Colombia Review, 2-Week Luxury Family Trip, Bogota, Tierra Bomba Island, Villa de Leyva, Barichara, Medellin, Local Markets

Skip Bogota or spend less time there and use a guide other than the one we were provided. Negatives of Bogota: Montserrat was crowded and touristy; the literary, neighborhood, art and antique tour weren't very interesting (the antiques weren't Colombian). We were lucky and grateful to find an unscheduled event: a one-week indigenous craft show. The Bogota flower and fruit market tour were interesting. Niko was very intelligent and may appeal to the cerebral visitor, but I would have preferred re-visiting the Indigenous craft show than his tour of the Gold Museum.  I suggested this to Niko but was not taken up on it. In hind site, with so many providers attending to us in Bogota, it would have been nice if we split our three-person touring group up the second day. Then I could have returned to the craft show, my husband could visit the gold museum, and our daughter could have joined either of us. 

Travel Company Comments

Dear Shelley,

It was such a pleasure and an honor to have you and your beautiful family travel with us here in Colombia. I know that everyone on our team really enjoyed getting to know you, your husband, and your daughter. We are thrilled that the trip was memorable that you enjoyed your time with us. 

Equally, I would like to thank you for your candid notes on what was not up to standard on the trip. I promise you that we are disappointed with the performance of our allies in Bogotá, and although they meant well we have already discussed both within our team as well as with the subcontractor the key issues: (1) that they sent too many people with you during your time in Bogotá; (2) and that they were non-responsive to your request to revisit the crafts fair. 

I promise that a mistake like that will not happen again in the future, as we only tolerate 5-star performance and for us it is unacceptable that you did not receive that level of quality during this stretch of your trip. We take our traveler's comments to heart and we listen very clearly. We are working to train everyone who works with us on active listening to make sure that they are as good as our team here in Medellín at reading clients' wishes and actively adapting to make the trip even better. This is exactly the type of feedback that is helpful for this training and we want to say thank you again for sharing.

As I said, the most important part to us is that you had a great trip. Thank you again for traveling with us and recommending us, it genuinely means a lot.