We spent five days with your guide, Ama, and the whole family loved our time with her. The North Island is a special place, and her and my main contact, Grace, did an awesome job with our family, which included two teenagers, two 40 something adults, and two seniors. Some of the highlights were Mount Terawara helicopter ride and the Te Pa Tu cultural experience. To be honest, everything we did was special and enjoyable, and your company enhanced our trip in every way.

Thank you Haka tours for our amazing private tour with Nick Halkhoree. This was a Reverse Southern Wonder tour which far exceeded our expectations of accommodation, travel and guiding by Nick. Our experience of the South Island of New Zealand was awesome. The requests from us were always followed through with enthusiasm from Nick and we liked his encouragement to try new adventures. Thanks Nick and Haka Tours. The Millers. WA.

While New Zealand was spectacular the trip left a lot to be desired. There were 11 of us on the North Island portion. 8 of us had signed up for for an ADULT ONLY 40 and over trip; yet there was a family on the trip with 2 young teens that acted their young ages and didn't have any interest in the activities included in the trip negatively impacting the enjoyment of the trip for the rest of us. Our guide was nice and informative yet lacked some of the leadership skills to make it a stellar trip and some of his information, while interesting, was incorrect. Some activities were canceled due to weather and other extra curricular extension trips were canceled due to low number sign ups. Because Haka tours is being acquired by Intrepid, we were Guinea pigs for them to work out gliches, which there were many. One is getting refunds. Haka can't do it and says we need to go through Intrepid. I have sent emails- 2 weeks have gone by and NO response- typical Intrepid. I called and got the canned response- 'this is highly unusual for our company....' not from what our group encountered- they do NOT respond and are terrible communicators. I have gone on many trips with travel companies and this was the worst by far. I would NOT recommend Intrepid

10/10 experience for me : the locations we have visited, the country, the friendly and knowledgeable guide (Connor), the friendly group, the people back at the office were also helpful and efficient. The whole experience has been excellent from booking (the website provides good information and gives everything you need to know for your trip, and makes your booking really easy) to the last day of the tour. As a solo traveler I highly recommend this experience as you get to see so much of NZ with lovely people.

We have just completed the Amplified Tour of New Zealand. The trip on the whole was everything we expected and more. We met some great travel friends. The Tour bus never let us down. Our guide Mike tried to keep us entertained. Mostly the hostels were great, though we did upgrade to a private room. All the activities offered were so enjoyable, do as much as you can. It was easy to book more activities on the go via the Guide. My one and only disappointment was the Māori experience. No welcoming haka, no traditional clothing, traditional dinner cooked by a couple of backpackers and a video in the classroom until 10pm. Then a double room with bunk beds for the night?? Not sure what went wrong, although the lady was nice explaining the history. Overall, well done HAKA Tours. We will use you again

What an amazing trip! There was a wide range of activities from cultural to adventure activities and a few surprises, which we absolute gems, up the tour guide's sleeves. The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and helped everyone in every way he could. He made us all feel comfortable and it was amazing to see how much of a family we all became so quickly. I have travelled a fair bit around the world but this was the first time I have booked a tour. This was my second trip to New Zealand but I learnt so much. I will definitely be booking with the company in the future to do the South Island. The only criticism I have is that what is included and the additional activities on offer were different on different websites. My friend and I booked through Backpacker Deals, then when we went on the Haka Tours website we realised we had to contact the company to book stuff that wasn't on the other website.

Wonderful tour of the South Island of New Zealand. It started in Christchurch and encompassed many of the most scenic and beautiful sites of the island, including Christchurch, Ohau, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Wanaka and Franz Josef, and wonderful lakes and mountains in between. I will definitely plan on returning to this lovely country. Tour leader Adam was amazing at ensuring everyone had a good time. Some of the activities were weather dependent, but Adam did his utmost to try to get everyone as many activities as he could. Our traveling group was exceptional - I believe we all had a good time. Some travelers were more adventurous, and this tour provided activities for everyone - bungy jumping, skydiving, kayaking, hiking, sightseeing tours, exploring, etc. Accommodations were fine - perfect for the kind of trip where you don’t stay very long in the rooms, but very comfortable for sleeping. All in all, I thought this tour was an excellent introduction to New Zealand.

