Regarding travel agency exoticca.com
So the Mrs. and I are planning on a trip to Japan for June of this year. I received a tip to take a look at the deals found on said travel agency and I was impressed. I made a cursory research on the legitimacy of the service and found that it does deliver. I took the dive and got myself booked--with an additional fee to cancel and have my deposit fully refunded. Since then I've been looking more and more into their services and find that way too many reviews are overwhelmingly negative. The corresponding Reddit board screams "don't do it!" (though most of the posts there are a bit dated, admittedly)
And now that I'm finally a member of this fine community at Tildes, I figured that I'd ask you kind people for your feedback and discussion. What do you all say? Is there any consensus on any particular travel agency? Or is it best that I engage in the grunt work to book all the hotels ahead of time? We're looking to hit Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto at the very least. My total cost so far is less than $5000 for 9 days, FYI. And travelling from USA, if that makes any difference.
This is my first post on Tildes prompting discussion, btw. Glad to be here! đ€
Gonna be 100% honest, sounds like a sex-business of some sort.
If we're being honest I clicked on this because I figured it would be full of wacky stories from those cruises for swingers
LOL. I assure all readers here... This is a legit (though perhaps "shady"--but that's what I'm investigating) travel agency. Nothing related to sex-business. đ
I believe you. Just noting that I probably wouldnât have booked with them to begin with. To echo what others are saying, I probably wouldnât use a TA for Japan or most places. Maybe for some specialized/niche trips (think birding expeditions or visiting Antarctica type stuff).
I guess you can't just buy the Rick Steve's book on Antartica and plan that one yourself.
For me hunting flights, accomadations, and general planning is all part of the experience. Except for Antartica... I would let someone else work out the logistics on that one.
Easiest way to go to Antarctica is to apply for work there!
I did 52 days last season surveying for the upgrades to the wind farm on Ross Island.
I'd recommend just booking everything yourself direct with the hotels or airlines that you are planning to go. You could ask any of the AI tools to help plan out your trip for you. Travel agencies don't have much leverage nowadays in terms of discounts.
Splurge on the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto
I don't put much faith in BBB scores, but their complaints seem to indicate that getting refunds or handling cancellations is extremely difficult. At a glance, I'd guess that you're fine as long as you go on the trip, but as soon as you engage their customer support staff it'll be non-stop problems.
(I'm not a person that enjoys travel, however, so I can't comment on anything more than that ...)
edit: Oof, sniped by 0x29A. Anyways.
I would suggest not using a travel agency at all and making your own arrangements directly through a hotel/airline whenever possible. Even as a novice traveller and assuming no other special circumstances since you didn't mention any, Japan is a pretty straightforward place to plan a trip to on your own. Even if you don't speak the language, booking flights, hotels, and navigating the train system are all possible in English.
You didn't mention how experienced the two of you are as travellers. If you've never planned a big international trip, it can be daunting for sure. As long as you have the time, it's worth making your own arrangements though. The biggest risk you run into when you introduce any discount third party into your plans is if there's any mistake or hiccup whatsoever, the agency will pass the buck to the hotel/airline, who will pass it right back to the agency, leaving you stranded in the meantime.
The travel boards on Reddit are full of stories of people who tried to save a few bucks on their plans, only to find out that there's no reservation in the hotel's system and the company they made the reservation through won't do anything for them. Even if booking through a hotel costs a bit more, knowing that there's no chance of being stranded after your transpacific flight is pretty valuable.
Indeed, it's the hiccups that concern me. I'm usually careful in minimizing unexpected expenses as much as possible. đ”
A rule of thumb to go by when travelling: you're most vulnerable to getting scammed when you're too:
The first two are easily avoided, assuming that you don't go looking for them, but a lot of people fall prey to the last one.
There are a lot of ways to hamstring your trip in the interest of pinching pennies. While it's important to find good prices for things, don't skimp on things that will actually matter on your trip like taking a cheaper, slower train to another city that saves you $20, but you lose 3 hours of exploring time for example.
Don't forget to budget for food if you haven't taken it into consideration. You can eat well at even a shoestring budget, convenience store food is famously good for the price and grocery stores always make for an interesting visit and help keep you from eating at restaurants for every meal, which adds up fast. Without having been to Japan in about 5 years, I'd plan for $25 per person per day at the low end. You could also spend that on a bite of sashimi if you were so inclined.
