'It's a great alternative to a city break': behind the scenes on the TTG Riviera Fest fam

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Jo Reeder, TTG Media 

Hello and welcome to TTG Riviera Fest, where I’ve been accompanying nine travel agents on board Riviera Travel’s Lord Byron on an eight-day tour of the Rhone, Burgundy and Provence. The guests onboard have enjoyed historic tours of towns and cities, walking excursions, vineyards, wine tastings, and here’s what the agents have to say about their experience on this beautiful ship.

Jacqueline Davies, The Holiday Village

The cabins are quite roomy, you’ve got lots of little nooks and crannies to empty your suitcase, you’ve got lots of space for your clothes, you’ve also got a fridge, you’ve also got a safe. You have a lovely setup of an espresso coffee machine, you’ve got a kettle, a spacious little bathroom and you also get some really lovely toiletries to use. The cabins can be split into a double bed or a twin setup, whichever your preference is.

The beauty of this cabin as well, is it has a what they call a Juliet Balcony, where you can just open the patio door and you’ve got railings alongside.

Tracie Cook, Travel Counsellors 

I’m actually really impressed with the array of things there are to to join in with here, there’s this great game on the top deck called cornhole, which involves tossing bean bags into little holes basically, but it’s really good fun and it’s proven really popular with a guests. There’s also putting green which brings out competitive streak in most of us.

For a bit of relaxation there’s a small plunge pool which is a lovely place to sit and have a drink with your friends if you want to catch some sun on the top deck, so that’s really good. Inside we’ve got everything from quizzes to music recitals, piano playing, there’s music for dancing, so there’s quite a lot of choice actually. I was really surprised, I think I thought it would be quite sedentary and we’d be sitting reading books and so on – there is small library incidentally – but there’s also a spa, there’s a sauna, there’s a steam room, so a fantastic choice.

Jenny Whiteside, New Hope Travel - InteleTravel 

I found the food amazing to be totally honest with you, always eating too much! But the choice has been incredible and the flexibility to be able to be eating downstairs in a more formal environment to coming upstairs here in the lounge where you can literally sit and chill, so it’s been really great. 

And then of course every evening has been incredible, and of course you have to taste everything – it’s presented in such a way that you can’t not – and of course I did room service as well – and you’ve got to do a room service because that’s just another experience all together. And of course we had the chef’s dinner last night, his signature dinner and wow, wow, it was amazing, so definitely, just coming here for the food would be a reason I would do this.

Leanne Buckingham, Hays Travel 

I found the service on the ship really excellent, they’re very attentive everyone is so friendly, all of the crew, we even got to meet the captain and he’s talked about everything in the bridge and that was really good. But the service as a whole has been superb, we had some people in our party that had allergies and they went above and beyond to try and sort that out for them.

It’s such good value really in a holiday, you’ve got obviously all your food, the superior drinks package and obviously all the entertainment and and an excursion every day, some days there were two, so you know, it’s it’s just a great value holiday.

And my top tip would be, if you’ve got some clients that like doing city breaks, this is a great alternative for them because you get to see several cities in the one trip. I think the excursions have been really good, there’s something for everyone, there’s been a lot of walking excursions, but if you felt like you wasn’t up to the walk there was other options like tuk tuks, or little trains, it’s been really really good, we’ve seen some lovely things.