will NEVER use Black Tomato again. 1- Black Tomato is based in London, although their website includes a New York address. Our primary agent was Tom and originally Josh, both of whom no longer work for Black Tomato. Although we were assured that booking with BT from the US would not impact the price of the trip – they will only accept payment in British pound – hence the price of our trip was greatly impacted by the fluctuation of the British pound due to the Briexit. Given the total price of our trip- we ended up spending nearly $2k more than originally quoted and planned due to the exchange rates which are set by the credit card banks and usually higher than the quotes on the internet. If Black Tomato wants to work with customers in the United States they will have to figure out a way to bill in USD. The price of our trip (paid to the Tanzanian venues and guides) did not change – only the money we had to pay Black Tomato. If you are in the US, do not book with Black Tomato! 2- we were booked in a “tented camp” while the same venue had a “magnificent lodge” option with spectacular rooms, a pool, gym, & spa. The Tented camps were wonderful -for tented camps – but way more rustic than we had expected – and not well suited to our family’s preference. Black Tomato did not ever discuss the two disparate options and in fact, although they booked the Tented camp, they included a picture and detailed description of the room for the Lodge in our itinerary. They also included a free massage for each member of our family – however- this is an amenity only offered to Lodge guests and was not available to guests of the tented camp. It seemed evident to us, based on our discussions with Tom and the photo and description in our itinerary that they had intended to book us in the lodge – but somehow booked the incorrect venue. In fact, We had no idea that there were two disparate venues as both a google search and TripAdvisor only refer to the Lodge. We only learned we were in a tented camp upon arrival, and were understandably greatly disappointed from being in the luxury lodge that we had expected. We emailed Black Tomato immediately, but both our agents were traveling. Eventually Oliver responded that they would look into it but that the original booking was “correct”. Thankfully the hotel manager was able to move us to the lodge rooms on our last night but we feel Black Tomato gravely missed the mark on this leg of our trip as it caused tremendous stress and disappointment for me and my family. 3- Black Tomato worked with Nomad Tanzania for all onsite arrangements. Nomad essentially did everything in terms of the local transfers, guides, etc. When we return to Tanzania, we recommend directly booking with Nomad – they are on the ground in Tanzania – and everyone from Nomad who we met and worked with were highly professional and experienced. Nomad made all the arrangements regarding transportation and it did not seem as if Black Tomato even had a role in the trip. 4- Most distressing relates to an issue of safety. When it comes to safety, we felt Black Tomato was our best bet for guidance. We were wrong!!! On the last day of the trip we received an email from the US embassy regarding rumors of an imminent terror threat in Dar Es Salaam. We emailed our Black Tomato representatives – Tessa & Oliver – for advice and guidance regarding our travel – but – They NEVER Responded! We’ve safely landed back in the US, but still have not heard back from BT. We felt that once our trip was fully paid the level of service and oversight was non existent . For a company that boasts high luxury travel – Black Tomato offered not a single welcome amenity on arrival or at any venue, and did not really seem to make the effort to understand our family and provide what we were looking for throughout our travels in Tanzania. Very disappointed in Black Tomato!

My fiance and I were looking to book a luxury honeymoon anywhere around the world with virtually an unlimited budget and had never used a travel agency before. We looked at several agencies and vetted all of them. Unfortunately Black Tomato was the only one that had poor communication. We chatted with Laura, a customer representative from the UK which went fine, but after 2-3 email exchanges she just stopped responding too us. “Luxury” doesn’t mean you charge people a lot of money to plan their trips. It also means you have exceptional communication skills. It’s unfortunate for Black Tomato b/c we were looking for a travel agency to not only book our honeymoon but also all of our future international vacations assuming the honeymoon experience went well. Luckily, we found a great company called Bliss Honeymoons which doesn’t advertise themselves as “luxury” but has certainly provided a truly luxury experience in planning.