Quark Expeditions

Had a wonderful experience on this once in a lifetime trip. I didn’t know what to expect from the Antarctic, but it was beautiful and serene and life changing.

The trip was an enormous success due to the skillfulness of the captain of the ship and the tenacity and resourcefulness of the expedition leader and her team. The hotel staff were also above and beyond. I was constantly amazed at the staff on the ship. The trip exceeded all of my expectations except for the coffee. The coffee needs to be upgraded. Perhaps some costa rican coffee. I will definitely look to Quark when I plan a trip to the Artic.

What a fantastic trip! We chose to do Quark’s pre and post excursions before and after Antarctica. We went to Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Easter Island. Everything went as planned. All transfers were timely, the excursions were great, the crew on the ship was top notched, and the Explorer Lodge on Easter Island was perfect; we couldn’t have asked for anything better. For Polar excursions we highly recommend Quark

For explorers that admire Shackleton, but demand at least hot and cold flowing water in their rooms at day's end, Quark's "Sea Adventurer" delivers excellent value for the money. As long as Quark successfully separates its different levels of "spa luxury," represented by their different ships, the value-for-money proposition will continue to hold. This means that "Sea Adventurers" will continue to see strenuous activities, supervised by guides willing to expand the activity envelope based on expert evaluation of the capability of its group members, while those treasuring luxury will find emphasis on pampering and more sedate excursions. For us, research for a strenuous activity expedition started with the activities offered by the ship and was later confirmed by Quark in the assignment of expedition staff. I hope that Quark will continue to assign its most adventurous expedition staff to the Sea Adventurer to separate themselves from the Antarctic tourist ship herd and thus cement their reputation as THE expedition company that understands the customer's value-for-money search. A comment for Quark's corporate leadership: Please use your leadership in the IAATO to continue to expand the risk envelope for adventure seekers; if you act on your Polar Travel Advisers' and your Expedition Staff's desire to steer customers to the right expedition package, even if it is with the competition, you will attract more passionate staff talent and loyal - versus one-time - customers. Right now, we're one-timers, but will you convince us to become "loyal" in the next five to ten years?

Reviews can be hard, since they include things in Quarks control and out of their control… but both impact the experience. When expecting a 10 day trip and maximum time in ‘environment’ Quark communications lagged. We lost unexpected time at the beginning and end of our trip. The key was sharing changes when Quark knew , vs assuming customers will adapt as they arrive. This can blunt disappointment, but Quark choose to advise us as we arrived from long air travel into Oslo. Delayed/Lost charter flights was unexpected and not unprecedented but when did Quark know… it would have helped. Then to find out the boat could not sail ‘on time’ because of a maritime document… seems comical on a trip date planned a year in advance. Again when did Quark know about this reality. Lastly the end of the trip was cut short due to flight issues again, disappointing but it could have been explained earlier to better know when Quark knew. Now all of the pre-trip complications would have been worse if the adventure, weather, trip crew suffered from fog, no animals, etc… but that didn’t happen. OMG the land, animals and staff saved the day. I sense we were lucky… but maybe this was some compensation. I know many of the passengers share this sentiment, since we all chatted about it. I’d love Quark to share their opinion on approach, managing communications and expectations. Yours truely - 2 time passenger.