Fourteen questions
Vacation Package Questions, Answered
Fourteen questions, including the four where the honest answer costs us business.
What does this agency charge me?
Nothing. No consultation fee, no research fee, no booking fee, no amendment fee of ours. The income is a share of the operator's own margin, released after you have traveled.
Who takes my money?
Each operator directly: the airline, the hotel, the ship, the tour company, the car company. This site takes no payment and holds no card details, and no page here has a field for a card number.
Do you arrange travel insurance?
No. This office does not arrange, sell or advise on travel insurance. Whether to buy it, and from whom, is a decision to make elsewhere, and we will not point you at a particular provider.
Do you help with visas or passports?
No. Entry requirements are yours to confirm for your own nationality and route, and this office does not advise on them or submit anything on your behalf.
Are your prices the lowest available?
We make no claim of the kind and we do not check. The figures here are the bottom of a real range on two people sharing, and the trip page tells you what pushes you up it.
Will you match a price I found elsewhere?
No. This office runs no price matching. If you have found something better for the same trip on the same dates, take it.
What do the four bands actually mean?
Gentle: the walking is optional and short. Steady: a few miles across a day with somewhere to sit. Active: real walking days with sustained ascent. Demanding: heat, altitude or consecutive long days, with no shortened version. Every trip page states the numbers.
I am not sure which band I am. What then?
Tell us that. We will ask about knees, hips, breathing, heat and stairs, and we would rather move you down a band than sell you a week you spend behind the group.
Why are there no reviews on this site?
Because there are no real ones to publish. Inventing them, buying them or recycling somebody else's would be worse than an empty page, so there is no review section at all until there is something honest to put in it.
Are you open around the clock?
Yes, and without an asterisk. There is no closing time on the telephone and none on the form. What we cannot do is wake up an operator in another time zone, so where an answer depends on one, we tell you when they open.
Can you hold a price for me?
Only the operator can hold a price, and only for as long as they say. This office cannot extend that and will not pretend to.
Can I book a trip that is not in the catalog?
Often, if it is in one of the regions we work in. If it is not, we will say so and point you toward the kind of specialist who does it properly, without taking anything for the referral.
What happens if the operator cancels?
Their terms decide what you are owed, and those terms were printed in your proposal before you confirmed. We will chase it, document it and tell you if we think you are being treated badly. We cannot pay it ourselves.
Is a deposit refundable?
Usually not. Deposits belong to the operator, are taken at confirmation, and on the ship and safari trips are the strictest on our list. The exact terms are in your proposal.
The Sun Traveller sells nothing that it operates. The flights, the hotels, the ships, the vehicles and the guides described on this site all belong to other companies. This office finds them, checks them, books them and stays with you until you fly, and it owns no part of any of them.