Totally Spain Reviews 

Reply from Totally Spain

Updated Mar 20, 2025

Dear Vita,

Thank you for your fantastic review! It’s always a pleasure working with you, and we’re delighted that your latest journey through Spain and Portugal was another great experience. Madrid, Salamanca, Porto, Santiago de Compostela, and Bilbao make for a brilliant itinerary, and we’re so pleased that everything came together seamlessly.

Hearing that our expertise and service continue to meet your expectations means a lot to us. We love crafting itineraries that balance history, culture, food, and adventure, and it’s wonderful to know that the hotels, guides, tours, and logistics all contributed to a smooth and memorable trip. We’ll be sure to pass on your kind words to our team and partners.

We truly appreciate your continued trust in Totally Spain and would be thrilled to help with your next adventure whenever you’re ready. Until then, we wish you many more fantastic travels!

Best regards,
Ken & The Totally Spain Team

Reply from Totally Spain

Updated May 14, 2024

With regards to your review, I’m lost for words. Your account of your experience with myself is not accurate. I still have our correspondence and this is what happened.
• You sent us a Trip request on Wednesday 09 Aug 2023 for a possible Spain and Portugal trip commencing 8 months later, in April 2024.
• I replied on 11 Aug, asking you a series of questions while also providing ideas for your trip. I also provided in that email links to a whole variety of pages on our website and our blog with information on Spain and in Portugal, so that you could review, and hopefully start to get a better idea of where you would like to go.
• You responded on 14 Aug providing very brief answers. Our trips are all custom made and they take time to prepare and cost, so clarity from clients on where they wish to go, when they wish travel and where they wish to stay is important. Your email did not provide that.
• Being August and high season, I was only able to respond to your email on 24 Aug. We were very busy and had to give priority to those clients traveling in 2023. Your proposed trip was still 8 months away.
• In my email I apologized for the delay in writing. I also advised that I was going on vacation soon and was trying to finalize things before going. I like to be upfront with clients. I then proceeded to provide details for your trip, a link to a suggested Spain and Portugal itinerary on our website that I felt could be tweaked to fit your needs and I provided a commentary of how I thought the itinerary would best work for you. I finished the email saying:
“If you are happy with this itinerary I need you to have a look at flights and give me final (or tentative) flight details.
Arrival & Departure dates, times and airports.
Only that way we can price this trip for you

Let me know if you have any questions.

I am afraid this week is a bit crazy and I don´t have time to talk on the phone.
In any case, we prefer to communicate by Email so we keep track of everything and you receive the information in writing and can share it with the person travelling with you.”

• You responded the next day, not with any feedback but simply saying:

“Belen, have a wonderful vacation! Let's touch base when you return. We don't want to go to Barcelona as we have been there before.”

• That is the last I heard from you. You never sent me the information I asked for. You provided no comment or feedback on my suggestions. And you never “touched base” with me ever again.
• I returned from vacation in early September to a full inbox. It’s true that I did not follow-up with you but I had specifically asked you to revert to me with your flight details or tentative flight details. I had also expected feedback on the proposed itinerary. That information was never sent, despite me having provided you with ample information, suggestions and reading material to enable you to provide me a more concrete idea of the trip you wanted.
• We receive hundreds of custom trip requests annually and we communicate with many enquirers. A huge number don’t follow through with their trip. That’s part and parcel of this business. Clues that a client is not genuinely interested in our service include when they don’t get back to you or when they don’t fully engage in the planning process.
I regret that you didn’t get back to me. I also firmly believe, and our correspondence bears this out, that you were to do so, but you didn’t.
Posting this review 9 months later has left me flabbergasted. It wasn’t warranted and I feel it is not a true account of your experience with me.
I provided you with very useful and relevant information for your trip. I provided you with suggested itineraries. I gave you my ideas and I gave you my time. It cost you absolutely nothing.
What did it earn me? A very undeserved and unfair 1 star review. These are for the lowest of the low and I assure you, I and my nearly 25 year old family business are certainly not that. Sincerely, Belen

Reply from Totally Spain

Dec 10, 2019

This review hurts and has us shaking our heads in disbelief. We don't understand it and we are even wondering is it at all possible that this maybe was a set-up by someone who never intended to travel with us but whose real goal was to post a negative review. We understand from an email you sent to us afterwatrds that this review was deliberately posted across multiple websites and you didn't even travel with us.

