Kimkim Trip Reviews for Iceland

Great planning and coordination, however hotel accommodations were a bit out of control in terms of pricing and availability. $350 each night was expensive- were there alternatives such as renting a van that could sleep 3-4, just a thought. Thanks!

No orientation. Voucher incorrect for Arcanum ATV tour at Vik. GPS waypoint incorrect for dropping off the rental car. Hotel reservation incorrect Day 4.

The service from Rico and Halldor was fantastic. They were very easy to work with and communicate with.

Our trip was excellent, actually, however there are some things related to our itinerary that would have helped us manage our time better during the day. For example, including how much time we might need for certain hikes and warning us which roads might be gravel/dirt and might take us extra time to navigate would have been helpful suggestions. We had a dicey drive heading out to Elephant Rock and ultimately had to turn around and skip that stop because Route 54 was full of potholes and impassable with our smaller 4x4 vehicle. We also had to skip a hike to Skaftafell because it would have been 3-4 hours round trip and we didn't get to Vatnajökull National Park until later in the afternoon. Also, the GPS we received from the car rental company wasn't useful. We should have ended up getting the wifi hotspot instead. We did end up using Google Maps for the whole trip, though, by downloading our itinerary for the day in the morning before we left the hotel.

First, the positive comments. Iceland was a beautiful country to visit and our accommodations were very comfortable.
However, we were quite disappointed in the effort put out by your sub-contractor, Wild Westfjords for a number of reasons. We had expected the same level of service as provided to our friend, Susan Turner.
The itinerary that Susan was given showed a choice of accommodation at each location and specified the cost at each. We were given one choice with the note that if that wasn't OK, we could be offered some thing else.

Upon arrival at the Hotel Fron on Day 1, we were asked to pay for the room and that there had been no request for a gluten-free breakfast. It took a couple of phone calls to clarify both issues.

The itinerary put together for us seemed to rely a lot on "cut and paste" with little attention to detail. Some examples are:
We learned from the Hotel Fron that the bus stop designated for pick-up for the Golden Circle Tour no longer existed.

Our voucher for the Dimmurborgir Guest house did not state that breakfast was included so we bought supplies only to find out that breakfast was included.

Our Day 6 itinerary stated 466 km on well paved roads. It was somewhat disconcerting to find ourselves on a long stetch of extremely potholed road. Consulting the map we had bought confirmed we hadn't gone astray and that the road section was identified as gravel.

As a volunteer at a conservation area, I was looking forward to visiting the Arctic Fox Center. I was upset when arriving there at 4:15 to learn they had switched to a 4PM closing as of Sept 1st.

Day 8 suggested viewing the teeming bird life near the Svortuloft Lighthouse. The info sign at the lighthouse indicated that all the birds depart before the end of August. Our bird count - zero.

On Day 9, the instructions to visit the Landbrotalaug hot spring near Eldborg were useless to someone who did not have a GPS. A simple instruction such as"Within 200 metres of the turnoff to the Gerouberg Basaly columns, turn on a road marked Stora Hraun and travel 1.5 km on a terrible road to the hot spring" would have been more appropriate.

We were somewhat dismayed to learn that we had a 8AM reservation at the Blue Lagoon although we realized that this was the only morning time available on that day. However the staff at the Hotel Geo kindly informed us that this only meant we could not enter BEFORE 8 AM and that a 9:30 arrival would be perfectly OK.

Our conclusion was that not a great deal of thought had been put into preparation of our itinerary by Wild Westfjords.

Our major concern, however was the lack of financial accountability and the refusal by Wild Westfjords to give us an accounting of the costs of our accommodation, car rental, etc. I do not buy their contention that these are confidential between WW and their suppliers and that we bought a "package". We were advised at the Hotel Fron that the booking there had been made through Booking.com. All the bookings could have been made through Booking.com and those rates are known to the public. Further Booking.com has a 24 hour cancellation policy in most cases so there was no reason why we could not have paid for accommodation upon arrival rather than paying for the whole trip in advance.

The bottom line for Kimkim is whether we would recommend your services to friends planning to visit Iceland. At this point our response would have to be NO if you were to subcontract the service to Wild Westfjord and no financial accountability was provided.

The trip was close to perfect. Great choices on destinations and activities. One day was overplanned: it would have been too much to get off the ferry at 17:30 in Brjanslaekur, then drive to the cliffs of Latrabjarg, then drive back to Patreksfjordur. So we skipped Latrabjarg.
It was fun to stumble on the Wild Westfjords office in Isafjordur and meet Halldor, Preeti, and the kids. The next day we got to spend a good bit of time with the family. We drove up above town to a ski area to take a lovely hike. When we got back to the car, it had a flat tire (our second of the trip). When we were having trouble getting the tire off, I called the office. Halldor and family actually drove up to help us, made an appointment at a garage to get a new tire, and arranged for a reimbursement from Enterprise. We felt very well cared for.

Friendly and responsive staff. good itinerary. We enjoyed the trip very much.