Thatâs an interesting one. Unless time is super constrained, Iâd wouldnât necessarily pick the fastest option over the slow one. Slow, cheap transport often gets you to meet locals, see places you wouldnât see otherwise and possibly find you some unexpected adventures. For me, travel isnât just going from sight to sight, the traveling itself is part of the fun.
This doesnât stop at traveling too. Going on expensive tours are less exciting than finding your own way. Being guided by a local, cheap guide can be more interesting than picking a larger group. Being on a dingy fishing boat can be more fun than traveling on a sturdy luxurious boat.
In short, finding fun and adventure for me is much easier by being cheap than by throwing money at a trip.
Very valid take, and I didn't mean to simplify my position down to "spending more money = better trip" since everyone travels differently.
The underlying idea is to not cut corners on the the things that can make or break your trip. If the cheaper, slower option gives the experience you want, then choose it. Don't gravitate to the cheapest option if you need reliability.
An expensive guide can be extremely knowledgeable and offer a highly specialized tour, when it's not a scam. Depending on the country, the price premium for a tour guide can be due to language proficiency. Even in popular international destinations like Japan, guides with high English fluency command a premium!
Definitely, good point!
For me, as an American, the Shinkansen is part of the experience travelling in Japan, tbh.
I've been burned enough times by middlemen (travel agencies, hotel/flight booking sites, etc.) that I always book directly with hotels and airlines. Even when they're not the direct cause of things going sideways, middlemen are an extra complication in the resolution process.
In the worst case scenario, it's paying to play Chinese whispers (the telephone game)...
Not sure what to think, hard to get a good grasp of them. Reading through their BBB complaints page there are plenty of complaints, and it's hard for me to gauge how reasonable both the customers and company are being, though I will say quite a few of the company's responses are disputed afterwards by the customer rather than resolved, which gives me a bit of a red flag.
I don't know how trustable the A+ rating or the "reviews" are either (there are plenty of good reviews too it seems?). It almost seems like it's a "hit or miss" kind of situation, and if it happens to be a miss and something goes wrong, they may not be in any rush to properly resolve it.
Reddit reviews all over the place too (i don't like linking Reddit but for this stuff unfortunately it's helpful) but worth reading for individual experiences. Anecdotally ranges from "it went perfectly" to "we had some inconveniences that they were unhelpful in solving" to "it was awful"...
Seems if you go with them the big things are "you get what you pay for" and "read all the fine print". Basically very communicative at first and eager to sell you a package and then extremely hard to get in touch with afterwards (classic...)
I've been to Japan twice and both times I just kind of did whatever without a travel agency (well, one time I technically booked my flights through one but it was nominally a work trip and it was the work travel agency), so I might not be the best to answer your specific question about travel agencies but I have some (hopefully) relevant advice.
One thing is that, before the first trip I took, I saw multiple people online suggesting things along the line of "look for tours online and just copy their itinerary yourself". So, if you're looking for a travel agency so that you can just get a good itinerary, I think that's a good alternative. I didn't end up doing this and just kind of found things I wanted to do over the course of my day-to-day time on the internet up until the trip, but worth thinking about.
If not having to look for hotels is the only reason you want a travel agency, I'd probably just look through Booking.com to be honest. That's what I did and it took maybe 30 minutes per city for my girlfriend and I to find hotels that had a combination of affordability, location, and size/amenities/etc. You could always look at some hotels before you decide whether it's worth cancelling with this exoticaa agency.
My last thing is, depending on how many days you want to stay in Kyoto, it may be cheaper and almost as easy to stay in Osaka the whole time and just take the train to Kyoto. It's around a 30-minute train ride each way for something like „1200 (around $7.50) but, at least when I was looking in October for my trip this past December, hotels in Osaka were a lot cheaper. On top of that, starting March 26th, Kyoto's nightly tourism tax for hotel stays is increasing (for cheaper hotels it's only a few dollars, for more expensive hotels it's up to around $65/night). If you want to stay more than a day or two in Kyoto, it's probably worth it to just stay in Kyoto, though, so you can go back to your hotel during the day and all that stuff.
