Carole and Geoff Thompson
1/5
My wife and I were bitterly disappointed with Coastal Variety Tours.
Their brochure for a ten-day coach trip to Townsville and the Tropical North in September 2022 sounded attractive with the prospect of a Magnetic Island Cruise and a tour of Charters Towers among other attractions.
When we joined the coach we found that its primary purpose was to deliver 28 Garden Club members from SEQ to the Garden Clubs of Australia Biennial Convention in Townsville each day between 12th and 15th September. All activities in Townsville were tailored around the Convention, and the 9 ‘other’ passengers on the coach were obligated to visiting half a dozen private gardens and nurseries each morning with the delegates together with a 90 minute afternoon visit to a shopping centre – none of which was advertised or signalled to us before the tour. So much of the tour revolved around transporting to the conference activities that many of the advertised tour highlights were severely curtailed.
For example, the Charters Tower Tour for the nine non - gardeners entailed a 90 minute drive each way with less than 2 hours allowed to see the sights and have lunch due to the need to pick up the delegates after the morning session back in Townsville.
Similarly, the Tropical Museum visit was extremely rushed. The Magnetic Island Cruise entailed passage on the public ferry together with a public transport bus trip each way across the island to spend forty minutes at Picnic Bay. Hardly a “cruise”.
We cannot fault the coach driver who did his best to negotiate an unmanageable schedule but we felt, as did many of the other “private” passengers, bitterly let down and cheated.
We were told that, had the extra 9 passengers not signed up, the tour to the convention could not have gone ahead for lack of numbers.
We cannot recommend Coastal Variety Tours due to this intentional deception.
FOOTNOTE:
A copy of this review was forwarded to CVT for their comment before posting online.
The Manager phoned me and accepted that the tour did not meet expectations in many respects and apologised. He said that his original plan to accommodate additional passengers into the Garden Convention tour successfully was overoptimistic.