None of it makes sense to us. Not the inaccurate content and not the abrupt way "Mr. Marks" suddenly dropped direct communication with us about his custom trip, that we believed he was just about to book with us, to take to Trustpilot to post this harsh and less than truthful review.

We gave him no reason to do so. If it is true that he has booked a different custom trip that costs less with another company then that's fine. Everyone is entitled to shop around but not to post harsh and untrue reviews about companies whose service they haven't fully experienced.

Let me first highlight the inaccuracies in his summation of his experience with Totally Spain and the custom proposal we offered him (or at least the person who communicated with us ).

Firstly he had 5 top winery visits included in his quote from Totally Spain NOT 2 as stated above. 3 were in Ribera del Duero - Protos, Aalta and Pesquera and 2 were in Rioja - Fabulista and Baigorri. He also omitted to mention that he had a multi-course, wine pairing lunch for two included at Baigorri winery.

Secondly, it is not true that he had `a walking tour´ included. He had 2 PRIVATE WALKING TOURS included. One in Madrid with prebooked tickets to the Royal Palace and one in Salamanca. Both tours private and with expert local guides.

Thirdly, it is not true that he "objected to the high quotation" or that we "refused to reconsider the quotation". His entire communication with Olaia was amicable and expressed genuine content for the trip she had proposed to him. Right up to his last email when he asked her for advice on how to save a small amount of money off the overall trip price which Olaia advised him he could do with just a minor alteration to his car rental. We were never asked to reconsider the quotation nor were we advised about a supposed other quote from an un-named "UK travel agent" that was 50% less expensive. This we only learned from this review.

Fourthly, it is wholly inaccurate to compare different quotes from different travel companies where the hotels used in each are different. Hotel standards and rates vary wildly in Spain and Totally Spain only works with handpicked, quality, centrally located hotels of a high standard though a client is free to suggest other properties if they wish.

Data protection prevents me from publishing the correspondence between Olaia (a Spanish native) and "Mr Marks" though anyone reading it could only take from it that he was dealt with efficiently, professionally, promptly and that he seemed genuinely satisfied. No cost was incurred by him for the many hours of work done on his behalf as we believed that he was genuinely interested in booking with us.

We are certain the quality of the trip and services presented by us to "Mr Marks" would be impossible to replicate at 50% of the price we quoted. Why? Because he isn't comparing apples with apples and after so long in the business in Spain, we know what things cost. "Mr Marks" assumption about our margins is entirely misguided.

Totally Spain has been in business in Spain for almost 20 years. We are a small, specialist travel company with a very good reputation that we strive to maintain. We know we can't please all of the people all of the time but I genuinely think we do so, most of the time. Our longevity, customer feedback and level of repeat business would reflect that. In-house we are all aware of the need to do things right.

If "Mrs Marks" was a genuine customer then it is a shame that he didn't travel with us. He would have been delighted with the trip and he would have been extremely impressed with the overall standard as well as the quality, personalised trip documentation that we would have provided to him to enhance his overall experience.

No one to date has ever felt the need to review us as "Mr Marks" has done and deliberately tried to damage our reputation. After posting it he informed us that he had also copied it to several other review sites. Seriously? I don't understand this....... what? Vendetta? Something feels awry.

One last comment in regards to my employee Olaia. She has worked for Totally Spain for almost 15 years handling some of the most discerning clients. She has created umpteen memorable trips over the years and knows exactly how to treat and deal with customers. Even those that are a challenge. Within 48hrs she had created a proposal for "Mr Marks" for a trip that was complex and from a brief that was not easy to follow. I am entirely satisfied with how she dealt with this enquirer. sincerely Ken Baldwin