Hallmark Travel Pty. Ltd.

Charmaine helped me plan a surprise trip to Italy for my other half, and it was honestly the most amazing and stress free experience for us! Charmaine suggested good places to go, and organised transfers to different areas of Tuscany for us. We stayed in the most beautiful places and stayed UNDER my budget! As someone who plans everything to the tiniest detail, I was so impressed by the detail within all the emails from Charmaine and also the pack we were given before we went away. Everything was easy to understand, meaning we could relax leading up to our holiday. Charmaine was always there at the end of the phone or an email if I had any questions, and was so supportive and patient with me. We had to postpone our trip twice due to the pandemic, and due to Charmaine's calm nature and knowledge, it was not a stressful experience for us - we just couldn't wait to go! Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for the most amazing trip. I 10000% recommend Hallmark Travel to anyone and we will definitely be back to get the ball rolling on our next adventure. Thank you for everything! xxx

Jo booked the holiday we had chosen. It was great , it took away all the anxiety of the on line booking procedures. It was so nice to have a real person to speak too. Thank you Jo. Bring back travel agents

We had a wonderful holiday. Thank you for recommending Silversea. As a first cruise, it exceeded our expectations. The ship, facilities and service were impressive. We so enjoyed the places we stopped and the excursions we went on. We certainly were lucky with whale sightings. We loved the Alaska panhandle, although Anchorage showed a different side to Alaska.

I believe this is the first review I’ve written but I feel I need to share my experience so other people don’t fall for the same mistakes that I did. My partner and I chose Hallmark to help us plan our 3 week winter break to Australia. We are quite independent with our planning but we thought we might need some assistance with this specific trip as it was Christmas time and we didn’t want the stress of organising it ourselves…..how wrong we were. We had the pleasure of dealing with Charmaine when she actually turned up to our appointments, wasn’t late or generally answered our calls or emails. We weren’t needy by a long shot but were very disappointed to turn up to an appointment that had been booked weeks in advance to discuss our holiday only to arrive and the staff not know where Charmaine was until 10 minutes after our appointment start time before informing us that she wasn’t able to turn up. This should have set alarm bells off in our head but we had read good things about the company so gave them the benefit of the doubt. For a time, it was going well and things started to take shape, we still had to wait days and sometimes weeks for responses on questions or confirmations and Charmaine refused to take our calls. The problems didn’t truly start until they issued our tickets 2 weeks before our trip though. We enquired why these couldn’t be released early to save the stress of rectifying any issues, but were informed it was out of their hands and everything would be fine. However, a very important part of our holiday was mis-booked or overlooked by Hallmark. On the car hire documentation my partner was the lead driver. We had mentioned in a previous meeting with Charmaine that I would be driving and my partner would not, this was acknowledged by Charmaine. To rectify the issue, they were asking that we paid £90, inferring that it was our mistake - but fortunately we found written proof and were able to persuade them otherwise after some very rude and blunt emails from Hallmark. To mitigate the costs to Hallmark I can only assume we were provided with an inferior standard of car. We also discovered in that meeting that the ferry time initially written in our plans had been booked for the incorrect time. Whilst on holiday, having driven 3+ hours from Port Fairy to Apollo Bay we arrived to find that the accommodation that Hallmark had booked for us had been cancelled back in April yet we had only received confirmation 2 weeks before we flew out. We were left having to find somewhere to stay on boxing day night, having contacted both emergency numbers for Hallmark and Gold Medal with no response. This took us some time and impacted our evening and the following day, Hallmark were unapologetic when informed and passed the blame to third parties. In addition, the way the day trips were booked seemed to make no sense. We ended up seeing the same stretch of road 1.5hrs 6 times. We were staying in Cairns first and the trip that was recommended and booked for us was the Great Barrier Reef trip which is based out of Port Douglas. We then stayed in Port Douglas and the trip that was recommended and booked for us was the Kuranda Skyrail which is situated just outside of Cairns. This resulted in us having to get coach transfers for both trips that not only was charged at an additional cost but wasted hours of our holiday. There was no thought that went into arranging these for the benefit of the us the customer. Having chased up Hallmark for a refund for our accommodation we had to purchase whilst out in Australia multiple times, when we did finally receive it, it was simply put into our bank and a receipt sent in the post. There was no cover letter, no phone call and absolutely no sign of an apology for the inconvenience caused. Throughout everything we have found Hallmark very rude, unapologetic and they have certainly not taken any ownership of the issues we have encountered. The experience has put us off travel agents for the foreseeable future!

Great, friendly and knowledgeable people :

First class service. We wouldn't book with anyone else.

Very very helpful charmian

Lovely personal service

Friendly and efficient.