The main reason for the travel agency was for the convenience of having someone else (who is familiar with the most accommodating options) do the grunt work at a reasonable budget price. But this particular agency is revealing itself to be more and more shady as I research more and more. Not normally an impulse buyer myself--just pressed for time to get things done, you know.
Thanks for the feedback! I think I will target a stay in Tokyo first then in Osaka as you suggest. âïžđ€
The nightmare has begun folks, I'm terrified to say. Just got off the horn with said agency and now they're tacking on a "transaction" fee. Further, they say it "credits" to my account. Not a cash refund payout. There might be another fee for this, after they "investigate" the claims made by the rep that assured me I'd get my money back. It will take 1 week to "investigate". I bluff-threatened legal action--not sure if that'll make any difference. In short, it would be nice to see if anyone here has any ideas on how to strong-arm these stinks.
Thanks again for all the great feedback, y'all!
Document every conversation you've had with them and get it ready to send to your credit card company's fraud department. Their legal department has way more oomph behind it than you do.
If you didn't buy this trip with a credit card, you've probably got a much harder road ahead of you and you might have to chalk it up to a very costly lesson.
Resist the temptation to give in and use the paid for vacation : if they're messing with you now imagine if you're stranded in a foreign land.
In addition to documenting everything, CC every email you can find of theirs every time you make an attempt to call. Read their credit card refund policy very carefully: chargebacks don't happen if they are following their own policies unfortunately. Conside escalating to executive email carpet bomb method if initial efforts fail.
Good luck, we've all been there from one company or another
This is great feedback, folks. Thank you all for the prompt responses!
I think it's settled... I'll start the cancellation process and pray they don't give me a hard time considering I paid the fee to allow cancel. Domo arigato! âïž
Side note, use:
While you might hear "dĆmo arigatĆ" used occasionally by natives, it's usually said to someone in a higher position of authority (like your boss). It would feel weird if you said it to any customer service workers while on holiday. The phrase is falling out of fashion, especially amongst the young.
Japanese politeness levels are so confusing. Before I was just there, everything I saw online (mostly Instagram Reels type stuff) was people saying how "Arigatou" (on its own) is more familiar and some people will take it as a bit rude if you use it to them without knowing them.
But also, as a white guy, I feel like people there assume I'm a dumbass from the get go and my attempts at Japanese are either welcome or, from people who really don't like the foreigners there, completely ignored, so I didn't stress too much. I did bust out a few ăçăăŒă«ăäžă€ăă ăăăs though and everyone liked that :P
Also depends a lot on location. Customer service workers in Tokyo are much more used to foreign customers, so they're less likely to care. More rural areas appreciate Japanese more.
I went to japan last year with a friend and her aunt in 2024, and we didn't book any agency of sorts we just choose which cities we wanted to visit and make sure the hotels were close to a metro station, that was basically it, the rest of it was min-maxing out expenses.
None of us knew japanese either, beside the basics ("arigato gozaimasu" and "sumimasen").
Obviously we booked all of our hotels in advance, most of them were very clean and with good customer service but quite small.
My advice would be:
I think Androids sold in the US donât support the same protocol that Japanese IC cards use, at least, thatâs how it was when I went a couple of years ago. iPhones are fine with Suica, though.
ow, my bad, I'm not from the US, so I don't know about their limitations there.
You can also pick up a physical Welcome Suica or Pasmo handily at any of the major airports or rail stations.
Yes! I forgot about that, I got a physical one as a backup and as a souvenir.
Sadly this is true, but standard NFC tap-to-pay is increasingly common for transit. Still wouldn't rely on it everywhere. You definitely need an IC card for transit!
June is unfortunately the rainy season. It can fortunately a bit cheaper and quieter during Tsuyu though.
For the price you posted you're probably paying a markup of around $1800-$2000. Depending on when/where you fly out if you were to book in Feb/Mar it'll cost you roughly $600 (From LAX) per person. Making the total $1200, assuming you're staying at chain hotels, you'll pay roughly $80-$120 per night. If we use the median price, you're looking at around $900 for 9 days. Bullet trains go for around $115 from Tokyo to Kyoto each way, assuming you're heading straight to Osaka from Kyoto add $10 per person. So a round trip cost would be around $500. This doesn't include pricing for any attractions (Not sure if your booking include ticket prices for all paid attractions)
This is boring, where are the stories of quirky wake up calls from the maids. /s