Outstanding travel services
The travel consulting company Enlighten Excursions, owned by Deirdre Swinson, provided my husband and me with outstanding services in planning the five-week trip we made to Europe in May, 2022. This was a complex trip, and we were not familiar with most of the places we wanted to visit. It involved five countries (France, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and 13 stops. Generally, we stayed at hotels, but sometimes with friends. Except for air travel to and from Europe, we traveled by train.
Enlighten Excursions (EE) managed this complexity adroitly and provided us with a highly satisfactory trip experience. The company arranged our train travel, hotels, and tours, and suggested things we could do on our own. At the onset of planning, we decided together with EE on a budget. Except for an initial consultation fee, we did not pay anything extra to EE. The company’s compensation was taken from bookings. We received regular updates regarding spending.
Deirdre and her team seamlessly incorporated into the itinerary our desire to visit four different sets of friends in three countries, including transportation to these cities. Our trip itinerary was presented in a highly organized way in an app that was easy to read on our PCs and mobile phones. The walking tours they arranged—both private and group tours—were superb. Our guides were knowledgeable and lively, with a love of history. We enjoyed nearly all our hotels, which were conveniently situated close to train stations and the historic areas of the cities. Several of the hotels had “old world charm.” Breakfasts, which most of the hotels bundled into their lodging services, were delicious.
It was evident to us that Deirdre Swinson genuinely enjoys travel and wants for her clients to enjoy their travel. She is the consummate travel professional: highly collaborative and thorough, responsive to our needs and requests, and personable. She and her team actually arranged our trip twice: a 2020 trip which we had to cancel because of the pandemic, and the 2022 trip we just took. We cannot recommend Deirdre and EE more highly.