Anderson Scandinavian Tours

Dean Anderson was very helpful and informative. He helped my wife and I have an amazing tour of Sweden. He even arranged for us to extend our tour and stay an extra three days with our family in Stockholm!

My wife and I did a tour with Anderson Scandinavian Tours a couple years ago. The tour itself was pretty good, but the good part was mostly because of the tour guide we had - not so much because of Anderson Tours. The biggest negative issues were in the planning part of it. the owner lied to us essentially throughout the planning phase, telling us that our arrangements were being processed - for 7 months. We finally got our flight itinerary a few days before time to leave. Even then, we weren't given seat assignments, and couldn't get seat assignments until we checked in or paid extra for the privilege of buying the seat assignments. Then, we were booked on SAS (Scandinavian Airways). I will do my best to never travel on SAS again. Their seats are so cramped and uncomfortable, and poor service. The leg room and seat width was like on a regional jet, and the seats were hard. It was obvious that Anderson tours had waited until the last minute to get the discounted bookings. Then, to make matters even worse, he booked us on a connecting flight with 30 or 45 minutes between flights with terminal changes. We made it in time to catch our flight (barely), but our luggage didn't make it with us. Then, thanks to the poor service of SAS, our luggage didn't catch up with us for several days (and we were still on our trip). There was no customer service agent to help us at the airport on arrival. we were given a form to fill out, which we did. After that, we could not contact ANYONE at SAS that would help us, and NO ONE would return our calls. Our luggage just happened to show up on the doorstep where we had been staying (listed as temporary while on our trip) as we were leaving town to head back home. 5 days with no luggage and no communications. They didn't even let us know the luggage had been located and was on its way??? I realize that is an issue with SAS, but Anderson chose to use SAS, and apparently, based on other comments, that isn't uncommon.Also, while in Scandinavia, we had to change hotels at least once or twice, and our tour group had to get split up at least twice - once, the hotels were like a mile or more apart. At least most of the hotels were fairly nice. I would rate most of them 4 star, but I would not rate most of them 5 stars.Also, some of the meals, you have no option what you eat. They bring out the same thing for everyone, and that's what you get. For example, one meal, we got a full rack of ribs - that's it. No vegetable, nothing besides a rack of ribs. Is that a meal??? I have to say though, that at least most of the meals were good food choices, and as I recall, all of the food quality was good.Final item. Be sure to keep your "itinerary" that Anderson sends you when you first look at the trip. You won't be given another one when you arrive for the trip. Since we booked our trip several months in advance, I had forgotten that I had seen an itinerary (very vague and basic) when we left for the tour. I found out when I was talking to another tourist in the group who had brought her itinerary with her.Overall, if it wasn't for the tour guide, I would rate the experience 2 stars. Our tour guide definitely helped a lot. If you don't get as good of a guide as we had, you will likely not be happy.

This Tour agent is not recommended by me at all. Last August he set up a tour for our group and the group ended up having to PAY out of pocket for a hotel and several meals. This has not been reimbursed to us and it is very disappointing. We are out of pocket $3500.00.