Multi-Country European Family Trip Review: Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, France, England, 1-Month Vacation

The planning portion of the trip was fine. We ran into communication issues in the 3 weeks leading up to the trip. Part of the challenge was having a month-long trip seemed to have too many variables for the tour company to manage in advance. All of the apartments we originally booked were no longer available due to the pandemic by the time we traveled. However, instead of booking us in 5-star apartments (as we had in our proposal and what we paid for), the housing was incredibly varied. One of the flats was lovely - great location, comfortable. One was horrific - filthy, bad location, loud, uncomfortable, terrible amenities. Some were in between but nothing as nice as what we paid for in our proposal. The travel commpany didn’t want to take responsibility for any of the issues we experienced. Their claim was to continue to blame booking.com. The reason we use zicasso is to avoid sites like booking.com and to use local agents who have relationships and know the right places to book. Overall it was a very stressful trip with so much communication throughout trying to fix issues. We have booked numerous other travel groups through zicasso and never had a single issue. Sadly, this was not the case. The first day we arrived in Europe our accommodation was not available and we sat jet-lagged in a park with our kids for 6 hours waiting for a resolution which only happened when we got zicasso involved. We do not recommend this group.