Transat: 2026 Reviews, Contact, and Practical Information

I just got back with my little family from a 12-day CANADAVISION trip with Vacances Transat in Canada with a guide and bus, and I am very unhappy with what happened to us.<br>
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The flight: the plane was okay, but you have to pay for everything (headphones, sleep kit, and blanket). Plus, they crank the AC way up so that you spend 7 dollars on your credit card for their blue blankets.<br>
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Arrival was on time, but we had to wait several hours in the airport because, yes, Vacances Transat combines several departure cities (profitability...), so we had to wait, like us, 3 hours for the last travelers to arrive before we could get on the bus and take a 5-hour bus ride to sleep 40 minutes away from Quebec City (why not just land in Quebec City???).<br>
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Aside from our guide Harold and our driver Gilles, who were top notch, here is what we got despite shelling out 9000 euros:<br>
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Hotels: half the time we were put up in residences that were in the middle of renovations (stay near Quebec City), in hotels frequented by professionals (Laval...) for quick hookups, or even in hotels infested with little bugs that took great pleasure in biting us all over. And quite a few rooms in these INN hotels were so clean that the spiderwebs felt more welcome than we did. Plus, all the hotels are, of course, as far as possible from the sightseeing spots just to make us spend several hours on the bus to get to bed.<br>
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For 9000 euros, my kids didn't even get a bowl of chocolate milk for breakfast. No, Vacances Transat only pays for tea and coffee (continental breakfast, they call it), a slice of sandwich bread, salted butter, and sometimes a glass of orange juice. It is scandalous to have to pay 4 dollars extra to get a glass of milk for our kids when, at the base price, we paid for our children's spots. They knew kids would be on the trip, and at 5 years old, you don't drink coffee (dirty dishwater) or tea!!!!!!!! The guide even paid out of his own pocket for powdered chocolate so we could mix it with hot water to make chocolate.<br>
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For 9000 euros, you get almost nothing except eating very badly (the Mamamia at Niagara Falls was the peak, with frozen food to eat), sleeping in filthy hotels (except in the Appalachians and downtown Toronto), and riding the bus. Because aside from the boat tour at the falls and the Thousand Islands, you have to pay dearly for everything else. And watch out, as soon as you get on the bus, they try to push all the options on you because, either way, if you don't do them, you are stuck waiting around doing nothing on the bus or in front of a cup of coffee for hours. Superrrrr vacation.

We did the USA-CANADA tour last September. It started in Boston, then allowed us to visit the big cities in Eastern Canada (Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto), Niagara Falls, Washington, Philadelphia, and finally New York.

The tour operator was Vacances Transat France, a subsidiary of Vacances Transat Canada. The organizer was GO WEST, an American company.

Overall, the trip met its objective well: discovering Quebec and the major American cities on the East Coast. And the trip was perfectly organized.

One regret: the time allotted for the visit to the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa was too short. The visit is optional, but everyone who went found the place remarkable. As with all trips of this kind, the pace was intense, sometimes even too much so. The fatigue by the end of the trip didn't allow us to appreciate the visit to New York as much as we should have.

This tour was planned with a limited number of participants (30 people). This limitation was very beneficial: management by the guide was easier, the rapport between group members was better, and bus travel was more comfortable. This format is highly recommended.

The driver was an excellent professional, courteous and helpful. The guide, although not perfectly fluent in French, was interesting and very available. Three local guides (Quebec, Montreal, and Washington) stepped in from time to time. Nothing to complain about regarding the bus either, which was comfortable. Plus, its lemon yellow color made it very easy to spot in the cities. A small detail, but important for us.

The hotels, with two exceptions, were comfortable, clean, and relatively quiet. However, at the Quality Inn and Suites motel in Gananoque and the Days Inn and Suites hotel in Lancaster, some people complained about the musty smell in their rooms and the filthy carpet. We actually wondered what the logic is behind putting carpet in rooms that open directly to the outside!

Three lodging locations did not have an elevator, the two motels mentioned above and the Fairfield Inn hotel in Dedham in the southern suburbs of Boston. Yet, even though the majority of participants were elderly, some assigned rooms were located on the second floor. And this was clearly when these hotels were far from full. This is a gap in the organization that deserves to be corrected. A back injury while carrying suitcases, and the trip is severely compromised.