Testimonials 2007 - Customer Feedback

Good Morning Nihat
We are safely back home again after a wonderful Eid break in Turkey. I would like to thank you and your team of tour operators for being so helpful. The tour was perfectly planned and everything went according to the itinerary. The organization of the tour was the best we ever had anywhere in the world !!

Thank you for doing such a great job. We will definitely be recommending you to all our friends and colleagues. Many thanks for making our holiday a great one.

Regards
Anna-Marie Rautenbach
Nowember 2005

To:
Nihat Yolageldi
Magnificent Travel
Istanbul, Turkey

Dear Nihat
We reached Canada safely.I sincerely thank you for a very properly arranged our Turkey and Greece Tours. The tour content was good, the guides were knowledgeable polite and punctual. All our pick up and transfer personal were in time with proper identification. Over all we were very satisfied by the quality of hotels and service provided.

I will specially like to mention that quality of service can be judged much better when things do not go as per plans. That is the time the system is put to test. We had our share of problems due to unforeseen weather conditions leading to cancellation of our flights. Under these circumstances I was able to contact you over the phone.
You were available even at odd hours of the day and promptly made the necessary changes to our travel plans. That is what one would expect. I will have no hesitation in recommending your travel group to others. I was contacted by a radiologist from USA since my return and I gave her my honest assessment of the provided services. I would not hesitate to use your service again. You can use any part of this email for reference purposes.

I have already given my suggestion regarding coordinating the time of check out from the hotels and the next flight or bus timing to avoid undue waiting in the hotel lobby or train or bus station. Also regarding the special vegetarian meals, your instructions were very clear on each and every voucher you gave me for the local tour guides and companies; they had not made any special provision for this. Although there was plenty of vegetarian food available as side dishes the main course dish was not provided in most of the places it was just omitted.

In case you need any further details regarding our experience with your travel group please do not hesitate to contact us.

We wanted to thank you again for putting together a
terrific trip for us to Greece and Turkey. Everything
went very smoothly, and we couldn't have hoped for a
better vacation. We're glad we were able to meet you
in Istanbul -- it's always nice to meet the people
behind voices and email addresses. We will be sure to
recommend you to any friends we have who might travel
to your part of the world.

Hi Tim,
Thanks for inquiring about Magnificent Travel. I also arranged a trip for a girlfriend and I via internet, and blindly trusted all I signed up for - a little unnerving at the time, but in the end fabulous.

We traveled in Turkey June 12-27, and arranged the land tour about 6 weeks ahead of time. I wasn't finding the exact tour we wanted (a basic 2-week tour plus Mt. Nemrut but no Troy/Gallipoli or Pamukale) so asked the 4 companies I thought looked best (from web searches) if they could accommodate us. Magnificent, that is Nihat, (the guy that runs the company, who responded to all my emails, and did so timely and efficiently) was the only company to come back with what we wanted. We changed a couple of things during the month before the trip, Nihat made those changes easily, adjusting for bus rides or tours.

The tour itself was terrific, neither of us would have changed a thing. We had some long bus rides, but they were good down time and we saw the extensive countryside amd mountain passes (Turkey's big buses are like flights, serve beverages and snacks, hand freshener, with stops for toilet, although we rarely could find anyone to translate "when is the next stop?") and one domestic flight. Nihat set us up in better hotels, although I'd asked for "special class" - which I think the only one we were in was in Kusadasi which was really really wonderful (Altin Saray, I think). The hotels were mid-class american, I'd say, none had coffee pots, but all were clean, beds were good, showers varied, some had screened windows. We were met at every new town (maybe 8 times?) with a guy holding a paper with my name on it, all but one place - he was about 15 minutes late - the person was right there, and whisked us off to the new adventure (we! settled right in to just trusting what was going on, some transfer persons didn't speak much english, and we were met by vans, cars, taxis, trucks, you name it!).

