C grade service with a minus

Previously, I never wrote reviews about travel agencies, because I traveled around Europe only with PACgroup, and there were no overlaps or complaints about them ... And then on NG I bought a tour with my husband from PAC (Three Kingdoms program), but the host For some reason, the side turned out to be some kind of Novovira, which we had never heard of before ... Our adventures began immediately upon arrival at the hotel: the guide Natasha, who met us, quickly and very professionally sold out the remaining places for an excursion to the Sagrada Familia, announced that the start of the tour in forty-five minutes, waved her hand in an unknown direction, where the taxi stand was allegedly located, and drove off somewhere. The tourists who signed up for the tour (including my husband and I) threw things into the room and ran to the taxi rank indicated by Natasha ... which, of course, was not there. Around - not a soul, because. The hotel is on the outskirts of Barcelona.

We began to rush around the area in search of locals and, in general, at least some signs of life, a company of local youth who happened to meet by chance explained that it was still a couple of kilometers to go to the taxi stand. After running around and around for an indefinite amount of time, we nevertheless caught a taxi accidentally passing through the empty streets, four of us crowded there and drove to the Sagrada Familia ... We arrive ON TIME (!) at the indicated meeting point, and there ... two tourists, who stood there 15 minutes before the start of the group gathering, in front of the company's closed office! Nobody came for them, there was no gathering of the group. And there were 6 of us. No ghosts of the tour group with the Novovira sign were found around the cathedral. Called the office...

I’ll say right away that it’s very difficult to get through there, they mostly don’t answer, finally some Alexander answered us, who turned out to be completely unaware that we weren’t taken on an excursion, and advised us to come for the money that we paid, “tomorrow” (in Sunday - when the company does not work). Then we got through to a certain Vladimir, who generally said in plain text that "tomorrow" there would be no one in the office, and the money would not be given to us, because there was a meeting of the group, and we were allegedly late. And, let me remind you, two tourists stood at the gathering place for fifteen minutes and did not see any group. In general, I will not describe how long we cursed, threatened and demanded a refund ... in the end, we were returned only half the cost, because, supposedly, they took tickets for us! Although, we still didn’t understand, why take tickets for those who were not taken on a tour?!...

We then assumed that the group's meeting was in some other place, which we were not warned about (perhaps even Natasha, who sold us a voucher, was not aware that the meeting was postponed). I don't want to find out now who is right and who is wrong... but the first impression of Novovira's employees turned out to be extremely negative. They brought me to a strange city, they didn’t explain anything, they gave me only 45 minutes to figure it out in an unfamiliar place and somehow get to the center. Then we realized that the guides, in general, do not care about tourists, and we should not expect help from them.

Then things got better: we decided to score on the loss of 45 euros and not spoil our vacation. The next guides were more or less, although we had met much better before. We swept through the cities simply "at a gallop through Europe", there was not enough free time for anything at all.

On the last day, an unpleasant surprise happened again: there was supposed to be an excursion to the Dali Museum, the city of Girona and some wine cellar, so Irina came running in the morning and said that the excursion was postponed to the evening. Well, okay, we think so. In the middle of the day, a more or less adequate guide, Vyacheslav, took us to the Dali Museum, and then said that, they say, due to the fact that the tour started late, we won’t have time to go to Gerona and the cellar at the same time, we need to choose one thing. And he began very persistently to invite everyone to this very cellar (you can guess why). It's a shame that many typical Russo tourists actively supported him (they were tempted by free wine tasting). Thus, we lost a pre-paid excursion to the medieval city of Girona (which is much more interesting to me than some wines and cheeses there). Of course, the money for it was not returned.

In general, due to the lack of organization of the company, the intellectual tour was replaced with a consumer one, which is a shame.

We won't go anywhere else with Novovira. Prior to PAC, Novovir has yet to grow and grow.

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