Selbstgeführte kulinarische Gourmet-Tagestour von Beechworth aus

Thank you Tour De Vines. Annette our tour guide was fantastic. She contacted us the night before to organise and confirm time and place to meet for the start of the tour and answered my question about where we can park. On the day of our tour both my husband and I alarms failed to wake us and because Annette had contacted us the night before I was able to text her and explain our predicament. She was so lovely and understanding and replied that we could start the tour later. When we arrived She met us with the bikes and then we got our choice of hot beverage while she sat us down and explained the route we were to follow. She was very careful to explain and describe the route and the stops we could make on the way. We were very glad to get the e bikes as I don't think we would have made it otherwise! The mini cheese tasting at Milewa Cheese was enjoyable and we especially liked lunch at The Providore where the service was very warm and friendly and it was so lovely to sit in comfortable arm chairs in front of a roaring fire at the end of a long ride. My husband was so tired he had a little nap in front of the fire!

Good communication, Michael was friendly, knowledgeable and easy going. Bookings were all excellent, accommodation, restaurants, cafes and wineries Rail trail was a great ride, self guiding was easy, very scenic and an electric bike made it doable not being regular riders.

The communication of this company needs significant improvement. Recently completed the Tour de Grande Gourmet with 5 friends. My friends and I have completed self-guided tours in NZ and Croatia. I have also do an escorted cycling tour in France. All tours were with different operators. Based on these great experiences, we were expecting a standard of service that was not met My review reflects the experience of the group and not merely myself. The communication issues arose before actually starting the tour. The company representative who was looking after the booking was not consistent with her responsiveness to emails. Sometimes she responded quickly, other times questions went unanswered for days. On one particular instance I was awaiting a reply and went I sent a follow-up email it was then that I was notified she was out of the office for a few days. I admit I was frustrated as I needed an answer and so responded abruptly. Her response implied that I was impinging upon her right to be out of the office. My issue was that I felt she should have responded to her unanswered emails before going on leave or at least acknowledge. During the tour we often arrived at one of the pre-booked venues to find we either had no booking or the number was for two guests not six. The feedback from these establishments was that this type of error was a common occurrence with Tour de Vines bookings. I hired an electric bike for the duration of the tour, which in reality is only the duration of the cycling part of the tour. Recharging the battery at night was an issue and thankfully the guide from a Tour de Vines escorted tour was willing to help out and solved the issue each time for me. After reading the other reviews for this company, the group was left wondering why our experience was so different from the glowing reports on TripAdvisor. Perhaps these reviews were all from escorted tours where the guide sorts out all the behind-the-scenes issues that we had to deal with. I was constantly told how busy the company was and how short staffed .I understand the difficulty experienced by businesses in the current climate but perhaps if they can't service all their clients adequately then they should limit their tour availability until they are able to provide the level of service that customers are paying for. Unfortunately this cycle group will be looking for other operators next time we do a cycling tour.