Directional Strategies Travel

I met David Smith with Directional Strategies at a Bridal Show. He was there promoting Sandals resorts, but on the sign it said he was a certified Tahiti expert, so I took his card. We used him to book a 2 week honeymoon to Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora. Since this trip was extremely expensive and involved mulitple islands, flights and boat transfers, we wanted to use a travel agent to book it. David had visited the islands himself several times and was very knowledgeable, however there are a few serious reasons why I would not recommend him or this agency for booking this type of trip. The first red flag came as we debated adding an extra day to our time in Bora Bora. When we finally decided to (the room we had was over $1,000 per night) he told us that actually there was a promotion with stay 4 nights get the fifth night free, so it would be no cost! However he didn't tell us about this until we added the 5th night! We eventually added even more time, but we found that odd that he never offered up that we could get the free night. The biggest complaint I have is that all through the planning process he told us that we would be limited to 44lbs of luggage each for our inner-island flight to Bora Bora. I expressed a lot of concern about this as we were planning a long trip and I am NOT a light packer. His only suggestions were to "learn to pack light". Well I investigated myself online and found on the Air Tahiti website an option for "Z class" that allows each passenger 110 lbs of baggage allowance. I emailed him to request the upgrade and included the link to the info I found, and he replied that I was looking at the wrong airline (I was not- he had it confused with Air Tahiti Nui). When he realized his error, he then wrote to advise he had checked with the airline and that the upgrade was not available for at least one of our flights, so it would not be possible to upgrade us. Some time passed and I continued to stress about the weight restrictions. I spent a huge amount of time reading up on packing light, researching luggage options and ultimately buying several new pieces of wheel-less luggage just for this trip. I was still unhappy though and ended up posting about my frustrations on tripadvisor. Everyone on the site replied that it didn't sound right that the upgrade wouldn't be available and they suggested that we contact the airline directly, which we did. We wrote with our flight numbers, dates and times and they wrote back to advise that yes, the upgrade was indeed available! We forwarded this note to David, who came back again saying that they must be mistaken as he checked again and couldn't get it for us. Again, we wrote the airline, and they ended up upgrading it for us and advising us to pay the difference to our travel agent and he could re-issue our boarding passes. It took several more contacts with him to actually get him to do this... and what was really shocking is that it ended up being only a $25 upgrade to more than double the baggage allowance! We were extremely unhappy that he made this process so difficult, but we didn't want to cancel our trip and have to re-book elsewhere at that point. We felt like he wasn't really working for us, and that is was somehow beneficial to him to not give us the upgrade. It seemed so odd that a "Certified Tahiti Expert" would not suggest upgrading to Z class when his clients were obviously very concerned about the weight restrictions. During our flights, we did notice that almost all of the other travelers had a lot of luggage, so I don't believe that this upgrade is uncommon. Furthermore, we stayed exclusively at 5 stars resorts in the highest room categories available, and this trip cost in excess of $20,000 so you would think he would understand that we were splurging because we wanted luxury... unfortunately, there was an experience on our trip that felt just the opposite. He scheduled us for a 30 minute public ferry transfer from Tahiti to Moorea. It was a huge smelly ferry and a very stressful experience- they take your bags and you don't get any type of claim ticket, I was sure I'd never see them again. Easily the worst experience of our trip. We later met another couple that got from Tahiti to Moorea on a 10 minute plane ride instead. We would have preferred this, but the option was never given to us so we didn't know about it. A public ferry ride really didn't "go" with the luxury theme of rest of our trip, so it doesn't make sense to us that the plane wasn't offered, especially seeing that we "splurged" in every other category. Overall, working with David was an extremely frustrating experience, despite his title as an "expert" it was not evident in the service we received. The upgrade we wanted was only obtained through our own research and perseverance, and we were really unhappy with the lack of attention to detail such as just booking us to take the ferry when a plane was available. We saved up for 2 years for this trip and wanted the best of everything, which unfortunately was made more difficult that it should of been by using this travel agent. Definitely go elsewhere.

I had a great experience with David Smith. We were "shopping around" different agents for our honeymoon to Tahiti, Moorea & Bora Bora. He was the most responsive and provided us with multiple options to satisfy our curiousity & price concerns. We booked multiple excursions with him. He threw in great honeymoon extras for us, and even helped us with a "lite" travel bag due to the puddle jumpers not allowing more than 6 lbs carry-on when traveling between islands. My only issue, was one of the "packages" he provided us with was no longer available by the hotel in Tahiti - they stopped honoring it months prior (which still showed in their website, so no "ding" to David there). I thought working with him was great - he responded very promptly to all my questions/concerns and the walk thru prior to us leaving was very much appreciated. I'd work with him again!

Their office isn't anything to write home about, but Sandra at Directional Strategies was very friendly and knowledgable about Sandals resorts. She was able to answer all of our questions and had many pictures to show.

Sometimes our meetings with her were a little awkward. She seemed to get a rise out of putting us on the spot.

In the end, she ended up getting us a very good deal on our trip to Sandals Grande Antigua. I doubt I will even go to a Sandals again, but that's not Sandra's fault.

Jennifer was fantastic. We went to Maui for the first time and wanted to make sure a professional helped us. She was great- we loved where we stayed, she worked well with our budget, and it was so nice not to have to worry about anything.

Travel agency: Horrible customer service. They were rude to guests and made inumerable mistakes with incorrect bookings. We ended up firing them and calling all our guests personally to not book through this travel agency as they had incorrectly booked and poorly treated our guests.