Emperor Tours Ltd - Cranbrook

Kevin Lopez

We booked a holiday to China just before the pandemic, after long delays, we finally went in May / Jun this year. We were not disappointed. Every aspect of the tour was taken care of with great attention to details. The hotels and restaurants were all very nice. We had different guides, all spoke good English. There were so many highlights and great memories, Great Wall, Terracotta Solders, Li River, … Great company, will definitely use again.

Brandon

We thoroughly enjoyed our holiday in Japan with Emperor Tours. The tour was very well organised. Hotels were centrally located and good quality, we particularly enjoyed staying in the traditional ryokan. Guides were informative, polite and helpful. We would have no hesitation to recommend Emperor Tours to anyone who's considering travelling to Japan!

Donald Robertson

We have used Emperor tours for holidays to China and Japan and found them very informative, professional and friendly. They helped to make both tours personal to us, including all the places we wanted to visit along with other suggestions. The guides were all helpful, informative and very friendly. We have recommended this company to many friends and wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.

William Nolan

My wife and I have recently returned from a wonderful holiday (Ultimate Japan 7-23 May) and I was saddened to read the negative comments regarding this trip. We are seasoned travellers, are respectful of people from all walks of life, don’t concern ourselves with trivia and appreciate that, on occasion, things don’t always go to plan. It is fair to say that there were some hiccups during our trip, all of which were resolved immediately, and we thought, to everyone’s satisfaction. In short, we enjoyed one of the best holidays of our lives, thanks to an amazing itinerary, and indeed a fascinating country and its people. On returning home, we gave our brilliant contact at Emperor Tours, Ling Todd, some constructive feedback about some minor improvements that we felt could be made for future travellers. Ling advised she will ensure that these will be put in place to further enhance the experience. I would have no hesitation in recommending Emperor Tours.

Simon Thomas

Whilst we had an amazing experience visiting Japan for the first time after many years of wanting to, there were some disappointing shortcomings with the tour organisation itself.

Things started badly when we landed at Tokyo airport and were unable to locate the tour company representative who should have been there to greet us and take us to our hotel - we had been in transit for a great many hours and were not prepared to have to deal with such an issue immediately upon our arrival. We ended up having to take a taxi from the airport to our hotel at a cost of around £35, which wasn’t great and whilst we got the money refunded by the tour company, there was no real satisfactory explanation as to how such an important basic element of their service had fallen down so badly.

There was an immediate subsequent issue with the assigned tour guide (David) who turned up on day 2 to show us around Tokyo. Turns out he was Chinese (not Japanese) and didn’t seem to have very much grasp of Japanese (based on his heavy reliance of a translation app on his phone when interacting with the locals).

He took us on the Tokyo underground to get us to where we needed to get to, which took a few wrong turns due to the guide’s lack of familiarity with the Metro and how to navigate it. He subsequently took us to a very dubious ‘Hot Pot’ Chinese restaurant for a late lunch - the place was empty and located in a business district - the meal was ok but definitely overpriced and we suspected some kind of ploy in taking us there.

There were other issues which I won’t detail but as I said we had a great experience in spite of the tour company’s shortcomings. We based our choice of selecting Emperor Tours largely on others’ positive reviews, so felt it important to highlight the issues we had for others seeking honest feedback.

The logistics and overall quality of guides were below our expectations and in spite of having communicated the catalogue of issues we experienced to Ling Todd as they occurred (and there were quite a few), whilst these were addressed, there was no real recognition of the detrimental impact to our enjoyment of the tour and no seeming understanding of the fundamental failings of her company.

We would wholeheartedly recommended Japan as a destination but would hesitate to recommend ET as the company to book through.

D. Dharsi

Ultimate Japan (17 Days) Tour Review:
Japan is a fantastic country and I highly recommend it as a destination. However I cannot recommend Emperor Tours. The tour came across as poorly organised and unprofessional. There were many things throughout the tour that we had to deal with which took away enjoyment from the tour.

After arriving at Tokyo airport from a tiring 13.5 hour direct flight, there was supposed to be someone at the arrivals lounge to greet us and take us to the hotel. We were told they would have either an emperor tours sign or our names on a board. After waiting and looking around the airport, and reading every sign the various drivers were holding up for 1 hour and 20 minutes, no such person materialised, and we had not been given a local contact number for the driver. As it was morning in Tokyo and the middle of the night in the UK, we also could not contact ET for assistance. We had no choice to take a taxi to our hotel, where we also could not check in immediately and had to wait several hours. This was certainly not the best way to start the tour.

