8-Night Best of Jordan Tour: Jerash, Petra with Wadi Rum and Aqaba Overnight

Don’t hesitate, use Zaid Tours for your trip to Jordan. Professional tour company who looked after everything to make our trip thoroughly enjoyable. Great hotels, fantastic tours, comfortable air conditioned transport, friendly knowledgeable guides who look after you from pickup to drop off at the airport. An eye opening experience, welcoming people and fantastic food.

This was an excellent tour which included a full day in Petra. Ramouni was an excellent driver and guide. He had an extensive knowledge of the country and its history and kept us amused on the long car journeys. We also had interesting discussions about family, religion and politics. He loves traditional music. Thanks for a great holiday.

Unique and great experience of Jordan. Already missing the morning coffee and treats our driver and guide Nazzal offered every morning. His network and knowledge second to none. Very flexible with our requests. The experience itself: I won't spoil it for you! You have to take it to believe it. Decided to stay a few extra days in Amman on our own. Location and Hotel, Lina Manzour, our agency contact arranged it for us was great. Close to amenities.

We had the most amazing time traveling with this company in Jordan! Highly recommend all the tours included, especially the Dead Sea, Petra and Wadi Rum. The company was very helpful with hotel bookings and other questions, before arrival and during our stay. Everything was perfect!

We had a very good experience with this tour. Our driver, Firas, was excellent. He was always on time, described the tour plans for the day and gave good information about the sites we were visiting. He also facilitated the entrance and initial contact with site guides in the places that had them, as well as providing assistance with just about anything we needed. He was also fun to be around and made the trip very enjoyable. As for the tour itself: We were met at the airport by a tour representative, who facilitated the visa and passport paperwork and then accompanied us to the hotel. This all worked great. We selected the “premium” accommodations (stated as 4/5 star) hotels. In Amman, we stayed at the Bristol Hotel. The hotel is somewhat older but quite nice and the included breakfast and dinners were very good. Visits to Jerash and the Dead Sea were great (I think Jerash is amazingly well conserved). The panoramic visit to Amman is just that: a drive around the city. Whereas you do visit sites like the citadel and downtown, the tour does not allow for time to enter the sites and spend time there. If you want to do it, you have to do it on your own. This was not a major problem but I think it should be made clearer in the tour description. The trip to Petra included stops are Mt Nebo, Madaba and Shoback, which were interesting. Our accommodations in Petra were at the Mövenpick Resort, which is very conveniently located across the street from the entrance to the Petra park. The hotel and the buffet food were excellent (we did have to pay an extra $320 for this hotel when we booked our tour as the “standard” accommodations in Petra were sold out). On the day we arrived we did the Petra by night visit (and extra 17 JD) that was great. The following day visit to Petra included an excellent guide that was with us for three hours walking the site and then we had ample time to explore on our own. We had a great time. Next, we travelled to Wadi Rum. We checked in at the Sun City camp in a “tent” that had A/C and a private bathroom and a comfortable bed. For a small extra charge (30 JD for 2 people) we extended the included 2 Hr 4WD tour to 4 hours which ended at sunset and it was great. Dinner at the camp included the traditional bedouin zarb and it was excellent. In the morning we did a sunrise camel ride and it was great. These extra activities were offered (with no pressure) by our driver, Firaz, and he made the arrangements for them to happen smoothly. We then traveled to Aqaba, we wanted to make some changes to our last night accommodations and the tour operator (Zaid travel) was flexible and willing to make the changes for nominal charges. The hotel assigned was the Grand Tala Bay Resort. The hotel is not in the downtown/hotel area of Aqaba but rather 20 minutes away in the “south beach” area. This suited us very well, but younger travelers may want to be closer to the busy downtown, although the hotel offered a shuttle. Unfortunately, the experience at this hotel was disappointing and the reason we are giving 4 rather than 5 stars to the tour. We were assigned a room that was not very clean and the shower had mold stains in several places. I took pictures and went to the reception to ask to be moved to another room. Instead, they dispatched the housekeeping to clean the shower, which helped but did not fully solved the problem. When I later tried to take a shower, there was no hot water and the shower did not drain properly so I was standing in an inch of accumulated cold water. I contacted the tour operator and told them I was going to ask for a change in room the following day (we had extended our stay to 2 days before arriving). When I did, they again tried to send someone to “fix the problem” rather than just changing the room. Upon our insistence they did give us a new room that appeared to be an upgrade (had ocean view) and it was cleaner. The tour operator also called the hotel just a few minutes after we had been moved. Unfortunately, we still did not manage to get hot water for a shower at the end of the day. This is a shame as it was the only low point in an otherwise great trip. The hotel’s pools and beach facilities are actually quite nice but it seems that an originally luxury hotel has fallen on hard times and is in need of repairs and renovations. In summary, the tour itinerary was an efficient way to visit Jordan and, not speaking any Arabic ourselves, having a driver/guide with us at all times was essential. Our group was just the two of us and another couple. We traveled in a comfortable van, everything was done according to plan and the driver made every effort to ensure a pleasant experience. The tour operator was reasonable responsive and flexible and, with the exception of the last hotel, the organization was exactly as described.