Complaint Review: WANT Expeditions - http://wantexpeditions.com/ Select State/Province

In January my spouse and I booked a private tour for Socotra Island for November 2012. The destination was awesome and I will cover that in another post but this post is designed to keep travelers from experiencing the nightmare we did with this tour operator. The operator based in the United States told us they operate tour to the island regularly and they would be happy to put a private tour together for us. Here is what we didn’t know…the company is one person (who travels most of the time) who has her sister answer the phones occasionally and if something goes wrong on your trip they will not be there to help you. (the other people on the website are contract guides)

We had decided to make this trip to the Island part of a larger Middle East trip. Here is what went wrong:

Travel: We specifically told them because of the unrest in Yemen we did not want to stop on the Mainland. They agreed this could be done. Weeks later (after we made the first deposit) they told us that on the way to the Island we would need to stop in Yemen but only for a 30 min layover. We didn’t like it but we agreed. Then weeks before the departure they told us that we would need to stop on both legs of the trip in Yemen. We didn’t like but agreed. Then two weeks before we left they told us we had to stop in Sana’a (the Capital of Yemen) and overnight. We said that was unacceptable but they said there were no other flights. Five minutes on the Internet proved that this was a wrong and that there were flights out the same night. Because the owner was on another trip we had to book it ourselves.

When we left the island we asked that our flights be confirmed. We were told they were but this was not true. We arrived at the airport 3 hrs early only to find that the flight was delayed significantly. (We know they didn’t check because most of the passengers that did check didn’t even come to the airport until after the original scheduled departure time). WANT told us we could check our bags through to our final destination but this was not true. At this point we knew we would miss the connection in Sanaa so we asked WANT for help rescheduling. The tour guides on the island tried to help but with very limited Internet and phones as you can imagine they could only do so much. WANT meanwhile did nothing. We arrived in Sana’a and our connection had already left. WANT meanwhile had done nothing to book us another flight. Thankfully the guides on the Island had made contact with a friend who met us and offered to take us to a hotel. Off we went 50km away through the dark streets as you could hear the gunfire and explosions in the background. We made through the army checkpoints and to the hotel which was perhaps the worst place I have every stayed in 30 years of travel.

We tried to contact WANT via their phone number but there was no answer. We tried Skype but no one was there. Finally we sent an email and decided to hope for the best. When they did get in contact with us they told us they hadn’t done anything to find us a flight. Staying calm we asked for their help right then to get a new flight. We were told that because the owner was boarding a flight herself she could not help us. So we found ourselves in a dangerous city, miles from the airport, in an unknown hotel with no help from WANT to get out. Finally after hours we decided to do it ourselves. Some of the options would have cost us $1200 to get out and because we didn’t book the first ticket (WANT had booked it) we couldn’t use the original cost. We found a flight going to another country and booked it $700 from our own pockets. We went to bed and when we arose in the morning and checked in with WANT who told us they were “still working on it”. We were appalled when they told us the best they could do would require us to spend two days in Sana’a (the very place we were never supposed to be in the first place) and as a result would miss our next flight and cost us another $1,000.00

We decided that there was nothing they could do for us so we returned to the airport for the flight we had booked. Turns out that we not only had to buy our own flight out of Yemen, we had to pay for the Hotel, tranfers, meals and the internet to book our own flights. Keep in mind this was supposed to be an all inclusive tour….. We were even we held at the airport until we paid “extra money”.

Guides: What we found out upon arrival to Socotra Island is that WANT subcontracts all the guiding and management of customers to a third party. This was surprising to us especially when the local guides they told us they had no idea what itinerary we had purchased from WANT. Luckily for us we had a copy and they agreed to do some of the things we had contracted for with WANT.

Price: The final insult from WANT is we found they had charged us about 2-3 times the price we could have gotten from another tour group. When we questioned them about that, they claimed things like gas were very expensive on the island. While it is true some things are expensive gas turns out to be about $2 a gallon (this is the middle east after all). Had we booked directly with the local guides direct or used the hotel on the island to book we could have saved thousands.

Bottom line: If you want to overpay to be stranded in the middle east in a hostile country with no way out WANT Expeditions is your best option. If your goal is anything else do NOT book with WANT Expeditions (also known as Wildlife and Nature Tour Expeditions).