We went on a trip to Italy through Brooklyn based Lodestar International Tours in May.
We knew that all previous tours had been conducted by the same scenario.
There was a tour director solving day-to-day problems and local licensed guides in each Italian city.
Our tour was very different. Our tour director served as a tour guide. The tour was terrible.
She knew very little about numerous cities we visited. Our vacation was ruined.
We have learned that in Italy it's illegal for unlicensed guides to conduct guided tours in cities.
The licence of tour guiding in Italy is released by a municipality or a regional authority; it means that if you are licensed in Rome you cannot conduct tour in Venice, Florence or any other place but the city/region that released the licence.
We were risking to get a huge fine by the local authorities for using services of the unlicensed guide.
We contacted Lodestar asking to present guide`s licenses. They insisted that they were using only licensed guides and promised to provide licenses but finally were unable to provide any prove.
So-called "guide" does not have a license for a single Italian city.
We were defrauded by the company.
We paid the same amount of money as all groups traveling to Italy before us and received high quality
licensed guides. Quality of our tour was unacceptable. 32 out of 34 tourists in our group would like to launch a lawsuit against Lodestar.
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