By far the worst travel experience of our entire lives. Since the pandemic this company does not have the bandwidth to deal with the returning tourists and offers guides and provides you with mere drivers or mentally unstable people, none of whom are accredited guides. Very poor preparedness overall, the "guides" arrives late, the van was leaking water from the roof, half the activities got cancelled, our guide abandonned the group mid trip because she had a personal mental crisis. THe group refused to replaced the guide....A complete, utter, and appalling disaster. It s a shame, because New Zealand is an absolute gorgeous country. Note that this trip was booked through Traverse Journeys, who got caught in the middle as they decided to partner with Haka Tour. Traverse Journeys has made reasonable efforts to remedy the situation, but the whole trip was so botched by Haka that nothing could be salvaged out of it.

We booked a tour of both New Zealand islands called a New Zealand Fantasy with Traverse Journeys almost a year ago.It turned out to be a New Zealand nightmare. It was the worst travel experience of our lives. We’ve travelled extensively with several companies and have had mostly good experiences. Nothing comes close to the travesty we had with Traverse Journeys and Haka tours. We only had a total of 4 people (their minimum) in the tour. The owner of Traverse later told us that this is not profitable as they usually do larger tours. She contracted our tour to a company called Haka Tours who threw together last minute and untrained tour guides. The guide in the North Island was a nice person but hadn’t been to some of the areas we visited in over 30 years. He was more of a driver than a trained guide. We missed some of the key selling points from the Traverse Journeys advertising due to his lack of familiarity. The trip has very little leisure time and the ads are misleading. Most of the time is traveling in vans and rushing to the next location. The South Island guide was an absolute disaster. Her name was Deann Loader. She was extremely unprofessional. She disappeared for a day and a half and screamed at my wife when asked why she wasn’t around. She threatened to leave us with the other couple after her first meltdown. Two days later, the other couple had a medical issue with a pregnancy before we were to leave for the day’s events. They were a few minutes late at the van and Ms. Loader lost it. She showed no empathy or concern for the wife’s medical condition and actually brought her to tears. Worse yet, Ms. Loader locked the van and flew home after a verbal exchange with the husband. She left the four of us in rural New Zealand ( a pregnant woman and us in our mid sixties). Haka was irresponsible and not at all helpful when their guide abandoned us. David Coles from Haka told us they didn’t have the resources to replace the guide.. He also didn’t know when he could get us a driver as we were left in a remote location. He was more interested in our not giving Haka a negative review than finding us a ride. We rented a van and finished the trip ourselves. We later learned that the van shouldn’t have been rented as the brakes were failing. This NZ fantasy also included driving the faulty van on the other side of the road through treacherous mountain roads to parts unknown. We demanded a full refund from Ashley Blake, CEO of Traverse Journeys. She was sympathetic and offered us a modest refund. We settled for a fifty percent refund after we had to put in a claim with the credit card company. I would look elsewhere and steer clear from both of these organizations since long distance travel is hard enough.

Overall, this was a really good tour. However, there are some pro's and con's to be aware of. This tour was a great value for the cost. Fairly cheap but with a lot included. The additional excursions were fairly cheap as well but really fun. I feel like we saw and did so much within a one week span of time. The cultural Maori experience was particularly special. My partner and I are in our late 30's and we were worried we would be the oldest people by far but we were not. Many people on the tour were our age or right around our age. Most of the accommodations were centrally located. Some of the cons- Expect your typical hostel accommodations. Nothing special. We did the private room which was nicer. I was surprised that the free breakfasts that were included on this tour were basically the tour operator purchasing breakfast foods from the grocery (i.e. cereals, bread, e.t.c.) and transporting them to the hostels. Tours I had been on in the past included meals usually meant through the hotels or restaurants or something. Our tour guide didn't seem particularly enthused or upbeat during the entire tour.

