Aleksandra Shebaltseva

We had never used KimKim previously and this was a test run for my husband and me. I hired KimKim because I did not have the time to devote to planning a trip. My understanding was that we were paying a premium to an agent so that they could do the hard work of planning our trip and we could rely on our agent to create an itinerary, provide vetted hotels, guides etc., answer questions and provide detailed information so that I would not have to devote too much time to the planning process. This did not work out exactly as I thought it would - details below.

Overall I thought KimKim was good, but it was too expensive for the amount of service that was provided and the ultimate result should have been great rather than just good given the price we paid. Let me start with what they did well - the web portal was easy enough to learn to use and our specialist Aleksandra was responsive to changes in our itinerary and to follow up questions. Aleksandra was also polite and professional. KimKim did a good job with providing good guides. Our guide for the City of Edinburgh and for a day trip to St. Andrews were both very good, and I would recommend them to others. The bookings for hotels and guides were organized and we had no problem with the hotels saying they didn't have our room, or guides not showing up on time, etc. The hotels where we stayed in Edinburgh, Inverlochy and on the Isle of Skye were all very good choices.

KimKim did not do a good job with some things. For instance, they were not great with booking restaurants - the places they recommended were quite touristy and we were clear that wasn't what we wanted - we ended up booking nearly all of our restaurant reservations ourselves. A much bigger issue is that they did not mention anywhere in our itinerary or in any correspondence with us that we needed to advance book the ferry from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. This was an important detail as the ferry books up in advance during the high season, and we could not get onto the ferry and therefore ended up driving an extra 80 miles, missing the ability to sightsee on parts of the Isle of Skye that we had been planning to do that day. Needless to say, this was hugely disappointing and I think is a basic job of our booking company where they dropped the ball. This made me think that our agent was not a local and clearly did not know this and did not think to ask anyone with more local knowledge. Our expectation was that we were getting advice from a local and clearly that was not the case. The other thing that was spectacularly badly was that the last hotel we stayed in was absolutely atrocious. It clearly hadn't been renovated in a very long time and smelled musty and was just plain disgusting frankly, and the dining options were beyond awful. It was not a place where anybody would want to stay, and I have absolutely no idea why Aleksandra booked us there. Most of the trip was wonderful, but that was a terrible way to end and unfortunately it is the last thing we took away from our time in Scotland.

My recommendation is to be very hands on: (1) make sure to independently review the hotels to make sure that they meet your satisfaction, and provide detailed guidance as to what you're looking for, (2) make sure to doublecheck your itinerary and ask the questions that you would ask if you were planning the entire trip yourself. This of course means that you're putting in much more time in the planning process, which kind of defeats the purpose of hiring KimKim in the first place. I might be willing to try the service again, but in a much more active manner.