The Travel Lady - Calgary

Every experience I have had with Amanda at this agency has been stellar! She is competent, friendly and very easy to deal with! I highly recomment this agency. Have used them for European trips 4 times and they did not disappoint!

We have travelled the world with the help of this company. We were not experienced travellers so depended on the help of the travel lady 10 years ago and since then every year she helps us pick another country to go to. Not once have we had any regrets with this company

We had Miranda Miller as our Travel Consultant at The Travel Lady. We were looking for help to book a trip to Portugal from Nov 1 - 12 and wanted to see Porto, Lisbon, Sintra, and the Algarve. I will say, Miranda booked us good hotels in Porto, Lisbon and Albufeira and gave us the option to upgrade a couple - which we did in Porto and Lisbon. However, the downsides from the rest of our travel experiences overshadowed the hotel selection: 1. Excursions: We had issues with EVERY excursion (3 total - 1 per city) that was booked for us. The first, and consistent issue we ran into was that the excursions were booked through a third party - not the actual tour group. For two of the tours, we had to get the hotel reception to call the number of the third party group who would then call the actual tour company and confirm that we were planning to go on the tour the next day. This was not only a waste of our precious time while we were on vacation (we literally spent at least half an hour with reception each time we were trying to get in contact with this company) but frustrating as the third party would not answer their regular or emergency phone numbers listed on the travel voucher. On our voucher from Albufeira one of the phone numbers listed on the voucher was actually not even in service! In fact, because we couldn't get a hold of the tour coordinator in Albufeira, we waited in our hotel lobby from 8:00-9:30am on the day we were supposed to have our tour but were not picked up. Miranda said she would work with the distributor to reimburse us for the cost of the tour but it has been 3 weeks and we have not yet been refunded. The excursion from Lisbon to Sintra, which thankfully the voucher didn't specify that we had to call ahead to confirm, had incorrect details on the voucher. We were planning to walk to the pick-up point written on the voucher, when as we were getting ready to leave, a representative from Greyline Tours (the ACTUAL tour operator), called up to our room to say they were here to collect us. It was a welcome surprise to be picked up but it also meant that there was an issue with EVERY excursion the Travel Lady booked for us. When we had issues with the first excursion, we emailed Miranda and asked her to provide the actual names of the tour groups we were using so that we could look up their direct contact information to make the confirmation calls that were required. Miranda was unable to accurately provide the actual operator names. She only had the information for the third party she booked through and that wasn't answering their regular or emergency phone lines. The best tour we had was one we booked ourselves through TripAdvisor (Douro Valley Wine Tour - EFun Tours from Porto) before we left. I would recommend that TripAdvisor is the way to go in the future as you are able to communicate directly with the tour company through the TripAdvisor website. No wasted time calling phone lines that no-one answers. 2. EuroRail - Miranda booked us a pre-paid 3 trip EuroRail voucher. She warned me that we had to be careful filling it out or it would invalidate the ticket. Unfortunately, the agent in Porto had us fill in the travel information at the top of the EuroRail Pass. I messed up filling in the dates and accidentally invalidated the 2nd and 3rd days of the pass (we learned later in Lisbon that the travel agents are supposed to fill out the top portion - not the travelers). As a result of having to buy my own rail ticket from Lisbon to Albufeira and back we realized that it is CHEAPER to just buy the individual tickets then to use the pre-paid pass! It would have also been easier to individually book tickets through the App instead of being at the rail station at least an hr early. 3. Flights - We didn't make our connection home as Air Portugal would not check our bags through to Calgary because the reservation number for the two legs of our journey did not match. We had a frustrating experience with The Travel Lady. Honestly, we would have been better off just using TripAdvisor and Expedia...

We had used them before for a trip and were not happy with parts of the booking but we decided to try them again as we had written them and thought maybe it had gotten better...our mistake. We had planned to go to Borneo booking with them what a waste of time...they advertised it in October, we called and in the mean time I did my own research...the flight they were going to book for us was the exact flight I found but their price was $700 more. So we decided to try a different agency. We went to AMA and the first thing the travel agent told me is she would get back to me but it would take a few days, when she got back the reason she waited was she was waiting for the tour price to come down which saved us $450. per person and then she gave me the flight price which as the $1200.00 not the $1900.00 that the travel lady gave us. With the internet, people are able to book everything themselves and travel agencies are not really needed. After the price came down with the tour company you would think you would call inquiries back....haven't heard a word. The trip was G Adventures and it was amazing. Our flights were awesome. Will never go back to The Travel Lady!!!!!

There is nothing extraordinary about the Travel Lady. I heard good things about the company but it fell flat when I wanted to book a river cruise. After I was asked to complete a form, it seemed like I was applying for a new car. It took away the excitement and it was replaced with applying to go somewhere

Let me start off by saying that I wish I could have made this a true 0-star review, but I HAD to make it 1-star to be able to post this. This travel agency is only interested in making a buck for themselves and has zero regard for their customers. Based on The Travel Lady's presence on Global News, my family and I (6 people total) decided to use Lesley and her company to book our all-inclusive vacation to Mexico. You would think this should be a pretty straight forward ask for a travel agency, but not for The Travel Lady... No, instead after a phone call with them to let them know the few basic needs of our trip (i.e., Kid friendy ammenities, clean hotel, Puerto Vallarta) and booking us in at 10:15am tomorrow to put pen-to-paper on a trip, Lesley (Company owner) decides to send me an email saying that she is concerned that we are going to use her work of narrowing down a short-list of hotels for us to just turnaround and book online. Another way said.. We don't expect our customers to do their homework on a vacation that is going to cost $10,000+.. Then she proceeded to tell us to take our business elsewhere. It's been a while since I've received such poor customer service that I had to make sure the internet was aware of this place and avoids at all cost! She is just looking for people who want to blindly give them money without questioning anything, very bizarre and also surprising that she still has her business if this is how she treats her prospective customers. For reference, I have attached a snapshot of her response to me (Miranda is one of her representatives that I was dealing with).

We booked a trip to Africa and just returned. The Travel Lady took care of every detail for us. I told Amanda, our agent, the types of things we would be interested in and our budget. She put together an amazing package and everyone said it far exceeded their expectations. If you have a special trip you want to plan and don't know where to start I highly recommend The Travel Lady.

I was so pleased to call "The Travel Lady" in order to try to get some information with respect to layovers at YYC during this pandemic. I was (pleasantly) shocked to have the phone answered immediately by none other than Leslie herself! I must admit to a wee bit of a fan-girl moment. Professional, heart-felt advice was provided and I just cannot say enough positive things about my experience. 100% I will be contacting The Travel Lady for my next journey! Thank you so much for your caring and kind help.