“10 Out of 10”: A Group Leader Shares Her ACIS Experience

French teacher Rachel has been traveling with ACIS for more than twenty years and has come to expect great service. On route to her most recent trip to France, freak acts of nature (i.e. a fire in the plane engine!) set in motion a series of airline delays that would make even the most seasoned traveler upset.
With another company, the trip might have been ruined from there, but Rachel had ACIS with her through the full process of rebooking flights, and even getting a hotel between layovers. Although the start was rough, we made sure the rest of the group’s time in France was nothing short of la vie en rose.

Check out Rachel’s testimonial video where she shares more of her recent travel story and what a difference ACIS made in making things right.

“I wanted to commend ACIS for the amazing job they did on our trip, especially when we had issues while traveling. Overall, I’ve been traveling with ACIS for over twenty years, and I have always come back with zero complaints.

The travel this time was amazing even though we lost one day due to our plane catching on fire. They totally helped us to recover everything that we missed except for the one event that we had missed visiting the school, our exchange school in Paris.

But overall quality I would say, was in top ten out of ten – except for it being so crowded in Paris, which ACIS could not control and maybe a little bit of a downpour of rain – ACIS was amazing in the transport and the hotels and the food.

The flight situation with United was rough. So, I wish that we could have not had that problem. We were supposed to take a direct flight, and we ended up being diverted to Denver and Indianapolis and Chicago and DC. It took us eight flights for our group of fifty five to get all the way to Paris.

But we did arrive, and we had to go straight to the Louvre. The minute we got there, we dropped our stuff off in the hotel. Our tour leader was amazing and really helped us to adjust, during our trip so that we could make the most of our trip.

The one thing that I was the most grateful for was when we were diverted to Denver the first night, ACIS was on the phone with us. Their emergency call center was totally there for us. And although it was ultimately United and American that helped us resolve our flight issues, ACIS helped us to book a hotel, a day hotel. They looked it up for our entire group, we were able to go and rest at a hotel for three or four hours at no cost to us. It was covered in our travel insurance.

And the itinerary moved – I mean, they kind of build in a free day the first day we arrived intentionally. So we actually didn’t miss much except for the dinner with our exchange school.

I would highly recommend ACIS.

They actually bailed us out many, many, many years ago when we had a tour organized with another company that actually went bankrupt after we had paid for everything. ACIS stepped in and gave us a trip to France for, like, I don’t know. It was, like, five hundred or a thousand dollars per person. And I have worked it was originally with Anne Freeman and then more recently with, Jeannie Page. It’s been really amazing, the help that I’ve gotten. The students, as you can see in the other video, they have gained resilience.

They learned how much they can survive without sleep. They realized how much they need to prepare for travel, with carry ons and taking their medications with them and just always being ready for anything that could happen. But mostly, I just was impressed that ACIS met us in Paris. They were on the phone and texting us. Emergency support was with us all along, and I really couldn’t have asked for more. Thank you.“

Student Highlights

Hear what some of Rachel’s students had to say about the highlights from their France trip, from their favorite moments on tour to the top things they learned.