18 May 2024
Our travel agent used Travelive for our 40th anniversary trip to Italy.
Our travel agent used Travelive for our 40th anniversary trip to Italy. Overall, our trip was wonderful. Most guides and drivers were helpful, knowledgeable and accomodating. We saw wonderful sites and enjoyed fantastic food.
We did have a glitch with our train travel which was our fault and it was wonderful to make a phone call to Travelive and have someone reschedule our driver. But we also had a few disappointments. We selected a restaurant for the evening of our anniversary and asked Trvaelive to make the reservation. When we got our final itinerary, the dinner was not on it. We contacted our travel agent AND travelive and they sent us an updated itinerary. Problem was....they only reprinted the itinerary and added the reservation. They did not contact the restaurant. So we arrived and had to wait for the restaurant to accomodate us. Very disappointing. The restaurant showed us the travel company listings and we were not on it. Definitely Travelive dropped the ball.
We also stayed in a "4 star hotel" called Hotel La Collegiata. It was a beautifully landscaped converted convent. However, the interior was dark and musty, no tissues in the bathroom. Asked housekeeping for some, told they don't stock them. The restaurant on property was closed so we had a limited choice on a "bar" menu. We were not allowed to eat in the dining room because the restaurant was closed. We ate at a coffee table holding our dishes. Pool/hot tub hours are 9:00am-7:00pm. Asked to use hot tub at 6:40pm and told it was closed (weird to have to ask). When we tried to use it the next day it was dirty, floating band aid. Breakfast starts at 8:00am. No coffee available before that. Makes it difficult for 8:30 tours or early departures. The "gym" is an underground room with no windows. Dirty broken equipment. This hotel was 2-3 hours in the opposite direction of our tour sites. We spent extra time in the vehicle to and from destinations because of the hotel choice. It would make sense to select a hotel between destinations. We question why this hotel was selected.
Driver did not show up for one of our transports. Had to call and wait. This was also an omission on our final itinerary that we pointed out. We got a corrected itinerary, they charged us an additional $150 but the ride was not scheduled.
All in all, we enjoyed our special anniversary trip and we were determined not to let the errors tarnish the trip. But we must be honest with our review of Travelive. It is very expensive, we booked private tours and private drivers so we expected top notch plans professionally executed. We did not expect to be sitting on a dock waiting for a driver, or waiting for a restaurant to seat us when a reservation was supposed to be made.