Navigation directions had inaccuracies or were out of order that led to skipping some destinations or having a "phantom" starting point on one of the detours.

Not clear if going on a potholed road all the way to Látrabjarg makes sense, since the puffins leave in mid August.

Very helpful for a very last-minute vacation! We loved some of our lodging accomodations and really enjoyed the sites you suggested.

Preeti was very responsive at every moment that we needed her, and she created a terrific itinerary for us as we knew little about our destination and what we wanted to see.

The driving plan didn't include GPS coordinates or addresses for each location which made navigating hard at times. Some of the hiking trails that were mentioned and sites to see the written directions weren't sufficient enough to easily locate trails/site.

Halldor was very responsive during planning however the driving plan lacked the addressed/GPS coordinates needed to easily navigate the island from place to place.

Chris' attention to detail was really appreciated. He did an excellent job with our trip from my first inquiry through to his "check in" note during our travels. We really enjoyed the out of the way and less visited places he suggested, and the hotels were fabulous!

As stated earlier Chris was friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. His suggestions were excellent, particularly his advice about how much we could realistically see and do in 3.5 days

Response time was excellent, and the expert was very accommodating to my requests

Our trip was an amazing experience, we enjoyed the "adventure" of the suggested route, focusing on West and North Iceland. However, as a first visit to Iceland, we were disappointed we did not spend more time in Reykjavik and area. It deserves more. The suggested activities and places to see along the route were not always organized according to the drive. I also think it would be more helpful in the planning stages if you had more knowledge of the traveler(s) - sort of a "get to know your clients". All in all, it was great. Chris did a great job. Thank You.

It seemed to be an excessive amount of emails back and forth to get things settled.

It was a huge relief to have Edda plan our trip. The route, plan, and hotels were terrific. It would have been nice to have seen the details before we arrived in Iceland.

This was my first experience using kimkim and I'm now a huge fan. I had a last-minute trip to plan and little time to do so and kimkim connected me with a wonderful travel agent. I felt completely confident sending funds to someone in another country I had never met because of the structure of kimkim and other's reviews. I would never have found this travel agent without kimkim but I'm so very glad I did. And I appreciated the ability to look at potential itineraries before making a choice --those examples made it easier to explain what I wanted to do and what we didn't mind missing.

Preeti was amazing. She really close attention to my requests and created a trip that was so much more than I could have on my own. Her knowledge of the area made such a difference--she gave me tips about "not-to-be-missed" sites off the beaten track that made our experience so much richer. I was (very) late in asking her to put the trip together and yet she took it in stride, working quickly and efficiently and staying in touch. She kept the fact I was traveling with a child in mind and created days that were great for both of us. This was a trip we will always remember, and I'm so grateful to Preeti for putting it together. We'll be back!

We had a difficult time sticking to the timeline as it seemed there was too much stuff for us to do in a day if we wanted to sleep in until about 8 and be at our hotel by 6 or 7 pm or so. Would be nice to have discussed how much we wanted to squeeze in one day. Otherwise, fantastic recommendations. All the restaurants, hotels, hikes, etc. were fantastic. Iceland is amazing.

Chris was prompt in responding to any questions and did a great job of booking all of our hotels and flights and relaying the information to me. The only improvement that could be made here is to add a feature for saving all of your booking numbers, confirmation numbers, etc. for each flight, hotel, car reservation, lagoon reservations in one place. It was kind of confusing trying to go back and forth between our itinerary and my emails. Because I had to book the massages at the lagoon, I screwed up and only booked one, but that was totally my fault! Little things like that got confusing - like what I had to do vs. what Chris did for us.

This was such a great experience!! All we had to do was follow the itinerary. It was so detailed and so easy to follow. Thank you so much kimkim!!

Chris was great!

Of course we had a wonderful time. The difficulties we had were 1. connecting with Ben after we arrived in Iceland. He didn't answer his phone, so we had to use the emergency phone number. 2. Enterprise Car Rental gave us a car which had two very worn rear wheels. We had a flat tire on the rear right side. We had to take the car to a mechanic, who said that the rear tires were illegal in Iceland and unsafe to drive on which is why we had the flat tire. This took time out of our trip, which was a disappointment. 3. We were promised that Heimir (sp?) would pick us up from Enterprise Rental when we returned our rental car and would drive us to our hotel. He had to back up of this agreement due to a delayed plane flight at the airport, so we were stuck. I asked him how I was supposed to return the GPS and he told us to leave our GPS with Grayline counter at the bus terminal when we were heading to the airport, but Grayline was not happy about this.

Without the help of Chris McCarty at Kim Kim, I would have been lost attempting to coordinate hotels and find sights around the coastline of Iceland. The timing from one location to another was perfect. This made a once in a lifetime trip as efficient as possible. Thank you

Very nice trip overall

Halldor did a great job at answering all our questions. He was prompt and always gave us options. The advice was well received and everything worked out great. He delivered on every request we had. Great job!

Halldor did a great job and gave us an itinerary that was very well balanced. We visited some of the most popular spots, but there were also special places that had very few people and just as beautiful.