Really excellent tour. Visited all the iconic sights and places in China. Covered an amazing area of the country helped by bullet train and internal flights so this tour didn’t feel as strenuous as tours I have been on before with other operators. Wendy Wu and our lovely Chinese guide were extremely organised. I think China should be on everyone’s bucket list and I would have no hesitation in recommending Wendy Wu as the best company to travel with. Good standard of hotels and restaurants. Great value.

Hotels were VG. Tours too busy, no time to get ready for dinner after a full day on the go and hot and sweaty. 50 mins one evening . 1 hour another. 1/2 hours was the norm Trying to pack in too many visits. Bus had seen better days. One tour guides English was almost non existent. The others tried v hard but WW could have employed better English speakers. Breakfasts Good , lunches to many courses and all on the table at the same time. Japanese food was v bland. Of the 30 lunches and dinners probably 60% were not to most peeps taste . 28 in the group. Too many. 3 stars because of the hotels otherwise 2 stars

This was our first trip with Wendy Wu tours and it’s worth every penny.

They did everything they could to make this tour as memorable as possible, from personal pick up and drop off at the airports, arranging all the best sights, transport, food, knowledgeable local tour guides and just making sure that every single minute was a pleasure.

We started in Shanghai, then flew to Xian and finally took the bullet train to Beijing before coming back to the Uk via Hong Kong.

All credit to Louis, our hugely knowledgeable tour guide, photographer, interpreter and nanny. His hard work made this tour run like clockwork and we always felt safe and looked after where ever we went.

Go to China, the people are friendly, welcoming and they truly love their country and it’s amazing history.

An excellent tour of the most magnificent spots in Peru, a country of wonderful culture, cuisine and traditions. The organisation, hotels, meals and transport were all of a high standard. The transition to touring at altitude was made gradually so no significant altitude sickness issues in our group. However, Peruvian tour guide Frank Jare turned the trip from excellent to outstanding. His knowledge, organisation, support and most importantly passion for Peru is what puts Wendy Wu tours ahead of its competitors. Thank you Frank.

This is the 4th tour I've booked with Wendy Wu. The staff are always very knowledgeable & helpful... & there is a great range of tours on offer

I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with Natasha, she has been more than helpful and patient with me while I’ve thought about the new tours I’ve wanted to book ! Always a pleasure and can’t wait for 2026 adventures and 5 Wendy Wu Tours to tick off the bucket list

Wendy Wu Tours provide excellent tours. The staff when booking are extremely helpful and courteous. The tour packages are good value with exceptional guiding provided. Itineraries are packed and the transportation within the country is always clean, hotels are excellent and the food is varied giving you a chance to experience the different cuisines throughout the country. I personally cannot fault Wendy Wu Tours.

Well organised from start to finish with good knowledgable English speaking national and local destination guides. They were responsible for assisting the group in all manner of travel and personal issues.
The itinerary was comprehensive and involved travel by coach, boats, airplanes and high speed bullet trains. We were warned prior to going of the difficulty of any terrain, length of walking and alternative options if one was not up to the task that day.
The food usually started with a comprehensive buffet breakfast, followed by many courses of Chinese food for lunch and sumptuous dinners every day. The hotels were mostly four star rated and one or two much better.
Much display of high technology around. Payment apps etc were superb, cash and credit cards acceptable and locals ready to assist when needed.
It is amazing to see the thousands of locals including tourists all mingling together with no pushing or shouting. The same applied to road traffic and travel. Everywhere we went was kept clean and spotless and this is on the roads and trains too. There was no rubbish or plastic lying around anywhere. There were beautiful parks and open spaces for residents to enjoy activities or walk around. All beautifully laid out and maintained to a very high standard.
However you need your passport all the time for entry to venues, hotels, trains and a mobile phone that can work in China with adequate data. If you purchase data from abroad before entering China you can still use WhatsApp. Also get the Ali Pay app with a foreign bank visa/master card pre-registered, then shopping and paying for purchases is easy.
However because of thousands of high surveillance facial recognition cameras all around and law enforcement officers it seemed very safe to wander around the towns and places we stayed. The whole experience is welcoming, eye-opening, super efficient and a wish by the organisers to let you enjoy and have a memorable trip of China.
We had heard of Wendy Wu tours from friends that highly rated them, and have not been disappointed with our decision to book with Wendy Wu. We will certainly consider going with them again on their other tours.

I've been on tour with Wendy Wu before and my most recent interaction was in keeping with the high standard of Wendy Wu Tours which is wht I keep coming back to Wendy Wu.
Staff members are always friendly and helpful, especially in the most recent case when our tour had to be cancelled and we received consideration and expert advice on possible alternative options.
Would always recommend as, whilst on tour, Wendy Wu guides don't let anyone down.

