Departures Travel

Ronnie is lovely to work with, very inviting and knowledgeable. I would definitely recommend her.Thank you Ronnie for making a bad situation (my father is very sick had to go to Toronto to see him) manageable.

I can't say enough great things about Carolina. She is so knowledgeable, friendly, engaging, helpful, and positive, and she will always give you her honest thoughts, opinions, and feedback about any type of trip you want to take. She has helped me plan epic, life-changing vacations around the world, and I completely trust any suggestions she has for new adventures. Her advice has saved me countless times abroad, and she has no hesitation in answering any questions I might have. She has a natural, and effortless ability to take the stress and complication out of any travel planning experience. Carolina really is the best, and I wouldn't trust anyone else to help me plan future adventures. Go see her, you won't regret it. You're guaranteed to leave with a smile on your face and the comfort of knowing your trip will be amazing!

We booked a mystery departure" with Departures Travel and Colleen. It was amazing! Perfect way to still get out and have some fun while adhering to all the public health orders. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone looking to get out of their house for a little while. There are so many things to do close to home that you wouldn't even think of! Colleen planned an amazing itinerary for us full of things we enjoyed and had never even heard of AND she was extremely prompt and communicative with all of our questions around covid restrictions. It was fantastic and her itinerary coupled with her professional communication made us feel perfectly safe!"

Colleen Jhonson is a Five Star Travel Agent with Departure Travel. I use Colleen for all my travel and always feel confident that if there are any problems she will handle them, calmly. We booked a cruise for Nov. and cancelled because of the virus. She got our money back. Some of my friends have not been so lucky with their travel agents or travel plans.

From the moment she picked up the phone, I felt completely comfortable working with Carolina. With how overwhelming planning a vacation can be, we are so grateful to have had Carolina’s passion and knowledge and attention to detail. She seemed to be almost as excited about planning our trip as we were! Carolina was patient while we looked into a few different date options, and always had helpful suggestions about things we hadn’t yet considered. We especially love the idea to take little gifts from Victoria to give to the locals at the resort instead of just leaving tips, something to make the whole experience more warm and personal. We highly recommend Carolina and can’t wait to plan our next trip with her!

Booked a vacation for a special occasion and for the most part, were satisfied with the help we received. No huge upsells, even when I was willing to be upsold -- I had to suggest the higher room category and premium class flights to our agent.A couple caveats so you can avoid the issues we had:A. Fees were never discussed with us, but they are additional. Our past travel agent experience was that the agent was commissioned, so we didn't pay fees directly. On this occasion, having not heard otherwise, we assumed it would be the same. Alas, we were billed an additional amount for agency fees by Departures along with the final payment of our trip, with no forewarning. This despite having had numerous discussions about costs of the trip, and exactly what was being billed when. So beware that whether it's discussed or not, Departures will take money from you for their services. Yes, I should have asked -- but given my past experiences, and that it wasn't broached with me, I made an assumption that was never corrected.B. If you book an all-inclusive trip through an agency, and then need to make adjustments or, in the worst case, need to cancel by a certain deadline, you'll be dependent on the agency to make those changes (with most carriers/tours). This is a bit annoying to begin with (blame the carriers, not the agency!) but to make it worse, Departures is not open on evenings or weekends or holidays. So bear in mind that deadlines won't mean anything unless you work on the premise that it's the last business day before the deadline, and before 5pm. You might get lucky and catch your agent working on a weekend, but there's no way to just dial the agency and ask for help -- you have to dial an extension for your specific agent, who most likely won't be available when you need them. All that said, we did find our agent quite responsive and helpful, as much as she could be given the limited hours.I'm not sure we'll use an agency again, because of the two points above (one of which is Departures-specific, and one of which is just the nature of booking through agencies), and also because in the age of the internet, we can do most booking ourselves fairly seamlessly. But if you are booking a complex trip, or need help, by all means, these are very nice people who know their stuff. Just beware the downsides!

We booked a resort in Mexico through Departures. They were very quick on replying and providing us with the information we asked for. However, when we arrived in Mexico we were told to check in to a different resort then which we had booked. After a long conversation with the resort and 24 hours of travelling we were tires and just wanted our room. So, we gave in and checked in.As soon as we got to our room we emailed Departures to see if they could look into why we had been moved to a different resort. The Departures employee told us they would look into it. Unfortunately, we never heard back for the rest of the trip. We even emailed them 2 other times towards the end of the trip with zero communications back. I realize this isn’t all the travel companies fault but some communication back would have been nice.The real disappointing thing about this was it was our honeymoon.

Departures Travel on Oak Bay Avenue has been our travel agency for many years. The staff is friendly and courteous with experience in all types of travel world wide. Our travel agent Colleen Johnson in particular has been amazing not only in facilitating routine travel arrangements but she has gone out of her way to assist us with travel difficulties when flights, cruises and tours are cancelled at short notice.

We were very fortunate to work with Colleen at Departures Travel for a family holiday to Mexico. Colleen worked with us to find the perfect location that gave the my husband and I the quiet we needed and enough activities to keep our grown children enthused. The details of having us travel from Victoria and our kids from Toronto, right down to the seat placement on the airplane and room location at the hotel was perfect. We appreciated the follow up upon our return to ensure the holiday met our needs. We look forward to working with Colleen again!!

Cathy,I just want to say that Fiona, just as she was leaving for her vacation, putting me in contact with Colleen, and it was a real blessing. Both ladies worked very hard to make sure I was taken care of. My flights home from Peru were all seamless, I know they came through the Oceania Agent, but information was passed on as soon as they got something. It was a bit of a tense time as Peru was shutting down everything very quickly. Colleen and Oceania came through, and we arrived home, tired but safe and sound……and with all our luggage! I will wait for Fiona’s return to start to deal with Oceania and rebooking the cruise. Thank goodness we had interruption insurance, but I think, as long as we can rebook the cruise and have the excursions etc. we are all good! Yes we still want to travel!Kudos, well down and thanks again.Shelly Holob