Customer's information:
Name: Mrs. Dorothy Chui
Nationality: United Kingdom
Itinerary: 8 Days Tour of Chonging-Yangtze River Cruise-Yichang-Shanghai-Huangshan
Dear ChinaTours,

All the guides and drivers were waiting for us at all the airports for our arrival. All the guides and drivers were courteous and mostly helpful with our luggage. The best guide for us was Tony, our local Huangshan guide. (The other guides were basically for transfers.) Tony told us all about porters, what to expect, how local people made their living, what the local customs were, etc. It was very helpful. Tony was with us the entire time and he also hiked with us.

The Bund Riverside hotel’s location was great. Our room on the first night was fine except the carpet was torn and filthy. They had remodeled the room and bathroom and we cannot understand why they didn’t put in new carpet to complete the remodel? The second night when we came back from Huangshan, the hotel gave us a very nice room that was on a higher floor and everything was completely remodeled. Needless to say, we were very pleased and surprised by the upgrade. Our rooms had good view on both nights, so I am glad we paid extra for the higher floor with view.

Thanks for your good work. I will surely choose you again in the future.
May 10, 2012

Customer's information:
Name: Ms. Lyn Randall
Nationality: Australia
Itinerary: 24 Days tour of Shanghai/Suzhou/Wuxi/Hangzhou/Huangshan/Jingdezhen/Changsha/Zhangjiajie/Shanghai
Dear Candy and Tracy,

In every aspect, my dealings with China Tours have been excellent. They were always very responsive to emails, were friendly and helpful and provided exactly the tour we asked for. They made suggestions to improve the itinerary I proposed and were happy when I asked for a few changes before we booked. Once in China, our tour progressed without any problems at all, everything was very smooth and professional. We plan to make further trips to China in the future and will have no hesitation in using them again.

As we travelled to so many places we had 6 guides in total. They were all very polite and their English was quite understandable. None of them arranged stops at factories or souvenir shops unless it was in the tour or we asked them to do so. We never felt pressured in any way to shop. All of the guides were keen to explain the local customs and history and to show us the best places to photograph. Standout guides were Tony in Suzhou, who was very polite and helpful; Ben in Wuxi who has been to Australia several times and knew how to deal with crazy Aussies!; Nick in Huang Shan who had excellent English and good knowledge of his area and finally Victor in Zhangjiajie, who’s strong accent was sometimes more difficult to understand but was more than made up for by his friendly nature and sense of humour! We would happily use all of them again in the future.

The drivers in all places were very good. We felt safe and the vehicles were clean and all air conditioned.

Our tour included all breakfasts and lunches but only 1 or two dinners. We were keen to try local dishes and were happy with the choices made by our guides. I think they were surprised that we could eat (and preferred) more spicy food, which was useful as we went further west, where the staple seasoning was chilli, closely followed by ginger and garlic! There were one or two meals where the dishes were rather bland but overall we always found something that we could eat and never went hungry.

Most of the hotels were in a good location so we could walk to shops and restaurants easily. The staff were very friendly and helpful and we enjoyed trying out our limited chinese to order meals etc. as in many of them there were no English speakers. We chose our hotels with these reasons and were very satisfied with the result.


All of the hotels we stayed in were fine, apart from the Gusu in Suzhou. The room we had there was dark and in desperate need of a repaint and refurbish. It stank of smoke so we had to spray with air freshener. Our travelling companions had the room next door to ours and theirs was fine so we were just unlucky. We were there for two nights and if we had thought of it sooner we should have asked for a different room.If we return to Suzhou in future we would probably stay in a different hotel or at least make sure we were happy with a room at the Gusu before we settled in. The linen and the bathroom were clean otherwise we would certainly have asked to be moved.

As far as we can remember, we had enough water in each place, although I don’t think it was supplied in Changsha.

I am happy to be a reference for you and for my comments to be posted on your website. If anyone wishes to contact me regarding any aspect of our trip then please supply them with my email address.

Lyn Randall

on behalf of Lyn, Jon, Kathy and Jann




May 04, 2012