Charming Travel Destinations - El Monte, California

Gabriel S.

Just came back from our Japan trip with Charming and loved it! Charming was great especially due to the fact that right before our trip a typhoon hit Osaka and closed that airport and then on the day we fly out another typhoon hit Hong Kong where we were supposed to then fly into. Talk about bad luck, right, note-to-self get travel insurance next time! haha Charming was great and was able to reroute our flights two different times in order for our trip to happen. One of those times was while we were at the airport waiting to fly out so that they could find us new flights on such short notice was mighty impressive of them! They did also give us the option to go at a later date as well which was nice. We were initially a little wary of a guided trip as up to this point all of our trips have been self-booked and planned. However, it was amazing and have to give a shout out to our awesome guide Alex! It was nice to hear about Japanese culture and traditions from Alex who has first-hand knowledge which we wouldn't have gotten if we planned this trip ourselves. Japan was beautiful and we hope to go back again someday only regret is that our stay wasn't longer!

Steph A.

I was really looking forward to this trip for a glimpse to japan. While David A was very helpful in answering my questions before the trip, which I appreciated, the trip itself felt like a let down in several ways. There were 45 people on my tour and they only allocated one tour guide for all of us, I felt he was very overwhelmed at times with such a large group. At one of the sights we spent 2 hours at a pearl factory for shopping and only 40 mins at Kyoto sightseeing. I'm sorry but I didnt pay over 1k a person to stand waiting for people to shop for pearls.

The next day we were supposed to go to Mt Fuji and our bus broke down our tour guide had no idea what was going on because he was waiting for a call back from the agency. Instead of leaving at 8am our bus didnt get fixed until after 1pm and by time we got to Mt Fuji it was 5pm, dark and rainy we couldn't see anything. Rather then reimburse any of us for the day they gave us a voucher for a buffet at the hotel.

Many of the sites felt very rushed we couldn't really enjoy it and had to keep rushing just to take pictures. I felt very overwhelmed and stressed, as did many other travelers in the group.

I would not recommend this tour company for traveling to Japan. I travel usually 4 times or more a year for leisure, and havent experienced anything like this before.