Sharon Carr Travel Agency

My husband and I have traveled with Sharon Carr several times to fabulous world-​renowned locations and had pleasant experiences. Recently I booked a gastronomic Italy trip with them for a girlfriend and I which was less that wonderful. The specific cities selected for this customized trip for around 35 travelers were the obvious choices considering the theme of the trip but certain aspects of the trip were not pleasant on this trip of a lifetime.
Sharon Carr books with Trafalgar for many European destinations. We have learned a lot now as world travelers and I will tell you, there are better companies to travel to Italy with in my opinion. The hotels selected were marginal at best. In fact, in one area in the foothills of Tuscany about 30 minutes from Florence, the Hotel Villa Pitiana was dreadful, dirty, obscenely in need of some major repairs as well as qualified exterminators. We were scheduled to stay there for 3 nights. Fortunately, my husband back in Dallas, was able to secure rooms for us in Florence so we left as soon as possible and headed for our new digs. This of course offended the Sharon Carr and Trafalgar folks but we were simply not willing to remain in the filth and disrepairs situated in the rooms booked for us by Trafalgar and Sharon Carr.
As a result of our insistence to move to new hotel rooms, we were branded and gossiped about the remainder of the trip. We rejoined the group each day for the scheduled events paying our own rooms for the two nights in Florence, our own taxis, etc. Still, it was obvious, we became the topic of lots of conversations resulting in a less than wonderful travel experience spearheaded in large part by the Sharon Carr representative on the trip. Talk about adding insult to injury!
We were supposed to have cooking lessons, well, we had one fantastic cooking lesson with the most charming chef. In my opinion, there should have been at least one more. This was rather disappointing. Moving on…
Other challenges to consider, the allotment of time for some of the destinations was ridiculous. We were given one hour and fifteen minutes total in the beautiful village of San Gimignano. This should have been at least a half-​day excursion. Almost all of the folks on the tour made comments about this. Then, our last day and we only had one day in Venice was shortened as we sat for one and a half hours in the tour coach because of the annual Venice Marathon. Why didn’t Sharon Carr and Trafalgar research this and prepare for alternate schedules and routes to accommodate for this. I am a former marathoner and I know bloody well these things are placed on city schedules a year in advance. As a consequence, we missed a lot of Venice due to poor planning and preparation for the group tours for this amazing city.
My husband and I are planning another trip in the spring of 2015 to Italy, Croatia and Sardinia with other couples. We will not use Sharon Carr or Trafalgar for this next trip. I am saddened by the lack of preparedness and ineptness observed from both companies. I suppose you can become detached and forget your customer’s needs from time to time. I absolutely get than you cannot please all the people all of the time but when you begin to take for granted your customer base, this is when you get in real trouble as a business. At this point, this is my interpretation of Sharon Carr’s group. I sincerely hope this post grabs the attention and immediate changes are put in place. If not, I suspect there will be more and more disgruntled travelers forthcoming.
But to end on one positive note, the tour guide we had was very knowledgeable and enjoyable. My husband and I have learned over the years through our many trips to Europe and other destinations that you can hire certified and extraordinary private tour guides through the web and a little research.
In the meantime, travel safely and be prepared. Know about the hotels, get everything spelled out for you ahead of time. Without a doubt, Italy is well worth discovering.

If you have the time and inclination, please read all of Sharon Carr Travel’s response. the very first paragraph seems as if they are truly apologetic and are saying hey we screwed up and we’ll be more careful from now on. But OH NO, this is more typical Sharon Carr Travelese and this is exactly what you can expect from them. The person who gave us the gift certificate told us she’d no longer do business with them because of their inept service concerning various trips Sharon Carr Travel had booked for her.
Note the following remarks trying to justify their poor services by putting the blame on the client.
1) «He rejected this idea and demanded»
2) «Dimitrios was quite frank with my agent, to put it as nicely as I can»
3) «I made the decision to offer him a full cash refund of his gift certificate»
4) «ended up with a hotel that was not ideal. All of which he was forewarned of»
5) «became abusive»
Number 3 is not true, I was never offered a refund which I would’ve accepted in a heartbeat. Think about it, if I had the certificate refunded to me I could’ve very easily done everything myself avoiding a lot of frustration.
The rest are, again, Sharon Carr Travelese. #4 was 65 Km away from the port and I had no warning, as I mentioned in my original post. As always, If you want any proof of my experience with this «company» IM me and I’ll send you the documentation including emails, tickets, etc. I’ve saved them all.
By the way, the «little known Island» Sharon Carr Travel mentions is the 3^rd biggest in Greece. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere – you’ll avoid a lot of frustration.
PS the reason I sent a list of travel agencies is that Donna Knowles asked me to do so.

My husband and I used Sharon Carr Travel to help us with our train itinerary for our France trip. Pat was able to pull up all the schedules and tell us exactly what to do upon arrival into Charles de Gaulle airport. Her guidance made our travel around the country easy breezy and we would’ve been clueless with out it! Pat also suggested some locations and gave us insight on a few towns we were unsure about including in our route to the French Riviera from Paris. Thanks again, Sharon Carr Travel!

We booked a trip last December through Sharon Carr Travel after hearing promotions on KLUV radio for years. Beginning with getting the tickets, hotel credentials, etc., for the wrong people with the same last name and ending with us missing our flight due to her agency never calling for our group after we stood in the baggage line for two hours (yes, partially the airlines fault that we were in baggage check in that long).Our boarding passes were all together had someone called for us. I wrote a letter, not wanting compensation, but a simple apology and I got a caustic, rude, hateful letter back, calling me, in so many words, a liar, signed by Sharon Carr. We returned on a flight with other disgruntled SCT group members, we have been in contact with the passengers we exchanged business cards with and everyone concurs that her agency is a very shoddily run outfit. There is much more to this that I haven’t included here, but trust me, it was a disaster.