Gate 1 Travel small-group tour.
I took a Gate 1 Travel small-group Discovery Tour of the Philippines in February 2026, advertised as secular. The tour manager conducted daily morning prayer sessions on the bus and never called me by my correct name during the 10-day tour. Furthermore, the tour presented Philippine history in a highly selective way. The Philippine–American War and the Philippines’ subsequent experience as America’s first major overseas colony were never addressed, and guides were unwilling to engage the topic even in private conversation. I sent a chain of three formal complaint letters, escalating through multiple levels of customer service, yet it took over a month for them to acknowledge that prayer sessions led by a Gate 1 tour manager were inappropriate. Even then, the Vice President of Customer Service did not take personal responsibility or address the broader implications for tour management. These serious professional and ethical deficiencies make this tour not recommended for travelers seeking respectful, secular experiences. Update - Thank you Gate 1 for your Trustpilot reply. This is not a matter of expectations but of the deficiencies in both the tour managment and the handling of my complaint, which I have already outlined in detail. I do not wish to engage further. My issues relate not only to the tour itself but to broader shortcomings in how your organization handles tourism management and customer concerns. These include the tour manager’s conduct during the trip, the framing of my complaint as a matter of personal sensitivity, the loss of my detailed follow-up, and the lack of any response from senior customer service leadership. Taken together, these issues raise serious ethical questions about your company’s accountability, transparency, and commitment to treating guests with fairness and respect. For that reason, I will not be pursuing this further and consider the matter closed. This experience, echoed by many reviews on Trustpilot, suggests that Gate 1 Travel reframes problems as expectation gaps rather than resolving them.