Review: Luxury Anniversary Trip to Australia, New Zealand & Cook Islands, Sydney, Queenstown, Nelson, Rotorua, Milford Sound

As a primer, my wife and I planned this trip to celebrate our 5th year wedding anniversary.  This travel agent and his team did an absolutely outstanding job in brainstorming, planning, and executing on delivering our trip!  Our trip consisted of Sydney, Queenstown, Bleheim, Kaikoura, Nelson, Rotorua, Auckland, and Cook Islands.

Probably one of the best part of this experience was our travel agent's knowledge in the area and his ability to get to know my wife and me;  out of all the other agencies we spoke to, he crafted a unique agenda that matched our likes/dislikes substantially better than any other.  We both felt a connection to our travel company because they seemed to get us the most and didn't try to do the 'cookie cutter' Australia/New Zealand approach.  As we went on our trip, more and more of his thought process and patience in helping us select the cities, means of travel, hiking, and excursions seemed perfect for us.

Once booked, our travel company was pretty good about getting us information and responding to us.  We had a little bit of follow-up we had to do on our end, but ultimately, the agent provided everything they said they would and with high quality.

When we were abroad, everything went fairly smoothly.  The only hiccup we had was when we first arrived in Sydney, the driver was not there and we were not sure how/where to find them.  We had about a 30 min. wait before they arrived and were unable to get a hold of our Australia contact initially.  However, it all worked out; they called to make sure we were OK and the driver was trying to figure out when our delayed flight was actually arriving.  At the end of the day, if that's the only item to impact us, I'll take that all day!

We did have an excursion that was canceled in Rotorua, which were bummed about.  But there's nothing the agent could really have done for us; and they quickly reimbursed us once we returned.

In closing out the trip, again, this company wanted to make sure we had a great time, were fantastic to work with, and really spend a lot of time getting to know you.  They also found a few 'trip enhancers' that helped make it a more unique experience compared to what we could do on our own.  The only reason I'm giving this agent a 4 instead of 5 is that two other agents we had previously worked with on special occasions (honeymoon, anniversary, birthday) to other destinations (Africa, Thailand) proactively reached out to lodging that we were at and made us feel 'extra special' for our special occasion with some amenity of sorts.  To us, that truly is the extra mile, but this company was not too far off!  Highly recommend working with them!!