This is an extremely important blog post about a trip that wasn’t.  Vietnam is on our bucket list so we decided to go in late November of 2018.  A friend had just traveled to southeast Asia and recommended Odynovo as travel agent so my wife wrote an email inquiring about possible trip through their website.  Within a day, we received a response from a Julia Guo, Professional Travel Consultant, that detailed a proposed trip itinerary with lots of details about what we would be experiencing, accommodations, and costs.

  Julia Guo from Odynovo

We fine tuned her proposed itinerary through about 20-30 emails or text messages, all of which she responded to in less than 24 hours.  (N.B.  Julia was in Guilin, China and we were in Chicago, IL USA).  The fine tuning included such things as different accommodations, different sites and different sequence of things. As a small example of changes, on our way home we would have a long lay over in Tokyo and wanted to take advantage of this by seeing a bit of Tokyo.  She had a recommendation nearly immediately.  Along the way, Julia provided cost estimates based on the changes we had requested.  It was as if we had an expert travel agent staying with us in our home and by mid December we had our ‘final’ itinerary!  

We were very excited, booked our international flights (Odynovo arranged all of our travel, including flights, in Vietnam), got our visas (with Julia’s guidance), made some additional revisions to the itinerary and started packing.  BUT by mid January, the news on Covid 19 was very worrisome and we sought Julia’s advice about our different options (we had already paided in full for the whole trip).  Eventually we decided to cancel our trip for safety reasons a few days before we were suppose to leave. 

Now this is really important.  Although Odynovo was under no legal obligation to refund our money, they did, almost 100%.  Julia worked very hard on our behalf and made sure we got most of our money back.  And even better, if we use them on a future Vietnam trip, they will apply what little we did not get back to the future trip.   It was quite a remarkable and positive experience.  

Based on our experience, we have to give Odynovo 5+ stars.  Here are the reasons:

1. Very responsive with clear communications

2. A well planned trip

3. An ethical (tries to do the right thing for their clients) business.

We are hopeful that the pandemic resolves and we can travel again.  Our very first trip will be with Odynovo, hopefully to Vietnam!

Below are two pages of an early document from Julia, full of details.  This made planning for this trip very very easy and clear.