The day guide for Tokyo, ‘David’, was absolutely appalling. He was Chinese and could not speak Japanese and had poor English skills. He was unable to answer basic questions about Tokyo or Japan, and it was clear that not only was he not a professional tour guide, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He struggled to communicate with the Japanese ticket officers in the metro, got us lost on the metro, shouted hysterically at the elevator operators in the Tokyo tower, and was unable to provide any meaningful information about any of the places we went to see. He had made preparations in advance to take us to lunch a Chinese restaurant in a strange location, the restaurant was empty and the cost of the meal was extortionate for Japan – it was clear to us that he must have been taking commission and that this was a scam! Overall, we were really disappointed and could not understand how and why this man – who clearly was not a real tour guide – had been selected to give us a tour of a city he knew nothing about.

For the rest of the week we had another tour guide, a Chinese student studying in Japan, whilst he did speak Japanese, his command and understanding of English was poor. He was also not a professional or experienced tour guide and was doing this as a part-time summer job. The places we were taken to, he was also going to for the first time, and thus did not really have much to say about them and looked quite bewildered and confused. After another member of the group raised her concerns to ET, he was replaced with a more competent Japanese guide, Daitaro, – who spoke brilliant English and was considerably more helpful. If professional and experienced guides had been used from the beginning of the tour throughout the tour, it would have made it much more enjoyable for us.

Quite a few times, our hotel bookings had been made incorrectly and we were booked without breakfast (which should have been included) – so we had to constantly flag this up to Ling to sort out, and we were also being charged with additional taxes at some of the hotels which we later found out should have been paid by ET and not us – luckily Daitaro helped us sort this out.
Our trip to Koyasan from Kyoto had been poorly planned, it had been arranged for us to take 5 different trains to get there which took over 5 hours and even Daitaro could not understand why it had been arranged like this. A coach ride directly there would have only taken 2.5 hours, or what we could have done is taken a coach ride to a more local station and then just one or two trains from there to Koyasan. As most of the group was quite elderly this was a very strenuous and tiring journey for them.

Overall, I would highly recommend a tour to Japan, but if you are looking for a professional and well organised tour, with a dedicated and competent tour guide to assist and guide you throughout the journey, then I would advise you to book with another travel company and not Emperor Tours.

Linda Hanson

We’ve just returned from the ‘Ultimate Japan’ Tour (7-23 May) arranged by Emporer Tours. Japan is an amazing country and its people are wonderfully kind, friendly and respectful! This tour is a ‘full-on’ mostly-guided itinerary (with some free time along the way). It takes in so many fantastic places*, travelling by mini-bus, shinkansen (bullet train), local trains and buses and there were a number of fabulous walks too! *Tokyo-Mount Fuji-Hakone-Nagano-Yudanaka-Matsumoto-Takayama-Kanawaza-Kyoto-Nara-Mount Koya-Hiroshima-Osaka. (Contact them for full details now!)

The hotels were, without exception, excellent and all were centrally located, close to restaurants, shops and other local amenities. A highlight was an overnight stay in temple lodgings at Mount Koya – a mountain resort reached by scenic railway and funicular tram. From the moment we enquired about the tour, Ling Todd, our contact, was so very helpful; she came back to us immediately with answers to any questions we had, and was a huge support, when there were queries from our group when we were on tour. We would highly recommend Emperor Tours and, no doubt, we will be travelling with them again in the future! Finally, a big thank you to you, Ling!

Nicky & Vic Bettridge

Top Marks Emperor Tours
Booked a tour of Japan which we unfortunately had to cancel due to a change in Japans regulations for tourists. Ling had put in a tremendous amount of work coordinating flights and a stopover in Singapore for ourselves and our friends in Western Australia. Despite cancelling the tour she rearranged all our flights and accommodation in Singapore to allow us to still meet with our friends and travel on to Australia and also provided a prompt refund.
I was particularly impressed with how quickly Ling responded to our endless questions and requests, even emailing me back on the weekend.
Thank you so much Ling, hopefully we will be able to rearrange our trip to Japan in the future.