TrovaTrip — Local services in Portland

TrovaTrip is a scam and an MLM. Not only do they not deliver the trip and services promised, they are openly negligent. We paid over $3k USD for the tour (NOT including flights) and received the worst tour I have ever been on. I cannot figure out where the $3172 USD was spent. It certainly wasn’t spent on a qualified guide, nice hotels, activities or access to attractions. This is the most I have ever spent on a tour and it’s the worst tour I’ve been on by far.

I honestly don’t even know where to start. The guide, the accommodations, the food, the itinerary and the painful lack of caring.

Our guide - I have been on many tours (Globus, Trafalgar, Intrepid, hell even Contiki) and there is no way our Guide Luigi had any experience. He didn’t bother to tell us anything about Italy on the agonisingly long bus portions. He only spoke about himself and made us all, frankly, uncomfortable. When it was clear we were all very unhappy, he started telling us more stories about his divorce, an accident he had, etc.He also didn’t count if we were all on the bus, almost leaving without people a few times. Most egregious was his getting mad at us for asking questions. He very literally yelled at someone for asking how much time it would take to travel from the farm experience to our hotel. He only stopped yelling when someone yelled back at him in Italian ‘That’s enough’.

The Itinerary: Nothing about this itinerary made sense and it changed constantly. But if you asked about it – you were yelled at. Travel times were never accurate and we were always short changed when it came to free time, or when to expect lunch, dinner etc. This became became so stressful as we didn’t know when to use the bathroom, bring food etc and resulted in further delays since all 25 of us went to the bathroom whenever we saw one just in case.

Day Two - Rome: I can’t believe I didn’t get to go in the Colosseum or the Pantheon on my first trip to Italy. It’s a false advertisement that it was part of the tour.

Day Three - I cannot imagine what the person who made this day’s route was thinking. We spent 8 hours being going to, backtracking and then going back between Orvieto and the Tarot Gardens. This day was easily one of the most stressful for the group, as we spent the majority of our time on a bus with no bathroom (27 people onboard). Once we arrived at the Tarot Garden we were once again yelled at (like we made this terrible itinerary) that we had a total of 30 minutes in the Tarot Gardens.

Day Four - Double Booking at the Castle: I lost all faith in this trip on Day Four. It became clear to everyone in the group including our host, that was openly discussed. We had just been on a two hour bus ride (which we were told would only be an hour) and were left waiting in the sun, without water or access to food. We were told there was a double booking and that our space had been taken. Many people felt faint as we had no access to water or food. We were left to find shelter and recover alone outside/inside the castle. So no food or water from 8:30-2:00PM.

Day 5 – Florence. I was so excited to see Florence but we were staying 40mins away for some reason and we only got a half day there. We were also supposed to have tickets to Palazzo Vecchio was cancelled, and we were notified days before the start of the trip. We left Florence, to head to a farmhouse. The farm was not set up for tourists, we were standing in fields or animal pens and didn’t have proper warning to dress appropriately.

The Accommodations: For the price of the tour, I was expecting 4-star hotels. I truly felt like I was on a budget tour with the accommodations that were selected for this trip. The Grand Hotel Tamerici & Principe, was by far the worst hotel we stayed at. It was very old, musty (like feel it in your lungs musty) and the staff was SO rude to us

Trova blamed the tour operator (that they outsource to) and offered $200 refund. They take no responsibility. Our host has been requesting we get a larger refund and Trova told her that it will have to come out...

I went on the swipe fat with italy tour in June of 2023, and I want to make clear that this review does not reflect the hosts and is purely for trova trip and their Italian tour company G2 that they partner with:

I had a great time on my trova trip in Greece last year, and thought I had appropriate expectations for my trip with you to Italy. However, I feel sorely disappointed in every aspect of this trip aside from the hosts - the accommodations were dirty, uncomfortable (unsafe at our last hotel in Naples, or should I say, 45 mins outside of the actual city), our guide did not communicate what we needed to know for our daily activities, the food included with our trip was actually some of the worst food I’ve ever had (aside from two meals), and some of the activities were either not set up for a plus size group or they were not communicated around the level of difficulty that the activity required (examples: one of the girls couldn’t complete the underground tour, we were not told that Mt Vesuvius would be an actual hike uphill and to dress appropriately and we were only given a little over an hour to hike it, which is quite hard for most people). I understand that this is italy and it is not set up for plus size people, but the communication about what we were doing that day or the next and how we would need to dress or prepare for the activity was lacking and I truly don’t feel like this was a trip tailored for us. Which was the whole point - to make traveling accessible to plus size people. It is the experience trova advertised for this trip.

