10 Aug 2015

Steve and Nancy Bender

The crew and Leslie were all great. The boat needs either to be retired or completely renovated. The rooms were way too small, there was minimal storage at best, and the fold down bed was very uncomfortable. I don’t expect a small room to have the amenities of a cruise ship, but these were below average in my opinion. The food was ok, but the portions were very small for the main course. My husband and son-in-law on a few occasions were still hungry following dinner. Budapest was a huge disappointment since this city was the main reason I booked the cruise. I realize it’s no one’s fault that the river levels were very low and that we had to be bussed into Budapest, but the time allotted to visit was therefore cut short and I missed out on a lot of the highlights that I was planning on visiting.

Reply from Boat Bike Tours 21 Aug 2015

Thanks for your feedback. Sorry to hear you're disappointed about your trip! Regrettably, you couldn’t spend more time in Budapest. We have send your comments forward to the crew and received their reply, which I sent per E-mail to you and also publish here below: 'I want to apologize on behalf of our office, as it looks we had not managed to make your customers happy and satisfied. We are always disappointed when we hear that customers complain about the portion of the menu. It is at the beginning of every tour - at the Welcome Dinner - specifically noted that there is plenty of food available, and each customer can take a second, or third plate. We also ask the guests if they had enough. Each of our service staff is trained to subsequently serving portions in the same, respectable size. The cabin size is communicated on your homepage, as well as in the travel documents, the customer reserved this cabin size and we assumed that the customer had all the information in advance of the booking. The price-performance ratio is adequately adjusted to the cabin size and calculated lower prices would not make it possible for us to carry out the tour at this level. Unfortunately, it often happens that the vessels which sail along the Danube, are compared with ours. Those vessels are luxury liners with bigger cabins available, but the cabin size is out of proportion for our ships. For us the aspect of "Sports - pleasure - Culture" is the most important one. We understand that the customer booked the tour because of the visit in Budapest - this is still the headline of this tour. We can’t control certain external effects, like the weather. The low water level was not foreseeable before our arrival and we acted responsibly here, as we are not retracted to Budapest. The ship's captain - as ruler of the ship - has years of experience and knows when continue driving would(n’t) be useful and smart. Nevertheless, we have tried to allow customers to stay in Budapest and even organized a further bus ride. The safety of our guests absolutely goes before everything. I think it is safe to carry out that the sightseeing tour in Budapest would have ‘fallen in the water’ without the busses. Please, let the customers know that we have tried to organize the best stay possible in Budapest. It works like a chain. Without all the services and service providers it wouldn’t have been possible to organize the trip to Budapest. I hope you can explain our opinion and our approach to the customers and I hope that the customer will continue to remain loyal to you as "Radler Guest".'

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