Rough Guides Reviews 

We had a great time in Morocco. Our driver Tawfiq was awesome. We had so much fun with him! Very nice young guy! Safe driver

My travel planner, Roberto, was amazing. He was patient with me when I made changes and made our trip to Costa Rica a seamless and stress-free trip. From the time we arrived to the airport and the many excursions, we always had a private driver ready to go. I would 10/10 recommend and use them again for my next international trip.

Justravel Asia.

My wife and I got the name of this company from the Rough Guide Vietnam, to help us plan a four week journey through the whole country from Hanoi to the far south, with many places in between. It was a lucky choice. Our contact was directly with the company’s director, Han Pham. She organised and booked all internal travel, accommodation, transfers, guides, car drivers, indeed everything which made the odyssey a wonderful experience. Her choice of hotels and guides was exceptional having planned the itinerary around the places which we wanted to visit. Han can be especially praised for the rapidity and reliability of her responses to our enquiries. The guides, both female and male, were hugely knowledgeable about their country, as well as being very nice ,friendly, pro-active, interesting people with whom it was a great pleasure to spend a lot of time. Their impressive command of English enabled us to have long conversations which went far beyond the usual tour- guide contact. We also want to recommend Han’s choice of drivers. They were all safe and considerate, two important considerations for long road trips.

Thank you Justravel Asia for an unforgettable holiday.

Philip and Ursula, Scotland.

Mohamed did a wonderful job planning our trip based the sights we wanted to see and the number of days we were staying in Morocco. He was super responsive to all our questions and needs. Everything met or exceeded my daughter and my expectations. Great riads, tour guides and sights. Our driver, Tawriq, was awesome. He was very knowledgeable, had a great personality and always available to get us to where we needed to go. We recommend using them and will use them again if we return to Morocco.

An amazing family trip to Peru! What a whirlwind trip, best holiday so far. The organisation was seemless, I thought it may be too good to be true but it was so effortless on our part. Everything was arranged for us and 40 transfers in 3 weeks all went without a hitch. I cannot stress enough how amazing all the guides were and the coordination between them, drivers and hotels was unbelievable. They were true professionals. A special thanks to Majo who was only a message away if I had any questions. Thank you Rough Guides we will be back!

Our week in Athens and Crete last week could not have gone more perfectly. I usually enjoy planning my family travels. I feel like beginning the planning is like starting the trip. With a very limited time period and the wanting to accommodate the needs of teenaged grandchildren and grandparents in our eighties, I felt there was no room for error. Working closely with Julia produced an exciting, comprehensive experience none of us will ever forget. Our expectations and needs were fulfilled, under the guidance of Julia’s patient, kind expertise

Having Julia's help in planning our 6 day trip to Crete took all the worry out of making decisions and meant we were able to relax and enjoy the trip. Our tour guide for Knossos was excellent - we got so much more out of seeing the palace and the museum than we would have otherwise. Drivers arrived on time with luxury vehicles, and the Palazzino di Corona hotel was lovely - thoroughly recommend their restaurant.

Julie from Rough Guides put together an itinerary for two of us travelling around India for four weeks. We both tweaked it until we were both completely happy. It was a wonderful experience, and Julie's depth of knowledge, and attention to detail, made it a most amazing month for both of us.
Everything worked like clockwork, the transport, hotels, guides etc were all spot on.
If you are planning a trip to one of the most wonderful countries on the planet, simply contact Rough Guides, they will put you on to Julie, and she will do the rest 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

March 2025.

Travelling as a couple we booked Rough Guides while planning a trip around Peru and Colombia.

Communication was excellent throughout. Majo was our Rough Guide contact she was professional efficient, and accommodating to our changing itineraries.

Tours transfers and accommodation were all very good. Any small issues were sorted by Majo in a timely and efficient manner.

Thank you to Majo and the RoughGuides team for a wonderful experience.

Kieran and Angela Crowley.

