India trip quote, is it too expensive?
 

Hello,

Looking for advice from the luxury hotel & travel crowd once again. My parents are looking to do a 26 day trip in rajasthan in november, and I just got a quote from my travel agent which seems outrageous... 80K USD for 2.... When I price out the hotels, internal flights, trains & taking out a 150USD/meal allowance (they don't drink alcohol and don't eat much), I am left with 51 K USD for car, driver, tour guide & visits / entrances for the duration of the stay. so roughly 2000 USD / per day! Is it me or does that seem a bit much? no there are no helicopter rides... heck the flights are on spicejet !

thanks all for yoru advice

A simple calculation USD 80,000/26 days gives you ~USD 3,075/night.

What hotels and what rooms types are they staying at? Assuming entry/mid-level suites, you'd be looking at ~USD 800-1,500/night or thereabouts (and some of these - e.g. Aman-i-Khas - come full-board). A mid- to upper-level suite you're probably looking at ~USD 2,000-2,500/night which would seem fair accounting for the difference if there are added things in the itinerary (flights, car + driver, train, excursions, meal plans etc).

Maybe you could lay out the full journey as it would be difficult to gauge otherwise, but if entry level rooms, it does seem excessive.

Dear Chinmoylad,

thanks for your quick message, here is the details of the hotels.

• Lodhi Hotel, 4 nights, premier room
• Serai Jasalmer, 3 nights, luxury tent
• RAAS jodhpur, 2 nights, duplex suite
• Taj lake palace udaipur, 3 nights, palace room
• pushkhar orchard resort, 1 night
• Rambagh palace Jaipur, 4 nights, palace room
• Castle mandawa, 1 night, suite
• Oberoi Amarvillas, 2 nights, Premier balcony room
• Lalit Khajuraho, 2 nights temple view room
• Nadessar palace varanasi, 2 nights, palace room
• Oberoi Gurgaon, 1 night deluxe room

The one i couldnt price out is the one night in puskhar. But for all those hotels except the one in Pushkar, i get a price tag of 19 000 USD for B&B.

if you calculated $2K/day on top of hotels, thats a problem, even if 1 expensive VIP activity
(clearly cost being paid for driver and guide is nowhere near $1K/day for each of them)

this is problem with tours, many levels of 100% profit markups, $3K/day even exceeds 'typical' $2K/day

also note it is likely they are not paying those published rates for hotel, yet another part of their profit

if it is a tour operator that partners with virtuoso, virtuoso requires them to give an itemized/etc bill

thanks Kagehitokiri, yeah I think I'll try to find someone else to price me this trip and give me a better price.

could say $2K/day on top of hotels is easy no decision, unless they want to give you actual details for you to consider

theres a la carte with some virtuoso partners, though im skeptical how partners of virtuoso et al are 'chosen' (or not)

could look at oberoi, taj, aman multi-destination packages. perhaps some here can recommend driver/guide co

some of the agents here i think would handle entire thing themselves, some say theyve used partners in india

Sent you a message.

Once asked for a quote for a whole trip and it was incredible expensive. If you are ready to organize some things by yourself or at least book different parts separate I guess you can save a lot.

If they aren't wedded to those particular hotels, I would definitely speak to the Oberoi team as they can offer great deals on an "Oberoi journey" including Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur and have previously been happy to let you break up the journey with other locations. The journey normally includes all transfers but they can also arrange drivers / sightseeing guides and the rates for these were very reasonable (and they were generally great quality). Nadesar Palace can also arrange everything from airport pickup to drop off with all sightseeing etc for a good rate. Unfortunately, you end up paying a lot to have a travel agent put it all together.

For a 7 day trip Delhi-Agra-Jaipur in February this year the cost of a car (Toyota Innova) and driver was USD360. Three days of English speaking guiding was USD150.

for trips for my wife and her friends I always use a travel agent who is a very close family friend, the prices you are quoting are very very high,
if you like to get in contact with the TA in Mumbai, please let me know, you can do this over email.

This seems to be a trend amongst travel agents. Scott Dunn managed to turn $17k worth of hotels over a 12ish day itinerary into a $48k quote. In a country that is less developed than India. Stuff like that makes me mad enough that I wouldn't care if they were selling round trips to the moon at that price in the future, they are banned from the Ridefar household.

I used IndiaAgraTravels.com but that was only Delhi Agra and back (Private Car / Mini Van from the Delhi Hotel in Agra and Back & the local Guide for Agra was $200) but maybe he has some advice on which local agency to use.

i guess economy (and maybe trying to control clientele?) has led to changing $2K per day into $3K and $4k per day

chinmoylad, any comments on driver/guide? i cant recall which companies youve posted about in the past