Travel Agent Review: New Zealand, Auckland, Queenstown, Hobbiton, Bungee Jumping, 10-Day Family Trip

Our family of four traveled to New Zealand for eleven days. We used this travel company to help us book our trip. I had an idea of where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, so based on that the travel company came up with an itinerary. We went through a lot of iterations to maximize our time and choose activities that were aligned to my family's interest. We finally went with this company as the travel planner seemed very flexible on changing and adding things for us. He was on the phone or email and helped put the plan together. During the process, we were not happy with our accommodation he had chosen for us and when we put in our deposit I specifically asked him to keep a look out. But, he started pressurizing us in going with his chosen motel in Queenstown, as it was a busy period and that was the last room remaining. We told him we found an Airbnb, but he asked us to throw that idea out as they are not reliable in NZ. We then finally went with him, though again reminding him to continue to find a better accommodation. We never heard from him on that matter. Our first night in Auckland, we had made our own accommodation plan, the rest were all through our travel planner. Our second night we got dropped at an Inn in Rotorua after our visit to Hobbiton. We were absolutely shocked at the room we were booked into. It was small, not a place we would have ever chosen, basic amenities only, tiny for a family of four grown ups/adults, stuffy and insects/spiders on our bed. We immediately called our travel planner and we started off a series of conversations to start changing our rooms, especially for Queenstown where we were planning to stay for the last five days of our trip. We told him we wanted our trip to end well and we found hotel rooms available on a travel website. He told us to hold on, meet him at Christchurch (we were flying in the next day) and we could discuss more. He also promised to start looking. We had been booked into a motel in Christchurch, and the lady who showed us to our room also mentioned that the room was too small for our family. But that was what our trip planner had us booked into. He came to take us out to dinner (a dinner he asked us out to, but he made us pay for our share!) and we clearly told him what we were used to and either he changes or we were happy to make the bookings. He asked us to wait and give him time till the end of the next day and he would have answers for us. We told him at least to start looking at an upgrade (bigger apartments in the same chain). We were booked into the same chain motel, in Queenstown too.  Anyway, next day he emailed us saying sorry too late to cancel. That was it, no mention of upgrade and nothing else. We went through our stay, completely unhappy, and felt duped. We felt more upset as he did not bother to check in with us after that email. IF he had at least called, texted or emailed to say sorry or ask how we were doing I totally would have understood. But since he did not I feel confident he totally duped us. Another reason we feel that way is because, he booked us expensive tours and tickets, he booked us a fancy dinner reservation for New Year’s Eve, so that means he kind of had an idea on what we expected. But he never asked us about choices for stay or gave a break up for hotel stay (we did ask for it) and one more thing is glaring at us, now that we are looking back. He started us off at better accommodations, we can say that as we see our first few itineraries, and also we saw those places during our visit. But towards the end, to make money out of us, he tricked us by changing the itinerary and booked us cheap accommodations. Our trip ended with us having a bad taste and constantly wondering if we should not have trusted him and done this on our own. So we sadly have a very negative feeling about our experience with this travel company. They charged us ultra premium for the entire trip, but the actual accommodations were totally not consistent with it. We have ended up overpaying and not getting that level of experience.