Curious Tourist Travel

I found Melissa through a Unilocal search, and I have more positive feedback to add here. I very much like her style. She efficiently arranged a big trip from Virginia to Australia and Dubai in a short amount of time. We specifically wanted to run in a couple of endurance races as well as do touristy things and she made it happen for us. She arranged flights, hotels, and tours, and all went smoothly. Thank you, Melissa!

Melissa with Curious Tourist has been fantastic to work with! We used them to book our upcoming family trip to England/​France/​Italy. It’s by far the biggest trip I’ve personally planned and I was overwhelmed with where to start. Melissa listened to all of my ideas and took the time to really understand what we were looking to get out of the trip.
Her turn around for each phase was very fast, and she was patient and flexible with my revisions to the itinerary. Since we’re traveling with a 6-​year-​old she took extra care checking with each of the hotels to ensure that we would have enough space for a roll-​a-​way or extra bed.
She was also very knowledgeable in suggesting tours and excursions that we might enjoy when I requested them, but not at all pushy about adding extras to the cities we already had plans in.
I am so glad that I found Curious Tourist, Melissa has made me feel very comfortable and excited about our trip this summer, I am so pleased to have everything scheduled and booked and can’t wait to get on the plane and experience the trip!

We used Curious Tourist for a trip to Germany and the Czech Republic in 2011 and were extremely pleased with the results. The owners have been to pretty much every corner of the world, and speak several languages between them, so they have plenty of experience in most places you want to go. Perhaps even more importantly, since they’ve traveled so much, even if they haven’t been there they know what you’ll need to have a great trip.
It was a very quick turnaround from the time of our request until options were presented to us, and they were great about modifications we requested. The hotels met our needs and budget, the locations were great, and prices were fair. I’d highly recommend their travel services!

Curious Tourist was great to work with for my Kenyan safari. I’m an experienced traveler and wouldn’t normally use a travel agency to make arrangements for me, but for a 9 day adventure in Kenya, I knew I would need some help. Melissa incorporated the ideas I had found (there was a luxury tent resort I knew I wanted to stay in) with suggestions of her own and it all worked out wonderfully and in fact exceeded my expectations. The trip was far better than anything I could have planned on my own. We had drivers to take us anywhere we wanted to go, they found us an awesome resort in Mombasa, planned activities for days that we needed them and also allowed for plenty of downtime, and worked within our budget. We never had to worry about anything once we hit the ground in Kenya.
Sometimes throughout the planning process I would change my mind about things, and Melissa was always very patient and prompt with getting back to me and tailoring the itinerary exactly to my specifications. I would definitely use them again and recommend them to friends.

Melissa and Zach are a godsend for vacation planning. We first tried out their services when we needed to go to New Orleans for my cousin’s wedding, and they were able to get us a convenient travel package for a fair price. It helped that they had been to NOLA before and could make some personal recommendations; one of our favorite recs was the evening historical ghost tour which we might not have thought to try if it weren’t for them. They also found us options for culinary tours at our request. :)
Our latest request for them was for our honeymoon. We were already so focused and stressed from wedding planning that it was an easy decision to enlist Melissa and Zach’s help by giving them our preferences, timeline, and budget for our honeymoon, and they helped price out some great options for us to choose from for multiple countries. We ended up choosing Mexico for the value, and it was just what we wanted and needed after our wedding festivities were over.
While they will plan a nice vacation for you both domestically and internationally, I think their international experience with traveling is the most valuable thing about their services. They’re adventurous and have tried both the touristy things and things off the beaten track; they won’t have an issue with giving you great travel tips and good deals. :)