We wanted to have bespoke trip, because we hate being herded around on big company tours.
I looked around and found 3 companies, one of which was Rough Guides.
I researched them and I liked the way they work. We had a basic itinerary which I asked the 3 companies to price. Roberto from Elemento Natural provided a very competitive price plus the majority of the money was going straight to him and the locals.
Once we had decided on Rough Guides we then adjusted our itinerary ( a few times), but Roberto was always happy to do this for us until we got what we wanted.
The actual trip was great. The areas, hotels and experiences were very good
The guides spoke good to excellent English and the private transfers worked well.
To be honest I was a little apprehensive in the days leading up to our departure, but that soon disappeared once we arrived. Roberto was always available on WhatsApp, so we never felt alone in a foreign country.
I would definitely use Rough Guides again

It was a fascinating and varied programme giving us a whole range of experiences of Morocco . We stayed in small, mostly family run hotels/riads, which brought us closer to the local community. All arrangements worked like clockwork and we were fortunate in having an excellent driver/guide,Yassin, who couldn’t have been more helpful and obliging.

I bought the Rough Guide to the Great Lakes and Chicago to help plan a trip. Should have read reviews online first, didn’t know RG has been bought and gone way downhill. This book has literally no information about the Great Lakes! It’s the length of a pamphlet and offers about 30 pages of blindingly obvious stuff about Chicago and two pages on the rest of Illinois. Same treatment for Wisconsin, Michigan etc. This guide looks like it was written by AI for a VC firm. Searching online I see a lot of people saying RG like Lonely Planet have been stripped for parts and became useless. Sad

Once upon a time Rough Guide was a company one could trust. Ebooks could be downloaded safely and without problems. Now they seem to have paired up with some fitness companies in Cyprus whose app one has to use [apparently] in order to download the ebook after purchasing the hard copy. Then one is locked into some fitness subscription. if this is legit, it's an appalling practice by RG, if it is due to the Cyprus company hacking the RG website, it's gross negligence by RG not to ensure its customers can use their site safely.

This was my family’s first time taking a personalized tour and working with RoughGuides. We choose RoughGuides after reading reviews on multiple travel-related sights. RoughGuides has direct staff and contracted guides in many countries. Our trip planner, Tamer, was based in Ecuador although our trip was to Chile.

RoughGuides utilizes a web chat system to manage planning staff and traveler communications. The traveler provides an initial summary of trip goals and the RoughGuides planner starts building a plan/itinerary for the trip. The process was straightforward but would be easier and more efficient if RoughGuides had a detailed “traveler profile questionnaire.” For example, our family prefers quiet mornings until about 10 AM. This fact didn’t seem relevant until draft plans/itineraries continued to have touring activities start between 8 and 9 AM. Overall our family was impressed by the quality of the RoughGuides team and the local travel guides/drivers who RoughGuides employs. All of our guides spoke understandable to excellent English and were well-versed in local facts, histories, and culture. One of the ways our family enjoys the local flavor of destinations is via food tours. We usually include at least one food tour in our itinerary. This experience sold our family on personalized touring. We’ll continue using personalized touring when traveling to destinations where our native language, English, is less common.

My Rough Guides Expert experience was 1st Class. From my initial thoughts on where i'd like to go in India to the comprehensive schedule with accomodation, transport, driver, guides and timings developed and agfreed between myself and Julie Charles at Indian Stories. My adventure was fulfiling, ticked all the boxes, ensured my safety and well being throughout. As a solo traveller, age 61, it was important to feel fully supported.

Antonis our agent was terrific, every moment was perfectly planned. Our driver Marios was well informed, thoughtful and responded to unplanned events like a major strike across Greece on our first day with aplomb. We had a really great trip which Antonis spent time personalising to our tastes, interest and budget. Couldn't ask for a better experience.

As soon as I contacted Rough Guides I was immediately corresponding with an agent who knew the area intimately. We received an initial itinerary to to look at and then use that as a rough guide until we had the perfect plan mapped out for my very special vacation for my husbands birthday

We booked an eight week trip to India for our family of three (our son is 12 years) with our Rough Guides agent, Julie. We wanted to book our own accommodation and sight seeing, with Julie assisting us with our transport/travel plans.

