Travel Review: Custom Costa Rica Vacation Package, Arenal Volcano, Monteverde Cloud Forest, EcoTermales Hot Springs, biking, etc

We would have kept the same itinerary for the time available to us but we would like to return to Costa Rica to further explore the country especially the coast lines. [Travel Company's Response on the Issues Raised in the Review] Dear Anne, Thank you very much for your recent comments about your experience with our company. Several of the comments we feel have a valid point, and not directly our fault, but we could have been more careful in stressing several facts: A GPS , although offered in one of our e-mails, we did not stress the need of it. Not every customer needs one, but we just learned some do. The rental companies do offer the service at an additional cost. As we read the comments we realized that all our itineraries offer the driving times between locations when we are doing private transfers, but not when renting a vehicle and the customer is doing it own driving. We went back in our emails and we did mention the driving distances in some of the areas asked about, but not in all. It would be a great practice to add a bit of information about the road conditions even if we are not doing the private transfer ourselves. Great suggestion ! Unfortunately with the high season in Costa Rica and when booking small boutique properties, they do book very fast. A hotel with 400 rooms will have a more stable inventory from one day to the other but not the smaller ones. The average hotel size in Costa Rica is 20-30 rooms when speaking of boutique hotels. As advised we needed to know right away if the proposed itinerary was accepted and when we received confirmation, the room availability had changed and it was not longer an option. In the future we should stress that our proposed itinerary is based on availability at time of confirmation. A lot of this small boutique properties do not let us hold the rooms unless confirmed with payment during the high season, and this itinerary was for travelling during spring break period. We tried to differentiate ourselves from other suppliers in quality and service. Part of the little perks we offer is the free use of a cell phone while in country. We give the customers the phone upon their arrival and we collect the phone at the end of their trip. Since this itinerary had a rented vehicle, we knew we were going to collect it San Jose on the last night or at the rental counter the next day. It is clearly a valid point to be more specific about the logistics of the phone return before hand so there is no confusion. Finally, we feel deeply sorry our driver was late on the arrival transfer . We would have loved to know about it while in country so we could have at least express our apologies and show our sincere regrets of the events and offered some form of compensation showing we do care about our customers. We would have offered a nice sunset sail, a romantic dinner somewhere, to show we do feel this was not appropriate from our part. Since we do not have this option anymore, the least we could do is refund the cost of the transfer in, which we already on the credit card we have on file. We appreciate all the feedback to help us improve our services, specially those related to stressing driving times, distances and road conditions. Sincerely Yours, Alexandra President