Sunset Travel & Cruise

We’ve used Sunset Travel since the mid 80’s and have always been more than satisfied with their service and travel suggestions. The vendors Sunset works with are also top tier. Two aspects we most appreciate about them are the accessibility and professional competence of the personnel. This may be driven by the fact that Sunset’s a very hands-​on family run business that takes pride in their interest and knowledge of their clients wants and needs.
It’s definitely true, peoples opinion of the same service agency can be quite different. That’s why I shouldn’t be completely surprised by some of the comments about Jay. We were fortunate enough not to have been subjected to compromised care when dealing with him and I guess it’s an overall benefit that he’s no longer there. We have noticed an even easier tone of process when working with Ryan, Martha and Kathy since Jay’s been gone.
I suppose too when you owe a debt of gratitude to a business that saves a vacation from catastrophe, your allegiance to them is more resilient. During an Alaska land and cruise tour a few years back we got the dreaded call in Denali that the cruise leg of the trip had been cancelled because of a mechanical breakdown on the ship. Of course panic ensued. Playing reliable St. Bernard to perfection, Ryan found us the last cabin on an all-​inclusive ship leaving the next day and handily rescued our vacation. Through Sunset’s efforts, we were able to experience true cruise ship luxury on a beautiful vessel called the Silver Sea.
We have a transatlantic cruise coming up in a few weeks and Kathy, the cruise expert, has already recommended which side of the ship to reserve to get maximum sun exposure on the balcony. It’s this level of diligence that keeps us using travel agents and coming back to Sunset.

Ryan from Sunset Travel came through for my girlfriend and me. He hooked us up with a fantastic vacation to Mexico on short notice — all over the phone, just a couple conversations and a few emails. I’m already stoked to book the next one with him.
To anyone out there in the Internets who is trying to book themselves a cool vacation through Orbitz: do yourself a favor and call a travel agent like Ryan. Just try it. I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be as frustrating. Odds are it’ll be way easier AND perhaps even cheaper. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Martha is the best travel agent we have ever had, she has never failed us or done any mistakes, she helped with our Vegas wedding and our Cancun wedding. She’s just an awesome person and I recommend her to all my friends and co-​workers.

Just got back from a marvelous vacation to London, Lyon and Paris, all put together by Ryan at Sunset Travel. He worked with me to find the right hotels and put together all the train travel, which went off without a hitch — the vendor he used, Avanti, was very reliable and professional — the only glitch was booking us on the milk run from Paris to Lyon (5 hours!), instead of the bullet train (2 hrs), but when we noticed that, Ryan had them correct it immediately.
Ryan gave us a nice Power Point binder that came in handy as we traveled, as it had all the information right at hand, and several nice freebies, like little maps, a pair of three day Metro ticket for Paris, and other stuff.
He was always helpful and responsive, and very easy to work with. I’d certainly use his services again.

soooo I must sing all the rave’s of Ryan!
Sunset & Ryan came recommended by a friend after an all out shout out on FB for a travel agent… and he did NOT disappoint.
I had been looking for a cruise and after what seemed like tons of searching when I went to confirm it locked me out and seem to get $ 300 more expensive– imagine my dismay and frantic panic.
Ryan was not only able to book it for me but even saved me a few bucks from my original hunt– not to mention the now increased booking price.
I have found my new agent and as a creature of habit and a loyal label whore this will be a very loooooong relationship! THNX RYAN!!! i’ll send you a post card from the water.

Ryan helped us book our first trip to Italy — Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice.
We experienced the WOW factor. Sensory over load and the curiosity to see everything can engulf a first time visitor’s energy.
The Italy experience was interesting, unique, enjoyable, and educational. A trip of a lifetime to cherish. Since we have been back we finally can absorb all that we experienced. The tours with «skip the line» are priceless.
Sunset Travel’s knowledge and expertise provided a personal itinerary. We would recommend using Ryan.

I had proposed to my girlfriend a year ago, and she said yes. I’m still not sure why, but shortly thereafter we decided to have a destination wedding. The first step we took was to look over all the resorts we could find on our own, and narrow it down to a few options that worked for us. One of the resorts that we liked the most had a list of their preferred travel agents; and that is where we found Sunset Travel & Cruise.
I went in to meet with a representative named Jay, to identify our options and try to make a good decision on where to have our wedding. Jay was very professional. He helped me to identify some potential resorts, and rule out others based on his personal knowledge of the area, weather conditions, and activities in the area. After a week of talking it over with the fiancé, we decided to have our wedding at the El Dorado Royale, in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
We worked very closely with Jay to coordinate the resort reservations with our guests. All of our guests worked through Jay to make their reservations and their payments, and they all said he was professional and extremely helpful in answering any questions they had. Jay was able to get us a group rate at the resort, for a discounted price that was much less than what we would have paid if we went on our own.
A few months later we contacted Jay to try and see what airfare options would be best for us, and he was able to get all of our guests airline tickets at prices that were much better than any other options we could find.
Closer to the wedding date, Jay also assisted us with planning off-​site activities for us and our guests. He worked closely with staff that were on-​site in Mexico, and was able to accurately provide us with all of the information we needed in order to plan our trip.
In summary, the travel agent we worked with (Jay) from Sunset Travel & Cruise did an outstanding job and we plan to enlist his services the next time we travel abroad.
PS: I have read a lot of reviews expressing a concern about response time from travel agents at Sunset Travel & Cruise. The travel agents who work here put in a lot of hours on the weekend in order to make time available for those who can’t take time off during the week, which means that they have to take «weekend» during the week. They also have to communicate with 3^rd-​party vendors, who don’t always reply back as fast as everyone would like. Nonetheless, our travel agent consistently expressed to us the wait time involved with trying to coordinate and reserve our travel and reservations.