The nature of our trip was that we went to the towns we wanted, and joined small local tours at that town, so almost every day was a new group of people to travel with, and each little tour company might have small changes, but was very accommodating overall. For example, our last Sunday we were to tour the Bosphorus in Istanbul and my friend noticed that the tour included a visit to the Spice Market, our travel book said it was closed on Sundays, so we changed our free day the day before so we could visit the Spice Market on Saturday. We then experienced Eminou, the area above the spice market where the locals shop - 2 mil. people crowd the narrow curvy streets - it was wild!! - and the spice market on Saturday, and on Sunday our tour instead went for a jewelry shop which we avoided. Speaking of shopping, the tour in Cappadocia included 2 or 3 shopping stops, which we were trying to avoid. Although we really liked talking with ! the tall tour guide of Yama Tours who took us on the Ilhara Valley trek - he and the trek were absolutely wonderful.

One easily-fixed problem was in Oludeniz (a hot, dusty european resort, hardly Turkey at all, but beautiful sea, although the beach is small rounded stones, not sand, so hard to walk on and a rough surf when we were there, not for kids), where our lesser-rate hotel had only one bed for us two ladies, so we demanded a second bed. I feared a rollaway, but they brought in another whole twin bed! - then we found no soap, and the a/c wouldn't work - it seemed they were used to massive european visitors, so it took a while to get response for each different problem, but in the end it was ok (it was also very noisy there, lots of loud music going late). We would skip that place next time, but the water and sea breeze was fantastic, and it provided good contrast. No other problems come to mind. Nihat suggested (upon our arrival, but I was stubborn) a better hotel than what I'd picked in Istanbul, and I'm so glad we switched to his suggestion our last two nights.

No unexpected expenses, most of our money seemed to go for water (1.5 to 3.0 lire per liter, depending on location) and toilets (.50 lire avg) and gifts and wine/beer. We were on our own for a few meals, and we found restaurants on the street that were wonderful. Ones we picked from travel books seemed to be high priced and touristy. We paid maybe 15-20 lire (~$12-$15) for the nicer meals. We met few americans everywhere, europeans were the most prevalent visitors. The more touristy the area, the more easily tips were accepted, and sometimes a tip box was available. But inland tips were refused. Also, when we paid for our land trip at the office, our credit cards had difficulty, so Nihat split the cost in half and that went thru. Seems a common problem but Nihat figured ways to get it taken care of. My friend used travelers checks which were difficult to cash...use ATMs there instead for lire or euros! .

Overall, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND Nihat and Magnificent Travel. Friendly folks, tour was better than expected, fit our every whim, all that good stuff. We didn't have luggage for the first 3 days, it found us in Cappadocia, Nihat was confident it would be there and helped with filing the proper paperwork at the airport (I'd missed my connection in NY). They took us shopping for clothes and toothbrushes our first day. Mustafa spoke english well and was good company, took us to a great area of town for shops and dinner on the street (didn't like the mall much tho).

Also, I learned on your return flight, make your only stop in the US be your home port if possible. They do the customs check at your first stop in the US, so if you change in NY like we did, you have to do customs in NY, where we had tight connections, so spent most of our 1.5 hr layover waiting for luggage and had to run to next terminal. So I now suggest people fly to maybe Frankfurt or Amsterdam, then from there to their US city.

Sorry for misspellings and incorrect town/hotels - I didn't check anything, just wrote.

And again, I would definitely go with Nihat and Magnficent travel again. I trusted them wholly and am more than satisfied. This trip was the best I've ever had. Great places, goodies for gifts, food, and friendly friendly people, whether they spoke english or not! All the gift/souvenir stuff was so beautiful and we were overwhelmed - buy all you can, everyone is so pleased with the gifts!! We spent about 18-20 lire for a cashmere scarf.

Ruan Frenette
5 July 2005

Yes we did find Maginificent Travel through the internet and we were a little scared because we did not know them, but what really made us take their tour anyway was the way the respond to our e-mails since the first one we sent asking for a tour.
We were very lucky to deal with Mustafa Ungur which is a very professional guy and very responsable. We ha a wonderful tour, everything that were said to us we were able to find out was all true. Any little problem, concern, doubts we had were solved quickly.

I am really sure you will love your trip to that wonderful country.
I heve been there four times now, and planning on going back this August and also taking some friends in September.

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