Private Tour nach Kairouan, El Jem und Monastir von Tunis_hammamet

Our guide Bilal and driver Said arrived on time to collect us from our hotel for this one day private tour from Hammamet. Both were very friendly and helpful throughout the day. Bilal was very knowledgeable about the sites we visited and gave us a lot of additional general information about Tunisia. We felt safe and well looked after at all times and would thoroughly recommend this tour to other visitors from the UK.

An incredible excursion to Kairouan el jem and Monastir! My guide Montasser was exceptional—very professional and passionate about the history of these places. Everything was well organized, from cultural visits to unforgettable photo stops. I especially enjoyed the Great Mosque of Kairouan and the el jem

While I am sure this tour is guide dependent, I cannot help but share how poor our experience was for the price. Vehicle: The car did not have properly functioning air conditioning. Despite the fan and cooling on max, during a mildly warm day, the car was like a sauna. We specifically booked this tour for an “air conditioned vehicle” - this was not correct. Additionally, the vehicle did not have proper headrests, and our average size bodies did not fit in the back seat without our heads hitting the roof. This car was the same as a cheap taxi, if not slightly worse. Guide: While our guide Mr Beligh was knowledgeable, he lacked the ability to stay on topic of the tour, and would barely answer the questions we asked him. We started the 8am tour early due to Ramadan, at 7:30am (per the operators request). He pushed the hotel to call our room multiple times before 7:30. When we arrived downstairs (at exactly 7:30), we informed him that we needed 5 minutes to grab food for the trip. At 7:35, we were in the car. Despite our communication, he gave us a total of three separate lectures about “being punctual” before our first destination. We tried to sleep during the drive, but he would routinely turn up the radio despite our protests to listen to various dialogs. Our driver was also annoyed with this behavior, as the driver would immediate revert the radio back once the guide left the car. He routinely interrupted us sleeping to shout an unnecessary fact (“WE ARE ENTERING CITY XYZ”) despite us clearly being asleep. After briefly introducing a subject, he would switch to his own “theory” and not elaborate on our questions further. We requested to skip ordinary explanations, and specifically told him we want to hear about Tunisian-specific history. Instead of following this request, the five pillars of Islam (we informed him we already know them … they are not unique to Tunisia). He then spent 15 minutes explaining the five pillars of Islam, despite us walking away, interrupting to ask other questions, etc. He did not even explain the basic history behind Kairouan - he instead just talked about how amazing the mosque is, and how genius the architects were. We learned more from reading the document on the wall than from our guide. Our guide would ask us questions throughout the tour. Each time we answered, he would say “incorrect!” or “wrong!”, even when the answers were right! This blew my mind. For example, he asked what is Ramadan fasting. I replied, “from astronomical sunrise to sunset”. He replied “Completely incorrect! Every tourist group no matter how big has gotten this wrong!”. I don’t know if he did not listen, or just had a set dialogue - it felt terrible. He was not a teacher. He never asked what understanding we had into a subject before explaining. On hour 5 of the tour, he spent 7 minutes explaining that Arabic was written right to left and the word “calligraphy” meant writing styles. Why should this take 7 minutes? We interrupted to ask questions about other things, but he did not get the hint, and kept repeating his explanations. Despite the rush, we finished 30 minutes early. To his credit, he thanked us for our punctuality. By the end of the tour, he hinted that we needed to tip a total of 6 times.