Dear SharonS,

Thank you for your feedback.

Insight currently contacts past Guests as long as they have given their permission. We ask that Guests tick the relevant box and provide their email address on the questionnaire that is completed at the end of the tour.

Your local Insight office will then send e-newsletters on a regular basis that contain useful information and our latest news.

Insight does contact passengers before travel when they pre-register their details via our FastTrack online service. An email is sent to passengers which contains further travel information relevant to their tour along with links to the Bulletin Board.

Understandably we can only contact those Guests who provide us with their details and we hope that as FastTrack becomes more popular with future travellers we will be able to correspond more with clients.

Alternatively anyone can sign up to their local region's e-newsletter via our website. At present the link for Australia can be found on the home page. Passengers in other regions can sign up via the 'Brochures' tab - however I will ask that this facility is made more visible on the homepage for all regions.

Thanks and kind regards
John
Moderator

Thanks John for your detailed response. Maybe the travel agents need more education on what Insight have to offer their travellors as there is so much good information available on this site.

I rarely visit the Insight BB, but after receiving the E-newsletter & reading about the 2010 BB tour we are certainly quite interested. I have voted for the one we would like to take & look forward to reading more info as time progresses.

I see that the Balkans & Dalmatia tour has the bigger % of votes at the moment and will most likely end up being the tour of choice for the BB tour next year.
Now if Insight want to make the "Enchanting Italy", one of their regular tours, I'll be more than happy to do another tour of Italy with them. That itinerary and the pace, in my humble opinion, is great. To each their own.

It certainly looks as if the Balkans and Dalmatia is far and away the most preferred tour for the 2010 BB tour with 52% of the vote in its favour.

I was one of the people that voted for the Balkans because at this stage in our travels we look for something that is a bit different and, although we have been to Dalmatia with Insight in the past, this proposed tour for the BB opens up new areas for us with Romania, the Transylvanian Alps, Bulgaria, Albania and Bosnia.

One unfortunate aspect of the proposed tour starting in Bucharest and ending in Belgrade is that we do not have direct flights between Australia and Bucharest or Belgrade. However both Star Alliance and One world have flights with only two stops en-route.

I also would have preferred the tour to be a little longer than the proposed 15 days (the Portugal, Spain, France proposal is 17 days and the Italy proposal is 21 days). Perhaps if this does turn out to be the selected area for the tour then Insight may consider looking to see what additional places of interest might be added?

As for the time of the year to travel I think I would suggest somewhere around August-September as June to September has the lowest average days of precipitation and average temperatures are between 21 to 24 degrees Celsius (70 to 76 F) which are quite pleasant temperatures indeed.

It would be great if many of the BB members who were on the 2008 BB tour were able to together again in 2010 as I enjoyed their company immensely and would look forward to once more catching up with them in person.

I look forward to reading the future comments and details from Insight on the proposed 2010 tour and take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Insight, and particularly John Boulding, for taking the time and effort to do something special for the Insight Bulletin Board members. This goes far beyond what is expected of them and far exceeds what any of their competitors would do.

THANK YOU.

Geoff

Firstly I must say I totally agree with Dragon about the generous time spent by Insight staff to provide "something different" for its Bulletin Board members. I can't imaging any other travel company doing something similar.

That said the Balkans & Dalmatia Tour did not receive my vote as it is not an area we've ever wanted to visit and it looks like once again we'll not be joining the BB members on tour. Our hearts are still set on Italy and as Pauline said the proposed "Enchanting Italy" Tour had the perfect pace and itinerary for a tour and I hope that Insight offer something similar in the near future.

Here, here, Dragon! We also prefer the Balkan tour. All things being equal, we look forward to seeing you, your wife and as many BB 2008 travellers as possible. August and September suit us too.
We are doing the Insight Sicily and Malta tour this September, but one has to plan ahead!!

Bill and Diane

Dragon I too was surprised to see that the Balkans tour was only 15days, but after reading the itinerary I think its long enough but I was hoping for a 3 night stop some where. We would have to come in a day before the tour, like we did on the last BB Tour. I just hope this time instead of eating dinner at the hotel we go out to some local restaurants for our included dinners.
I have chosen to do this tour because I have been to Italy before. I have done most of Eastern Europe, Russia and Baltic States and I think the Balkans would finish that area for me.

I haven't looked at the flights from Australia but I think we will need to fly into Frankfurt or Istanbul and get a connecting flight.

August -September would be a good time to travel- we don't want to fly high season.

Tupps

It certainly looks like the Balkans. It is a trip that we would love to do, but the logistics are daunting. Madam needs seven Visas and only two of the countries have Embassies in Thailand, for the rest we have to go through Embassies in Australia (two), Indonesia (two) and Malaysia (one).

Madam has total faith in my ability to organize this. Unfortunately her faith is totally misplaced. However we shall soldier on and no doubt will sort something out. I suspect the first requirement will be to get her a new passport, I doubt that she has enough pages left in her current one.

I also feel that 15 days is a bit short. However we would probably be flying through Istanbul and it might be possible to combine the president’s tour with a tour of south east Turkey that we have been considering. That is another Visa, but at least Turkey has an Embassy here.

It would be great to see you all again!

Hi Geoff,

quote:

I also would have preferred the tour to be a little longer than the proposed 15 days (the Portugal, Spain, France proposal is 17 days and the Italy proposal is 21 days). Perhaps if this does turn out to be the selected area for the tour then Insight may consider looking to see what additional places of interest might be added?

I was also a little surprised when my Balkans & Dalmatia Tour had 5 nights chopped off the front end (3 nights Istanbul and 2 nights Sunny Beach, Bulgaria). I had previously posted a "Your ideal BB tour duration?" poll topic with [15-18] days receiving the same number of votes as [19-22] days. I have always preferred longer tours so I submitted one of 17 days ("CR of Portugal, Spain & Southern France tour") and two longer ones of 20 and 21 days ("Balkans & Dalmatia Tour" and "Enchanting Italy").

I had always assumed that Insight would throw in some other, perhaps shorter itineraries. I was very surprised therefore when Insight chose my three proposed itineraries for voting.

My best guess is that Insight cut 5 nights off the front of my Balkans & Dalmatia Tour to give BB members a wider range of tour durations. Assuming now that the Balkans & Dalmatia Tour will gain the most votes, I don't know whether Insight would consider adding back some nights, without repeating the whole polling process, given that some of those who voted for it may have chosen it on the basis of its length.

---

Hi Pauline and OzJohnno,

I'm glad you liked my "Enchanting Italy" itinerary. I put an enormous amount of time into researching that tour and apart from the relaxed pace, it includes many places/activities that will be entirely new to many past visitors to Italy with Insight or similar companies.

phil

This message has been edited. Last edited by: phil,