Cocha's Score: -3

After going to Cocha last Friday at Ripley, from Mall Plaza Vespucio, I could understand why people go there to plan their travels and do them, but I wouldn’t do it.

First of all, I get the feeling that all the experience was pretty old: You sat in front of a person that tries to smile, ask you where you want to go, how many days and since when and answers: “ok, here are the  options  we have for you, you can choose between package A, package B and… that’s it.” So first of all you’re buying a standardproduct that can’t be changed. At Cocha we ask for a tour in Cusco, and I wanted to go to all the ruins around the city, but that wasn’t in the plan, so I guess I would have to do it by myself anyway. One point less.

Also, they never tried to get me to feel excited about the trip, show me any pictures of the locations I was going to visit, tell me about places where to eat or go at night. They just explain me, very briefly, about the option we have chosen. For that experience I could just go to internet, search for the same tour, and let the page speakto me, with a robotic voice, about the tour. I mean, travel agency should really try to sell you their tour, be enthusiastic about it, tell me any other information that isn’t on the paper they gave us, they must transmit and share the joy of traveling with their customer. So that’s another point less.

And the location is really bad. Maybe the answer lies that they were part of Ripley and that was the location they gave them, but at least they could try to make the place look and feel better. If you look at the picture, you can see a plain and boring sight. It wasn’t comfortable either, they didn’t have a place to wait! If it wasn’t because they were right near the beds area of the store, we would have been waiting five minutes standing looking at fourpictures, one of them repeated in a smaller size. Having so many information about how to make people go into a buying mood they didn’t use it at all. So even before starting our service, I, at least, wasn’t very happy being there. That’s another big point less. 

And an issue that mixes the environment and customer service, the desk where you get your service wasn’t very good either. It was just a plain, simple and black desk, nothing more, nothing less. This also made us feel that we were buying any other physical product; we could be buying a mobile, a hammer in an old shop or even a pen. This made the interaction more difficult, colder, you never really feel comfortable sitting there. So I think they should really redesign that part, and everything else, so you can like of have a chat with the travel agency, more relaxed that finish with you buying the tour. That’s the third point against them.
                                       


But they should have something good, don’t they? And that’s that they have information fast. You ask about it and the person at the other side of the desk answer it right away. So you could know many things, fast, in one location, but only if you ask, as you can notice reading above. They never told us about travel insurance, of paying method, or how getting discounts there, we had to ask, but they answer. So here they won a point. So, after all this, they get a score of -3, very bad indeed. I understand that some people like all done, so they only pay and wait to enjoy the travel. But I think I could go to any travel agency, have the same talk we had last Friday, get all the details written down on a notebook, and then go home and do it all by myself, enjoy all theprocess of planning my trip to Cuzco, and spending less money. If someday I go and actually buy the tour and everything, they would have to have an interactive experience, where the travel agency has a tablet where (s)he shows you all the amazing things you’re going to do with them, sitting on a couch, drinking a cup of coffee or a soda, and enjoying the experience.