Tailormade Tours - Vietnam

A well established tour operator in Indochina who will tailor the best of Vietnam to suit your timing and budget

We all want to plan our perfect holiday, but sometimes the practicalities of putting it all together – knitting flights, transfers and hotel availability, choosing the best itineraries and booking the best guides – can get too much. That's where a tailormade tour operator comes in, helping you create the holiday just as you'd like it and then taking on all the boring stuff: making bookings, arranging prepayments, checking schedules and generally making sure that you don't have to spend a night out in the cold (or warm) because you've forgotten it's a leap year.

In Vietnam, we have partnered with Exotissimo, based in Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City, who have been designing and arranging top-end bespoke holidays in the region for over 15 years. You can choose which places you’d like to cover and roughly how many days in each, they'll advise you where to stay and how to travel between them, book tour guides (their own staff) and hotels (based on our selection but not limited to it), and arrange payments (you just need to make one – to them). If you ask nicely, they'll even suggest a few hidden gems you might not have thought of: hiking to colourful markets in the villages around Sapa, exploring the sea-caves of Halong by kayak, doing a family treasure hunt around Hanoi by cyclo.

Why we chose this partner

• They're well established, with 15 years' experience, winning the Vietnamese Tourist organisation's 'Top Tour Operator' 2 years running; they have 14 offices and a good mix of foreign and local management
• They employ their own guides, which means they don't struggle to find freelancers in overstretched places like Siem Reap and Luang Prabang; and they train them well – Unesco courses, 1-day Red Cross training, excellent English – and assess their performance through feedback
• All their vehicles are air-conditioned, and their drivers are careful and punctual. Their bicycles are sturdy Trek 4500 series front-suspension mountain bikes
• They work with local communities to protect the area and foster its people: they have helped build 2 schools in Akha villages in Laos, and have brought Duke University students to work in Cambodian NGOs
• They guarantee your tour will cost no more than an identical product through any other channel - though, of course, it will almost certainly cost more than if you research and book all the individual elements directly (you're paying a small premium for the service and the backup)
• Lastly – the acid test – they helped arrange our own labyrinthine trip to Indochina: a total of 8 guided tours, 20 ground transfers and 7 flights spread over 3 countries, not to mention numerous hotel and restaurants – and all without a hiccough (OK, we once had to wait 5 minutes for our driver at Hanoi airport…)