I’m also sorely disappointed in the accommodations - I paid for a single room, was told last minute it was unavailable and that I would have to have a roommate, and then all of our hotel locations changed from the ones that were advertised to us. I wouldn’t have gone on the trip if I couldn’t have a single room as I’m an introvert and know I need alone time. So, I paid extra for a single room one night when we got to sorrento - low and behold, the room was beautiful and completely not what the rooms were like for our tour group. Our tour groups rooms had mould in the shower, dirty floors, and uncomfortable beds, where the one I paid extra separately for did not. I would like to know why there were rooms available for me to book separately when I was told they were full and I needed to have a roommate, and why there was such a discrepancy in the room quality. There was not one four star hotel in sight on this trip, which is what trova advertised. Additionally, it’s crazy that the hotels trova booked in Naples were so far outside of Naples! That’s so much more driving in a short trip, and additionally the American hotel was in an unsafe neighborhood with staff that clearly did not care about our stay. The electricity was not working in the main areas during our stay. Plenty of the girls got ripped off from the cabs the front desk called for them to get to the airport in the morning. I felt so unsafe there I booked yet another hotel room actually in Naples on a trip that was supposed to be already paid for.

Additionally, 24 people is way too many to enjoyably have a tour. I would recommend capping it at a lower number, and again if I had known that that many people could sign up, I would not have wasted my money on your company.

The only good parts on this trip were some of the tours, my friends from the last trip, and the hosts. I enjoyed the Pompeii tour, the amalfi and positano tour, and the underground even though I think we should have been prepared better from the G2 guide or the underground tour company about whether we could all physically fit or not.

I will not be coming back, and I implore you to do better. I know this is an expensive country at the beginning of peak season, but that does not account for your poor planning or lack of fulfilling the promises your advertisements for...

I've gone on 2 trovatrip outings and they both made the top 5 list of worst trips ever. I did the Laura Whaley trips to Morocco and Jordan and man...literally scarring, both of them. For both trips, the hotels were So Bad and often so sketchy. For both trips, we basically had the same meal every meal, every day, and the meal was bad.

In Morocco it was a tagine with meat and couscous Every Meal and almost nothing for vegetarians (we all lost about 10 lbs in a week). The meals in Jordan were all the same buffet of unsalted super dry pita bread and 30 smears and meat pastes and hummus. Every. Meal.

Both trips, no one escaped their diarrhea fates. No one. The meat eaters fell first though.

It's a TrovaTrip tradition to have the first and last hotels to be particularly low rate. In Morocco the first hotel had this huge blue bull statue in the lobby with enormous red testicles. It took the kitchen 5 hours to feed our group the first night. No alcohol lol/cry. The hallways had motion detector fluorescent lights so you were walking down these super dark echoey hallways until the lights eventually slowly flickered on to thoroughly creep you out.

Also in Morocco, TrovaTrip overbooked our group and had to split us up between two hotels in the middle of Dades Gorge and the hotel half of the group got stuck in was ugly and uncomfortable.

Jordan was so so bad. I can't stress enough how demoralizing it is to eat the same meal that was bad on the first day every day for every meal for the entire trip and pay a lot of money for the honor. All of the hotels were so bad but a special shout-out to the one in Petra with a frigid pool, unlocked rooms where they kept our luggage, stained walls, stained bed covers, and a shower head that bopped up and down due to the water pressure being more than the hinge on the shower head could handle.

Honorable Jordan mention: the geodesic dome hotel in the Gobi Desert with the 50 unaltered, starving and filthy cats wandering around their dining area fighting and breeding and begging for food under and on the dinner tables. The same hotel that had a broken A/C in one of our rented units and the girls that were staying there had a room that was 300 degrees for a day until it was fixed.

On the last night in Jordan, the second TrovaTrip trip, they had us all out on this special meal that was exactly identical to all of the other meals and I literally stood up from the table and left and cried on my walk back to the horrible hotel for what I knew was going to be another sleepless night on a plastic-wrapped cement mattress.

Another influencer that I follow and love has started working with TrovaTrip and even though I trust her taste, there's no WAY I'm giving this company more of my hard earned money to make me miserable with.

I also don't believe that this was at all a fluke. I say this b/c one of the silver linings of these trips has been meeting people I now follow on instagram. For the friends of mine that have gone on future and very recent trips (Galapagos, Tanzania), and these ladies are posters so I would see it, there are ZERO posts or stories showing their hotels. If it was a cute hotel, you can trust that there would be posted pics.

Don't pay these people to wreck your budget and stress you out, girlfriend....