First because of the guide. Connor was enthusiastic, funny and empathetic. He was always happy to share about some of his favourite places and fun facts with us. He was really organised, and was incredible in finding new ways for us to be entertained when events or activities were cancelled due to forecast reasons. He knew how to advise when in doubt of which activity to choose from but always let us be responsible for our own actions. I loved the Bay of Island, Hobbiton 😍, swimming with Dolphins. I LOVED all the activities we did regarding the Maori culture. Carving our own Pounamu and paddling a Waka are some of the highlights of my trip. I fell in love with this culture, with Aotearoa and I can't wait to come back. Spending the night in Kohutapu Lodge and eating the Maori traditional food was also amazing. Thank you for all this. I met incredible people and can't wait for my next trip!

This tour company overpromises and underdelivers. Transportation was not as represented - the bus was old, filthy, with no sound system and malfunctioning AC. Hostels were basic, not like photos, and primarily for 6-10 people rather than the 4-6 represented. One hostel smelled terrible and at the hostel in Christchurch, UrbanZ, the manager put us in a 10-person dorm of mixed sexes. And told our guide "Tom" from HQ had authorized it. Choose another company. It's a long way to travel and life is too short.

We did this tour in Jan 23, just got back. First 2 weeks was excellent. Great group of eclectic, insane, funny and lovely people. Runty our tour guide went to great lengths to ensure he accommodated our every need despite little support or guidance from Hakka. He bent over backwards to please us and provide alternative activities when planned ones were cancelled. Cancelling the glamping was super disappointing and totally inappropriate of Hakka especially as it had been sold as a highlight of the trip. The compensation offered was insulting but Runty took it upon himself to try to make things better. The second 2 weeks of the trip was a disaster weather wise, we didn’t get to do the planned activities so very disappointing. No one’s fault but again Runty tried to make the best of our trip offering alternatives he personally knew about. Hakka was calling on him for advice to advise other trip leaders. Overall Hakkas administration of the tour was poor, the bus itself was a banger, not good enough to transport people on a tour that cost as much as this and the accommodation was not consistent. I believe Runtys resourcefulness saved the day for us all but probably wouldn’t book with a company that sub contracts to Hakka again.

​Hello team at Haka Tours, It has been over a month since our last correspondence and we are still awaiting our FULL refund of: * 20% of the original tour price ($3999 for each person which would equal $799.80NZ refund per person) PLUS * the refund we are both owed for the Heli Hikes at Franz Josef that did not occur due to the weather conditions, fully pre-paid (a refund of $499NZ per person) Reference code: HKT-66066398-FA3 Please refund the 2x(799.80) + 2x($499) = $2597.6 TOTAL (minus $749) directly to the original credit card used for payment IMMEDIATELY OR LEGAL ACTION WILL COMMENCE.