Martha is by far the best travel agent I have worked with. My friends and I were booking a vacation to the Dominican Republic on Expedia since it was the cheapest price we found. However, as we all clicked book, some of the people in my party were not able to get the vacation package because Expedia had apparently sold out for that flight. Desperate to find the best deal, I checked other sites and called 2 other travel agents in which one was only concerned with making a sale and the other never sent me a quote like she said she would. Martha genuinely wants to help you get the best deal possible and upon hearing what happened, she sought to find the best and closest price to the vacation we booked the previous day. She is very personable and quick to reply to your emails as well as calls to keep you informed. I have found my travel agent for future trips. Thank you Sunset Travel!

I understand travel agents are a dying species. Soon to face extinction like the dodo bird. But in the midst of my travel plans to Europe, I got really overwhelmed. My husband and I figured it would be nice to save some trouble and pass along the planning and booking to someone else. Enter Sunset Travel. I emailed and got a response back from Jay, who requested all of our personal info and travel plans. I sent the information. He never replied. I followed up by email a couple weeks later. He never replied. It’s been over 3 months and I have never heard back.
Was I mistaken and the travel agency industry is so busy that they don’t need our business? Or did they already go extinct somewhere between my first and second email? I’m not sure, but what I am sure about is that I’ll rely on handy/​useful websites like Trip Advisor and Kayak for the rest of our future vacation plans.

Forget any travel website and call Martha. I am old school and like to talk to a real person. Not only is Martha helpful and knowledgeable, she gave me a better price and deal than any other agency or website. It was a pleasure to deal with Martha at Sunset Travel. I will for sure have her take care of my travel needs in the future as well a refer her to anyone I can. Thanks Martha and Jay too. You all are the best!

I met with Jay to plan a trip. I told him what we were looking for (luxury hotel in Mexican Riviera) and he said he had many great options for us. He said he’d email me that day. When I didnt hear from him for 2 days I emailed him.
He emailed back saying he’d get back to me in two days. Never heard from him again. I guess they are so busy they don’t want any new customers. I would not recommend this place.

We just got back from a trip to Turkey. I found this travel agency via angie’s list since it was highly recommended there. Martha was my point person as Sunset and she made all of the arrangements for our private tour. The tour was perfect, no problems, and Martha was super responsive to all of our concerns and questions. I will definitely use these guys again!

Jay was excellent. In planning a multi-​destination trip to europe, I shopped for the plane tickets on price-​line, expedia, orbitz, cheaptickets and kayak. He was able to beat the best that I could find there by over 50%.
If you have any sort of a complex trip planned, you likely can save time and money by using a travel agent. They do have sites and tools not available to consumers. Check with Jay at Sunset.

If i could have given 0 stars I probably would have…
With that said, we were recommended to this place by friends who have used them before and suggested we use them to help book our honeymoon. My fiancé and I hadn’t done a whole lot of research into where we wanted to go and were pretty open with a pretty decent sized budget. We wanted to talk to an expert to see what our options were based on the time of year we are going, our budget, and what activities we liked to do.
We had scheduled an appointment with Jay and when we showed up he was on the phone with someone else for at least 15 minutes. Thankfully one of his co-​workers was nice enough to talk with us and get things started with a broad overview of some of their more popular destinations and what some of his experiences in travel had been (I wish I remember this gentleman’s name because he was one of the only bright spots of this experience).
Once Jay was off the phone we sat down for a while and although he was knowledgeable about some places you could tell he would try and avoid other, pretty popular, locations that he didn’t know anything about. This is understandable but we were interested in a few and he didn’t even offer to look up some information for us.
Long story short, we left there with lots of unanswered questions but with a promise from Jay that he would send us some information on 4 locations that we had narrowed things down to. This was to include current airfare costs, lodging, activities, transfers within the countries, etc, so we could have 4 different packages to start with. Jay had said he could have this to us by the middle of the following week so on that next Friday we followed up and there were some excuses about being busy and having other clients he’s had to help but he would get it to us by Monday. So on Tuesday, another call to Jay and more excuses about his other clients. Let’s just say it should have been clear at that point that his «other clients» were a lot more important to him than we were but we played this game a few more times until finally we got the hint.
I think Sunset travel has horrible customer service, most specifically with Jay. I see that other people on here have had very nice experiences with Jay but I know now that I’m not the only one who has been jerked around like this and I ask you this; do you really want to gamble on which type of experience you’re going to get when you’re trying to plan a large trip like this? I think not… so search out any number of other travel agencies to give your business to and you’ll be a LOT happier in the long run.

I worked with Jay at Sunset Travel to plan accommodations and airline tickets for our honeymoon next May. He was absolutely amazing to work with. He responded to all my emails very quickly and took care of all the details I probably couldn’t have figured out on my own (like how to obtain the right type of travel insurance coverage). He also cc’ed me on all the correspondence he had with the hotel and airline, which I really appreciated. I will definitely go back for all future travels! Thanks, Jay!

I used this agency to set up a recent trip I took. They did a great a job and were very helpful! I feel they got me the best deal possible! I would use them again and recommend them to anyone and everyone!