Don't waste your money - it will be less expensive to book an Uber than to rely on this "tour" company. My family and I booked what we believed would be a small, private tour of the highlights in Vienna, Austria, through Viator, which bills itself as “A TripAdvisor Company.” Since we regularly use TripAdvisor and the company has a good online reputation, we expected that Viator would deliver everything that was promised on the web site that advertised the tour. At a cost of more than $433 for the five of us (two adults and three young children), the tour was not cheap, but we’ve previously found small private tours to be one of the most effective ways to share a lot of information with our children and to still keep them engaged in spite of their age. The TripAdvisor and Viator web sites promised "a 3-hour, private tour in a comfortable vehicle." As promised, we expect to "hear stories about the city’s kings, queens and revolutionaries" from a knowledgable tour guide. Instead we got a driver, who was not from Vienna (he lived in Bratislava, Slovakia) and only spoke broken English. While he was a perfectly fine driver, he hardly knew a thing about the places he drove us to and he certainly did not know much about the history or stories about the city. By the 20-minute mark, I felt that we had been ripped off and, short of being driven to the sights, the experience was a complete waste of time. After finishing the tour, I contacted the tour operator, who was non-cooperative and refused to recognize that there was a problem. I then raised the issue to Viator, who was equally uncooperative and insisted that this tour did not include a tour guide. My family and I travel frequently, but we will never use Viator again. I'm also questioning my willingness to utilize TripAdvisor going forward.
We are very sorry to hear your review, but we informed you that the option you selected did not include a guide, but only a driver, so our driver took you to all the places as mentioned in the itinerary, showed you all the photo stops, was waiting for you at designated areas where you took pictures, drove you around the city, all as dicribed in the tour option. This is a very popular tour and clients usually choose the option with a guide, so they get a deeper feeling of the city with history, culture etc. We also feel that its a bit unfair that you first tried to negotiate some refund and when we refused you threatened us with bad reviews and other things and thankfully Viator and Tripadvisor were on our site as you just simply chose the option with a driver only and demanded a guide for the same price. We wish you a nice stay in Vienna for the rest of your holiday.