I think the holiday is overpriced. Whilst we enjoyed the holiday we would have benefitted by learning more about Japanese culture. We had some long coach journeys which would have been an ideal time to learn about this. The holiday could be improved by including a geisha show, sumo wrestling and a visit to old Gion.

Japan was very busy and I think Wendy Wu should have reduced their numbers to 20. The guide could not successfully manage such a large group of people with varying needs. Some could not keep up with the guide. I would suggest smaller groups and using their own guides rather than topping up with freelancers.
We booked the holiday because we had an amazing Wendy wu trip to Vietnam and Cambodia last year.

We are not planning to use Wendy Wu in the future. Since returning we have booked two more tours - with other companies.

This was an extremely expensive holiday for what we got. We paid over £16,000 for 2 people for 15 days. Accommodation in Japan is not expensive and although the hotels were 3-4 stars and very nice, they did not have a bar or social lounge to relax in for us and chat to the others on our trip that we had met. None of the hotels were located in the centre of the towns that you could walk to a bar or explore either. Therefore we were off to our rooms at 8pm because the hotel restaurant would close at 8 or 9pm. In particular, the Hotel in Tokyo was badly located, very disappointing when we had 3 nights here and a free day! We chose Wendy Wu as we travelled with them in 2010 to China and had a fantastic trip and they were the only tour company that covered ALL meals. Not knowing the language we didn't want to try finding restaurants to eat and try to work out what the local food was. Having been to all the main towns many places are written in an English version or you can use a translater app. Having 3 meals a day was too much. The food was very similar, raw fish, 1 tempura prawn 2 veg tempura, rice, not many noodle dishes Ramen style. miso soup, some beef in a hot pot you cooked yourself. We wanted to experience Japanese meals, but 30 meals was just too much! If they cut out the lunch meal it would have been perfect as most of us left a lot of it, this would then allow more time at the temples, shrines, shops etc. Most of us just fancied a coffee and cake for lunch or even a burger!
Our guide was trully lovely, Chiyami, she was fun, knowledgeable and looked after our every need. If you have a food allergy you will struggle, not many restaurants cater. So a tour with less meals would be your option. We all thought the cherry blossom was a disappointment after all the hype in advertising. We were there in the height of blossom but the tours do not take you to the famous sights and most of it is white blossom. The UK have far more blossom!
Japan is a wonderful, safe country and the people have to be the nicest nation in the world. So care free, relaxed and all so friendly and helpful, despite the issues above we enjoyed the sights and the people we met.

Japan Uncovered – Review : Departure 29 March 2025

This was my third group tour with Wendy Wu. I’ve previously travelled to Vietnam and India and had an excellent experience in all respects both times which is why I came back for a group tour to Japan. I have dipped into various Japanese cities briefly a few times as ports on cruises. I liked what I saw and wanted to come back for a more in depth experience which is why I booked the trip for its comprehensive and varied looking itinerary.

1) I used Wendy Wu to book my international flights and upgraded to Premium Economy. The airline used was ANA which I found to be prompt and punctual on all flights. I flew to Tokyo Haneda then an internal flight to Osaka. My only niggle is that the timing of the flights meant I got to the hotel at 11.30pm well after every other member of the group so missed all the usual introductions and hellos. The flight home from Tokyo was excellent as I had a free seat next to me and effectively had the space and leg room that the business class seats had to myself. Pick up and drop off at airport was very good by luxury minivan ... as I was last to arrive and one of first to depart. Generally the rest of the group were just given tickets to the general airport bus ...not good and smacks of penny pinching.

2) Overall I found the tour to be good in terms of content and the itinerary – a balance mix of big cities and smaller areas. Id give it 1 3.5/5 overall - it would have be 4/5 but the Tokyo experience brought it down for me. There were however a few niggles which did impact my overall experience which I’ll come to shortly.

3) Group size of 26 – mixture of UK and Aussies/NZ. The UK numbers bigger than Aussies this time. A very pleasant group to travel with, however I think I would have preferred a smaller group of 15-20 as many of the areas visited were very crowded which can make it difficult at times. We had earphone/receivers but the sound was often very crackly.

4) I don’t think Level 1 is at all accurate for this tour – there are very many steps and inclines at a lot of the sites visited and also there are times where you're walking 10 mins from car parks to the entrance of a site and then walking even more. The pace felt quite relentless in the first 5 days and the bottoms of my feet felt very sore for a few days – sticking them in an ice bucket every night helped! Level 2 is probably more accurate. The pace slacked off a little as the tour progressed which was a relief! It is after all a holiday not a Boot Camp march. I walked around 85 km in total over the whole tour and didnt do some areas so the total walking if you did everything was in excess of that.

5) Guide Chiyomi (Chi) Nakata was excellent throughout – enthusiastic, friendly, informative and well organised. Guiding 26 people around often very crowded areas with no hiccups and no losses is no mean feat! She did a great job.
Drivers – all excellent safe drivers.