Julie was extremely helpful, knowledge and communicative. Throughout the process she assisted us with our itinerary and relevant bookings.

Once our trip commenced Julie and her team regularly checked in on us and were ready and willing to sort out any ‘on the ground’ issues (we had none, but knew we could contact Julie and her team if we needed).

Our trip went smoothly and we had wonderful, attentive, safe drivers. We couldn’t have been more happy with how our trip went.

Highly recommend!

It's the second I use Rough Guides for a trip. The first one was fantastic, the past one extraordinary. What a trip we had, would go as far as saying life changing. The places i visited and the humans as guides changed the way I viewed the place. Nothing but good , nah great things to say. Do not hesitate to go with rough guides, then you will not have to think, just enjoy the voyage

We normally prefer to explore overseas destinations on our own, but for Morocco we decided that it would be less stressful to have a tour company take care of us and we are definitely glad we did! We just came back from a 7-day/6-night tour of Morocco arranged by Rough Guides through a local tour company called Tilila Travel. Overall it was a great experience. It was good value, the tour company and driver assigned to us were honest, trustworthy and responsive, and the hotels and local day guides that they arranged for us were all good recommendations. The tour company assigned us a driver named Tawfiq for the entire duration of the trip. Tawfiq is a terrific asset to the company. He is a safe and thoughtful driver and we felt safe in his care. Also, although he was not a formal guide he knew a lot about the places we visited and shared many interesting and useful insights about Morocco. Tawfiq also made sure to call ahead and ensure the hotels could meet us on arrival (which sometimes required a porter to carry our bags uphill or down very confusing alleyways in the old city), as well as meeting and handing us off to local guides. Tawfiq was available on WhatsApp (for Americans, it is a helpful texting/phone app overseas), so we had no problems arranging daily logistics for pickup, etc.

Our tour started in Tangier where we were picked up at the airport, and continued over 7 days to Chefchaouen, Volabilis, Meknes, Fes, Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakesh, and included drop off at our departure airport at Marrakesh. The tour company was very helpful in helping us modify their initial "best of" recommended itinerary to match our flights and preferences. I would note that we did most of our communications arranging our trip directly with Mohamed, the owner of the tour company. Because of the time we had and the way the different cities are laid out, our itinerary did make for some long drives which they thoughtfully broke up into 1-3 hour segments. Our driver Tawfiq was very helpful planning rest stops and meals along the way, and you should not be shy about letting your driver know if you need to take a break. The hotels that they arranged for us were all quite good, clean with helpful service and good-to-decent breakfasts. I guess there is always a fear of getting sick but we were pretty lucky and no one had any digestive problems even though we ate out almost every day at local restaurants outside our hotels.

The tour company also arranged for local licensed guides with expertise in specific locales. These local guides covered a full day in Fes, a half-day in Marrakesh, and 1 hour in Volabilis (ancient Roman ruins) and 2 hours in Meknes. You do not need to pay these guides separately, but it is customary to give them a tip. The guides were generally pretty good (special mention for Amal in Fes), but you should not be shy if you need them to slow down or speak more clearly. One point I think worth mentioning is that in the bigger cities, the guides included stops at various shops, including shops selling berber rugs, leather goods and ceramics. I have been on trips (e.g., Venice) where you find yourself in high-pressure sale situations. This is not that. These stops give you a view into the local culture and economy, and if you are interested, a chance to buy from respectable sellers. If you really do not want to be taken to any shops or merchants, you should say so, or ask your guide if you need help (although normally the guides will sit outside the shop and let you shop at leisure).

For our family of three adults (2 hotel rooms each night), it came out to approx USD 330 per person per night, including an English-speaking driver and large van, 2 rooms each night at a 4- or 5-star riad-style hotel, breakfast was inclusive. The expense included hiring the local guides.