Dear Mr. Si,
Thank you for your letter dated 18 May 2016 regarding the full-day tour of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories your company booked with us for 9 May.
We regret that the driver arrived half an hour late at the pick-up point that day and made the passengers stand outside to wait. In fact, it was unusual, no one expected a bus would come late, especially for such an unreasonable duration. To get to know the reason behind, we had searched for the related road traffic information and talked to the driver. We found out that a traffic congestion caused by a car accident occurred on the way and the bus got stuck therefore. The driver had tried his best to catch up when the roads became clear but is is undeniable that he was thirty minutes behind schedule. Though encountering a sudden traffic jam was unexpected, the bus was still expected to arrive at the pick-up point on time under whatever circumstances. It was indeed our fault of not sparing enough time to get the place in case of any incidents. We will ensure that all drivers can get prepared to face unusual happenings and arrive at the pick-up point on schedule no matter what.
We are terribly sorry that the air-conditioning system of the bus only worked sporadically, making the bus very warm and the passengers uncomfortable. We knew that the air-conditioning system was out of order beforehand. However, as it was during the peak season, all other buses were booked by other tours, and we had no choice but to use the bus without getting the air-conditioning system repaired. It was actually our negligence of not being considerate enough to understand the possible bad feelings passengers might get due to the warm and stiffy environment. We will ensure that the air-conditioning system of all buses rented out is fine by all means to provide a comfortable travelling experience to passengers thereafter.
It is also regrettable that the restaurant for lunch was not booked and the tourists had to wait until tables became available. It was quite an unacceptable mistake, so we talked to the staff responsible for the booking of dining places. He admitted that he carelessly booked another restaurant instead, and he only figured it out after the day of the tour. Although the incident was caused by carelessness of a single person, it led to the suffering of a group of tourists due to long waiting time and hunger. It was surely our mistake of not double-checking the booking of restaurant before the tour. We will ensure that any bookings are confirmed to avoid causing any inconvenience to the tourists in the future.
With reference to your letter, the tour guide insisted on visiting the jewellery factor though some tourists wanted to go back to the hotel, and he was angered when some tourists did not get off the bus to do some shopping. First, we need to clarify that it is actually our policy that tourists must visit all the places listed on the itinerary, and the jewellery factor was clearly written on the itinerary as the last stop. Therefore, the tourists were required to visit it even when the tour was running over time and the tourists were tired, the tour guide was just doing his duty when he insisted that all tourists should get off the bus and visit the jewellery factory. It would be a serious incident if the tour guide forced the tourists to shop as what you described, so we talked to the tour guide to get more information about the situation that day. According to the information given by the tour guide, he was explaining to the tourists why they should visit the factory, just that the tourists were not happy about the idea and ignored the tour guide, he did not get angry at all but stayed in a professional and polite manner while talking. It seemed that the comment about the tour guide only arose from the misunderstanding of the situation.
You requested us to reimburse the $2,050 loss due to a partial refund your company offered to the tourists. However, we are sorry that we cannot refund the money to you as the decision was made by your company only without any discussion with us, and we are not responsible for it. Instead, to compensate any inconvenience brought, we can offer your company a ten-percent discount for every tour joined within a one-year period.
We value the opinions given by our clients a lot, especially important ones like your company, the comments drive us to strive for even better performance.
Please do not hesitate to give us further comments.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Wong
Customer Service Department
Magic Tour Bus Company