6) Hotels – generally of a decent quality and location but I had issues with 2 of them. Hotel Kanazawa in Kanazawa … my room was clean but felt dingy and depressing. The pillows were heavy and uncomfortable ..no idea what the filling was but I don’t think feathers or hollowfibre!.. the AC didn’t work meaning I had to open the window and keep it open all night ..very noisy since hotel was opposite the rail station.. and then there was the high step to the bathroom which I tripped on twice. It felt like being in a very basic student study bedroom. The initial response I got from Wendy Wu on this was that they were surprised as "never had negative feedback" on it before ..I don’t believe that one ..and that a team member had stayed recently and found it “basic but comfortable”. Well given that Wendy Wu is a big source of ££ to the hotel I suspect the room they had was far better than my cell.

The hotel in Tokyo was extremely disappointing. The hotel itself .. optimistically named “Sunshine Prince” is old, dated and in real need of a refurb immediately. The beds are rock hard, the décor is Travelodge 80’s era with scuffed walls and carpets and the AC barely functions – fortunately it wasn’t that warm in Tokyo, 20C tops - and then another high step to the bathroom. The lifts were extremely slow at all times other than early morning or late night. The location – for me – was terrible. The only positive I can think of is the convenience store on the ground floor. We were in Ikebukuro area which was quite a distance to the north of the city centre areas like Shibuya or Shinjuka. To get to the centre took around 40mins by bus or cab and similar on subway .. and subway can be very confusing if youre not used to it .. many lines, many exits and yes crowded. The only thing to wander around was the attached shopping centre. It felt a bit like booking a weekend in London and anticipating a West end hotel but actually finding out you're in Borehamwood. I much prefer a central location as that gives me the ability to wander round the surrounding area and get to attractions faster – couldn’t do that at this hotel which I have to say very negatively affected my stay in Tokyo. I’ve previously stayed closer to Shinjuka on previous pre-cruise nights and this was a much better experience. The tours in Tokyo were essentially all places I’ve seen before so I would have preferred the option to explore independently. The tours were practically identical to tours I've done from a cruise ship. Friends on another Wendy Wu Tour a week ahead of mine said that their Tokyo hotel was very good and much closer to downtown. I paid a LOT of money for this trip – no2 in my all time spending behind Antarctica .. where I got incredible bang for my buck.. - and with this Tokyo hotel I honestly felt ripped off, annoyed and feel that a big chunk of my time in the city was wasted and I seriously question why Wendy Wu uses this hotel... well I can guess ... ££ .. Wendy Wu dropped the ball big time here – why shoot yourself in the foot like that? If there was the option of cutting short stay here and heading home early I would have honestly done so.

7) Food – The Japanese food was consistently good but it did get quite repetitive after a while with a lot of it being bento and hotpot cook it yourself style. Western style was ok. On some occasions if I didn’t eat all the bits in the bento – eg cold veg isn’t my thing and neither is the slippery jelly kinds of tofu - I was hungry again only a few short hours later and searching for a convenience store. Quality of hotel breakfasts a bit hit n miss, luke warm always. Some restaurants for lunches better than others – the Italian restaurant in Tokyo for example where we were shoved into a corner near the entrance on high stools in the bar area where the actual restaurant itself … which you walked through enroute to the toilet was nice, spacious and NOT full. The food was OK but essentially looked like a plate of "everything on the menu". I would have liked more variety like simple but filling bowls of ramen or udon, some gyoza, teppanyaki, yakisoba etc. I'm certainly not convinced we had the best experience Japan had to offer food wise. Don’t think I’ll ever knowingly touch tofu again. Maybe an obvious thing to say here but if you dont like Japanese food that much then you probably will struggle.

8) Other. As to be expected there was lots of Shrines, Temples, Castles and Gardens... which do kind of blur into one after a while. There were some cultural bits such as Tea ceremony, Miso brewery, Sake brewery, paper making and a brief walk round a wasabi farm but they all felt very brief I would have preferred more like maybe how to do bonsai, meeting a local family, meeting Geisha and Maiko, making gold leaf, sushi making, Kabuki, Sumo or food tour round local food markets.

9) Overall – good varied itinerary, an excellent guide, very pleasant group of travellers but given the points raised above I cannot honestly say this represented good value for money and this is very different to my previous view of the Wendy Wu trips I’ve taken before where all aspects were completely outstanding. Knowing what I now know I'd advise a shorter trip and dont necessarily feel you have to go to Japan at the - most expensive - and busiest time of Cherry Blossom. You may well enjoy it more when its less crowded.

The holiday was action packed and the tours were well planned. Restaurants we visited were varied and excellent quality. All hotels were top quality with Hotel Clad near Mount Fuji being exceptional. I particularly enjoyed the onsen there.