I had a fantastic 24 days in New Zealand, but it was the tour guide Ollie Crooks, the group, the land itself and the activities I did that made it sensational. I booked my trip 9 months prior to departure. Initially the booking process was seamless. However as we approached closer to departure date I did find the office at Haka Tours to be rather slow in response and oftentimes when I'd ask multiple questions the responses would only have answered half of them or give generic replies/links to find the answer myself. A few weeks prior to my trip we got added to added to a facebook group however the admins at Haka didn't talk on there so neither did the group. Upon landing in Auckland at 2am, I checked into my private en-suite double room to find that I'd been put into a dormitory which I wasn't very impressed with considering after a 32 hour flight I wanted to shower, sleep and get ready for our tour that started at 8am. However I was refunded for this at the end of the trip. Now the trip started and we had a great group. The tour guide Ollie Crooks. I cannot fault him. In fact he was incredible and as a seasoned traveller who books on tour groups often. He is the best guide I've ever come across and had the privilege to spend time with. Throughout the duration of the trip, he was knowledgeable and gave facts and interesting nuggets of info about Maori culture, the land, the people etc. He was very conscious of the groups needs and ensured we made ample rest stops, snack stops & photo opportunities. He made extra effort to get to know every individual in the group and ensure everyone was included and generally was a breath of fresh air. The whole group adored him! He also constantly went above and beyond his job to ensure all the mistakes made within the itinerary were rectified. However, the group collectively felt sorry for him. As unfortunately headoffice had constantly made mistakes with regards to booking (or not booking) activities, accommodation, one guest even got told the wrong arrival time and missed the first few days of his trip, gave zero support with someone who's luggage got lost at the airport etc. They weren't very helpful or accessible and there were continuous issues. We even had 3 buses throughout the course of the 24 days due to them being rather old and breaking down. But throughout all these issues, Ollie was continuously fire-fighting. He went above and beyond to ensure everything was seamless and managed to keep the positivity within the group so that we would still get to do everything we wanted. So when the bus broke down and us die-hard LOTR fans were going to miss Hobbiton. He managed to re-arrange the schedule to ensure we could go another day and I cannot thank him enough for that. So, a huge shout-out to the Tour Guide of a lifetime for making our trip incredible. The trip itself was a great itinerary. However I do think there's some places I would've preferred to have spent more than just one night at. For example Taupo, Wellington, Christchurch & Tekapo. And I do think an extra few nights in the North Island would've been great too. I pretty much booked an activity every single day of the trip where I could and I got to do pretty much all of them except the last 4/5 days due to the Heavy Rains that hit us after Franz Josef. The ones I lost out on I got full refunds for after the trip concluded which was pretty good too. We definitely got lucky with the weather as everyone's activities barring those last few days went ahead. The buses were all dated, uncomfortable and a bit hot and smelly. They also don't have fridges on, charging ports or shelves so they're rather cramped - especially if you have a pretty full group. Luckily, I upgraded to a private room so I had better nights sleeps than the rest of the group who were in dorms. Which if you're not planning to upgrade, please note that these dorms are mixed dorms, no ensuite, and incredibly cramped and small. Some were better than others but whatever your expectation is - lower it. I think the FAQs and packing list needs to be updated as if you're thinking of bringing spending money which Haka recommends to be 20-60 NZD a day. Double it. NZ is very expensive and if you want to enjoy yourself and have a good time you definitely spend a LOT more than that per day. Also by not having a fridge, you have to buy food regularly as it goes off very quickly due to the heat of sitting stagnant on a hot bus for 12 hours before we can get to a hostel fridge. One thing to note, is you're constantly on the go and there's a lot of 5am/6am starts. I survived on 5 hours sleep a night and a lot of coffee. We were constantly on the go, hiking, activities etc and I came back positively exhausted. So I would ensure you can survive on little sleep and are reasonably fit. Due to all these early starts and staying in one location for one night we very rarely got to go out as a group and enjoy ourselves in these great cities as everyone was worried about the early start the following morning. So somewhere like wellington, 2 nights would've been great so the group could've had a night out together without fear of oversleeping. New Zealand is a beautiful country, the Maori culture is incredible and I loved experiencing it and learning about it. This tour was great and the activities I did were unforgettable. It honestly is a trip of a lifetime. If you get Ollie Crooks as a guide you're super lucky as he is really incredible (and talented to boot). I should probably add at this point that Ollie did have to leave the tour and we got a new tour guide for the second leg, Grant. Sadly, the energy and vibe we got from Grant was poor in comparison to what we had for the first half of the trip. I'm not going to go too into it. But thankfully our group was great and we'd already had time together to bond so we carried eachother and continued the good atmosphere. But I've never known someone to appear like they hate their job as a tour guide and also hate people as much as Grant did. I think he needs a career change as it's not for him and the group despised him as much as he despised us. It was incredibly uncomfortable and awkward at times and I would not recommend him as a guide for these trips ever! All in all, he also brought the rating down as it seems that Haka are so desperate for staff they threw someone in without a personality test or proper training. I do think that after the acquisition of Haka Tours by Intrepid. They have a lot of kinks to work out internally as they weren't singing from the same hymn sheet and still seemed to be working as separate entitities. So they have a lot to work on internally to make the pre-work and planning/booking of the tours, activities and comms to the guests a bit more seamless. As the reason you got a 5 was because your internal Head Office Team were poor. The country, activities and the guide were the only things that carried everything. So Haka, do better. You have a great product, some great staff and a huge opportunity to out perform your competitors but you do need to look at your internal processes, training process & upgrade those buses if you want to be exceptional. That being said, I had the best month of my life. Which would've been better had Haka been more seamless. Thanks Gang & Thanks Ollie - you made my time unforgettable!