Customer Reviews
When you return from your Belle France holiday we give you the opportunity to give us your feedback. Any comments you may have, both good and bad, are gathered and displayed both here and on our holiday pages. By giving this feedback, you not only help us to improve our holidays and service, you also help other travellers make an informed choice about their holidays.
We've kept the feedback questions as simple as possible. When you give your holiday feedback, we ask you to rate both the holiday and the service you received. For each of these we give you four options - excellent, good, poor, or bad. We then invite you to make a comment on each element.
Below is our most recent feedback, unfiltered and shown in date order.
If you would like to contact us, please do so.
- Service (1/5):
Wildly overpriced Luxury Grand Cru cycling trip. The gourmet restaurant in Pauillac on day 1 is never open on Mondays or Tuesdays but those are two of the days Belle France says you can start the tour. We were in Pauillac on Monday, so dinner was at a bistro where we were offered the 35 Euro set menu. The hotel was fine.
The private chateau in Margaux was a filthy unkept place and the restaurant was the same. The 30 Euro set menu was acceptable, the breakfast less than that even.
The chateau promised on day 3 turned into a clos in Marcamp with a clean but tiny room. The cafe was a taxi drive away and while it was good it was not a gourmet restaurant. Here at least we were free to select from the entire menu so I guess they were given 35 Euro for each of us.
St Emilion was as promised - a luxury hotel with a gourmet dinner. We met some people who booked the same tour with Cyclomundo for about 1/4 the price, using the same company in France to provide logistics services. I would recommend that since they even provide the maps electronically and the money you save for 2 people will easily cover the cost of a room and dinner at the Hosteliere du Plaissance in St Emilion, which was the only luxurious bit of that trip.
Belle France has offered us a 250 Euro refund. Too little too late.Belle France: I have looked into the photos that you sent of Chateau Margaux and I can only apologise for your disappointment on arriving at this hotel. Of course there will always be a variation in the quality of the hotels, as this is the nature of a holiday when you are staying in a number of accommodations during one trip. Taking into consideration that Chateau Margaux is an ancient chateau and comes with a certain aged charm, perhaps a bit more shabby chic than chic, we would however expect the cleanliness of the accommodation to be of a high standard. We did offer to call the hotel following your phone call to change the room or have housekeeping sent to your existing room which you did decline. As we have only ever had good feedback from previous clients regarding this hotel we were of course surprised to hear your comments, but we especially thank you for bringing this to our attention so that we can look into the matter more closely.
I have read the email correspondence regarding the confusion of the first nights dinner and I can see that we have not clearly explained on our website that on certain days when the hotel restaurant is closed, dinner would be in a nearby restaurant. We will of course rectify this on our website so that it is clearer for future clients and again we thank you for bringing this to our attention.
The other people that you met that were on a similar holiday were in fact not staying in exactly the same hotels, or had the same dinners or route... it was not an exact replica of our holiday and therefore the price would indeed be different. Our holiday prices are very clear on our website and clear to all clients at the time of enquiry and when making a firm booking.
Again I can only apologise for your sense of disappointment in the holiday which is normally very well reviewed by our clients and again I offer you the £250 refund as a gesture of good will, should you wish to accept then I ask that you please return to my email correspondence.
very kind regards
Lorna
27th June 2019
Your Burgundy Prestige à Pied holiday
Service (4/5):
Service was very good. We would have found it much more helpful, if GPS tracking was included, as we found it at times difficult to stay on the track, just from written directions.Belle France: thank you for your comments, we are indeed considering adding GPS tracking as an extra to the marked maps and comprehensive route notes for future holidays, and it is actually available on request on a few of our tours already. We appreciate that this is fast becoming a preferred method of map reading for many clients.
10th June 2019Product (4/5): Some of the accommodation was not up to the standard promised. The Hotel Gentihomiere was really not up to the prestige level which we purchased, and the food was so-so.Belle France: We are aware that this hotel is not at the same standard as the others on this prestige tour, I do try to explain to most clients that due to the nature of remoteness on some of this route, we are limited on hotel choice, and sometimes and especially on this occasion a hotel is chosen primary for location and/or for the excellent restaurant. I thought I had informed you of this at the time of booking and I sincerely apologise if this had not been the case.
10th June 2019Your Seine Valley River Walk holiday
Service (5/5):
Very helpful and when ferry not available due to bank holiday they made alternative arrangementsProduct (4/5): Good route but descriptions could do with an update- Service (4/5):
Your French agent Evazio was excellent, the best maps and directions we have ever had. So clear and never got lost once. Your Mountains to Med Walk with Belle France
Service (4/5):
The Mountains to the Med walk was great, we got to hike through some pretty remote areas of France.
We thought that the communication was good, however we didn't hear from office approx 1 week prior to leaving for Europe so it was very last minute before we received the notes. As it was self guided it would be best that the information is sent upon payment of hike.Belle France: We are so pleased to hear that you enjoyed your walk on the Mountains to the Med route. We apologise for sending your pack out just one week prior to your start date, we normally send the holiday packs out to clients 4 weeks before the departure date and I believe in your case we were waiting for some maps to arrive from France and this held back the pack for longer than we anticipated. We do hope that you will consider Belle France again and we will ensure your pack is delivered in plenty of time for future holidays.
Kind regards,
The Belle France Team.
30th April 2019Product (3/5): We think that the cost of the hike was priced a bit too high compared with hikes that we've done before.Belle France: We check our prices regularly to ensure that we are competitive with other companies but we also believe that our 30 years experience, knowledge and personal service offers good value for our clients. We sometimes have special offers too which are worth looking out for, I do hope that you are subscribed to our emails so as to be kept up to date on these for future bookings.
30th April 2019- Service (5/5):
All the arrangements were superb; everything worked well. Your Agen to Sarlat through the Lot Valley Holiday
Service (5/5):
Good communications with me and an excellent itinerary with very good hotelsProduct (5/5): Great bike ride, everything worked as promised and very good hotels. The bastides are on top of hills, so I got plenty of exercise. It was good I selected an electric assist bike.- Service (5/5):
We had a brilliant holiday with Belle France. Very well organised. Everything went very smoothly. Beautiful scenery and walks were organised.
Service from the company office prior to our holiday was prompt and professional. Your Along the Leisurely Loire cycling holiday
Service (5/5):
Excellently organized self guided bike tourProduct (5/5): I was very happy with the lovely little guest houses/hotels conveniently located in the heart of the towns in the Loire Valley- Service (5/5):
We were delighted with the accomodation and restaurants booked for us, the ease of luggage transfer and the route mapped out fir us. A memorable week in Champagne!
Read on Feefo