Croatia Review: Dubrovnik Food & Locals Tour, Hvar, Split Walking Tour, Food & Wine

My wife and I should have done a better job reviewing and discussing what we wanted with our travel agent.  We traveled a week before on our own in Italy and Austria and used this tour company for the Croatia portion of our trip.  We did some excusions that in hind site we would have changed.  We love food and wine but our trip was over loaded with these type of events.  We stayed in Split for only two nights and one full day at a five star hotel.  Our only full day we had we spent on a 13 hour bus ride to Plitvice Lakes National Park. The national park was pretty and also packed with tourists.  We should have done a boat and snorkel trip somewhere close and laid by the pool the rest of the day.  Way too far and over crowded.
We should have done small group walking tours of Split and Dubrovnik instead of private.  It was very busy with guided tour in english all around us.  We could have saved some money.
The private pick up and drop off at Hvar was unnecessary.  The resort was waiting with vans when we got off the ferry for our luggage.  We had to wait for the other hotel guests to load luggage into the vans and then we left in the private pick up to the hotel which was 5 minutes away.  Could have saved hundreds of dollars both ways by eliminating that.

TRAVEL COMPANY COMMENTS:

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are really pleased to hear that you enjoyed our services overall and that you would recommend our company to your friends and family! At the same time we regret that in hindsight you would have done some things differently. We do believe you were well prepared for the trip so there should have been no surprises. As you know our local representative went over the itinerary with you prior to your arrival and presented all the details of the trips including the duration of the Plitvice day trip. Plitvice is often a highlight of many of guests trip's to Croatia so I was surprised by your feedback but I do understand it can be crowded since you were in there during the peak season.

Regarding the walking tours, I can assure you that we have very competitive rates for the private guides so joining a group would not have made much of a difference price wise. We do believe the small difference in price is well worth the value you get out of the experience so we always encourage guests to go the private route.

As for the port transfer in Hvar, please note that the transfer we arranged is definitely the most convenient way to get to the hotel. The Hvar port is located in the pedestrian zone so the hotel vehicle is only allowed access to pick up client luggage and no vehicle is allowed to take passengers from this area. Instead all guests need to proceed to the nearby bus station from where they are picked up by either a group or private car. From our experience the group option doesn't work well because of the time it takes, first you need to wait for all the other guests to load and then later it makes stops along the way dropping people off at different hotels. The difference in price between group and private transfers is not significant so the private transfer is well worth it all things considered. We would never recommend to walk from the port to the hotel as it takes at least 15 minutes when carrying luggage and not to mention usually in warmer weather.