STI travel company

I used STI in May 2010 for a trip through Istanbul. Jordan, and Egypt. I was not pleased with the results. They subcontract out all the services to regional travel agencies (in Egypt they use Sakara which is owned by the same company that owns STI). They require a LOT of hand holding through the planning process. You should thoroughly review the itineraries they send back to you as they frequently do not include what you ask for and throw in other things (with a fee) that you do not ask for. Even when you correct them, they often fail to make the change.

Unfortunately, as we found, the itinerary/contract they do settle on with you is pretty much useless when you are on site anyway. The subcontractors will do whatever they do regardless of what is in the itinerary. Jordan was the biggest issue. Our driver Basheer was excellent, but the local guides at Petra and Wadi Rum they contracted with were horrible. The Wadi Rum camp they put us in sounded like it was along the side of a highway (trucks and buses driving through and idling until 1.00a in the morning), not the middle of a remote Arab desert. We tried to roll with the punches, but at some point the experience was simply being ruined. We raised our concerns with the local folks at the time, but they said they were sorry but unable to make a change. When we raised our concerns directly with STI, STI placed blame on the local providers and said there was nothing they could do. Our contract was with STI, we expected them to ensure we had reputable people on location, they failed to deliver and when we tried to hold them responsible for that failure, they passed the buck.

Once they knew we had a problem, they become unresponsive to email and phone calls. I would NOT recommend STI to anyone. The people I worked with at STI were Jane (sales person you passed us to operations once they were paid) and Sergio in operations who became non-responsive when we had an issue.