(Adoption)

“We will surely trust Lotus again...”

Hi Maricel - I wanted to thank you and Lotus Travel for taking care of all our arrangements in November to finalize the adoption of our son, Colin. Our guides were all friendly and knowledgeable and we appreciated all the little details they managed to make our experience delightful. Everything was easy because of the Lotus Travel staff.

I particularly want you to know how blessed we were to have David (Peng Wang) help us in Xi'an. He was our guardian angel the entire time we spent in our son's province. He went beyond the responsibilities of a guide to also make sure our new children were doing well and that we had everything we needed to succeed with our new family member. We will never forget David's kindness as he visited our son's orphanage with us. He's a wonderful person!

We will surely trust Lotus again when the time comes to return to China. Hopefully, we will also be able to spend time with David again as our guide! With great appreciation,

　Nicole, Mark, Isabella and Colin

"….. the best service we’ve had”

I owe Lotus Tours (I'm not affiliated with, and don't work for them) a huge thank you and so I am posting to tell you how they came through for us. We're leaving Sunday for China to bring home our daughter, a waiting child in Wuhan. We considered the Ladybug specials, but in the end decided to fly United so we could go direct from Chicago. No problem there so far. I made our in-China reservations on China Southern using a travel website. Over the weekend, the travel website emailed us that our reservation was canceled, no clear reason why! China Southern said it was too late to order tickets, so we'd have to wait and buy them in China. That scared me, so I emailed Lotus Tours. 3 emails, one fax and less than 24 hours later, we have our China Southern tickets in hand! I thought they might not even work with me since we didn't use the ladybug special for international flight, but they were helpful, fast and efficient. So far in our adoption process, this is the best service we've had. Thanks, Lotus!

Sandee M.

"Fabulous!"

What makes a professional Travel Agent "FABULOUS"? I tend to set very high expectations for people (myself included) and Lea at Lotus ranked "FABULOUS!" She amazed me.
On Thursday, I told Lea that I was waiting for Consulate appointment confirmation, but that I might be leaving that next Monday (in 3 days!) to try to see Beijing prior to meeting my group in Shanghai. Lea immediately put holds on all the flights for me and did as much work as possible in advance.
On Friday at 11:20 am, confirmed Consulate appts. meant we were indeed leaving on Monday and needed to book everything within an hour and a half to get the tickets overnighted to me. And Lea did it. The international flights the Suite at the White Swan the In-China Flights, the Beijing Hotel, the LAX Hotel, the lap ticket in our daughter's Chinese name for the return trip, everything. Done. Not only did Lea book everything exactly as I had requested, but she was faxing me hotel confirmations Sunday afternoon from her office!
Lea also arranged for the local Beijing travel agent to deliver in-China tickets to my hotel in Beijing. Now, you have to really trust someone to take off into China, headed for Beijing, with no idea how to get from Beijing to Shanghai and no tickets in hand for that flight. However, upon arrival at the hotel in Beijing, with no prompting from a jet-lagged me, our tickets were handed over (and they reconfirmed the flight for us too!). Perfect!
In addition, Lea faxed Chinese translations for our hotels for us to give to the taxi drivers at the airport, which we gratefully put to use. She obtained "add-on" fares from Guangzhou to Beijing for us very inexpensively. Domestic ATL to LAX round-trip tickets (that would have cost us coach class $2000 each that close to travel time), Lea got for $350 with a changeable leave date, if necessary.
Everything was done efficiently, as promised, with professional experience, and intelligently. I was impressed. I would guess that other travel agents might have considered the whole task overwhelming, but Lea pulled it all off without a hitch. Not one single mistake. She is AMAZING!
By 2 pm on Friday, I had a printed itinerary in hand and by the time I left for the airport on Monday, final details were wrapped up. I give Lea the highest level of recommendation possible. Thanks to her hard work, I got to experience Beijing, and that was a FABULOUS city! In fact, I felt sorry for those in our travel group who didn't have time to see it. Hire professionals! Enjoy the journey!
- Teresa Hill

"I would also highly recommend them"  

I also used Lotus Travel (left 3/19 and came home 4/4/03). I dealt with Annie and changed my flight a couple of times. I didn't use any of their specials as I wanted a more direct flight out of NY. Annie was fabulous to work with and all of my travel (both to China and between provinces) went very smoothly!!!! She also booked my hotels in Kunming and Guangzhou and everything was as I requested. I would also highly recommend them!!!!!

- Michele

"Cadillac of travel agencies"

For our first adoption in November 2000, we used your travel agency (through our adoption agency) and we were extremely pleased and satisfied with our Lotus travel services. For our second adoption, we changed adoption agencies to CCAI. Now CCAI is a most excellent adoption agency, but they used a different travel agency for their adoption trips and never did we appreciate LOTUS TRAVEL as much as AFTER having an experience with a different agency. Our experience with this second travel agency has been terrible after the top notch service we received from Lotus. Without notifying us until it was too late to make changes, this agency booked us United Airlines - horrible economy seats on an already FULL plane so we could not upgrade to better seats (we had requested business or first class in writing weeks prior to our booking) -- terrible, uncomfortable flights, inconvenient flight times, many plane changes, and so on. Also the agency was very hard to reach with odd hours to call, at least from the east coast, and when I did call, I usually got an answering machine even when the agency was open, staff  were not very polite or helpful or easy to understand, and so on. For us, it felt like going from a limo to a cheap economy car, the difference was so striking. I just wanted to let you know that I feel your agency is the best. So much so that when someone asked me about travel agencies for China adoption, as their adoption agency did not help much with travel arrangements, I immediately suggested she contact Lotus Travel and talk to your agency about the travel arrangements for her adoption in China. 
CCAI is clearly the Cadillac of adoption agencies, and Lotus travel is clearly the Cadillac of travel agencies…. Also, eventually we want to take our 2 beautiful girls back for a tour trip to China. We will be calling you when that time comes.

Thank you for everything.
- Julie Thomas Bumbulis