Lemontour

Nice trip to Etna and taormina

If you are sure that you will have the perfect conditions for your trip, you only need to know that the Taormina part in Etna+Taormina tour is not guided. You literally get dropped off at one point and picked up at another. However, this review is about this company's utter failure to put the customer first when facing less-than-perfect conditions. First and foremost, nothing bad to say about the guide / driver. He did an amazing job under the circumstances that he was in. The (bad) review is targeted towards the company itself. We went for the Etna + Taormina tour with my SO and paid 79€ per person, which included pick-up at the hotel at 8:30/9am, a tour of Etna, lunch, a tour of Taormina and drop-off at the hotel at 6pm, which sounded very reasonable. Due to bad weather, the tour was cancelled and rescheduled for the next day, if the weather would be better - again, very reasonable. Next day, the guide picks us up at 9.15 and we start going up to Etna facing more and more wind, fog and rain. After a while, our guide decided to call the agency and tell them that there is no way that we can go to Etna. Having consulted his agency, the guide tells us that we will change our plans. By then, we are all already soaked from the rain after getting out of the car for the few (interesting) points that the guide managed to make. Next, he takes us to a "local" shop, where we can sample and buy some local produce. Given the fact that the shop was filled with other tourists, I take it that it's a very popular shop for tour guides to take their customers to (if I had to guess, I would say that the tour agencies get either a cut of the revenue or get paid per person that they bring). Seemed a bit strange, as it felt like we were being "milked" for more money instead of being offered an experience... After having (delicious!!) lunch, we drove to Taormina, where we would spend 2,5h instead of the usual 1,5h - presumably due to the fact that we skipped the Etna tour. "Sounds like a great change of plan", we thought. Until the guide told us, that he will drop us off at one gate and pick us up at the other once the time is up. No tour, no excursion, no nothing. Extremely disappointing. We made it work as Taormina is a beautiful city, where you can spend some more time by diving deeper into the history and architecture. So all in all, we were ok. 2,5h later our guide picks us up and we start heading back to Catania. Having agreed with my SO that we would not be paying full price, upon our arrival to our hotel at 17.15 (45min before originally stated) we started negotiating the price with our guide, and he said that we would get 8€(!!!) discount, which is ~5% of the total cost. As it didn't make sense for us to continue this discussion with the driver (as he even called back the agency), we paid 150€ in the end - and felt like we were ripped off!! In my mind, when - tour is not cancelled in the first place, even when people in charge are very well aware of the weather conditions (weather is not something that can be controlled - I understand that. But if you see that it's pouring in the morning and you know that you cannot give your customers a proper experience, wouldn't the decent thing to do be to cancel the tour instead of forcing it through?) - half of the promised tour does not happen - due to late start / early end, the tour is cut down by ~1h - there is no guided tour for the second half of the trip - the time is "made up" by letting customers wander by themselves for 1h longer than originally planned - nothing is offered to the customer to make up for under delivering on expectations ... anyone considering taking a tour with this company should be cautious. I'm sure that they do a great job when all the circumstances are great, but a truly great business should always put customer first instead of just trying to cash out (not a fact, just how the experience made us feel).

We took whole day Etna and Alacantara canyon tour in June. Incredible trip, worth the money. Lemontour was very professional and easygoing in scheduling the trip, while the guide Rosario was excellent, well educated, friendly and good English speaker. I warmly recommend Lemontour for Etna trips.

My host recommend me this agency for Etna trip, but during my visit was there guy speaking only Italian and French, thus disappointment for me. As similar service is offered every second door, I did not return.

It was really interesting to hear all the the details about "the great mountain" the place is amazing ,the guide very friendly and competent. We really enjoyed the tour!!!

Nice excursion to Etna! With Constanza we spent the perfect day full of information and views including visit in the shop with natural products.

Tour to Etna was very good. Child seat included and all the interesting places visited. Recommend 100%

Etna and Alcantara Tour. The guide (Janet) knew a lot about volcanos but let us wait for almost an hour before we started, which meant we had less time on Etna and also later at the river. How is it OK to waste guests time? She claimed later she couldn’t find parking, but we saw that she found a spot in 5 min. She seemed overall just like she wanted it to be over with. And had no problem driving at 70km/h inside of villages. And laughing it off when almost a bus hit the mini bus in Catania because of her reckless driving in which she took pride. “If you can drive here you can drive anywhere.” Her definition of driving is fast and furious.