Tripmasters.com is a full-service travel booking website that is undoubtedly the most impressive travel booking engine of any sort we’ve ever used. While not the “flashiest” user interface, the versatility of what you can do, why types of trips you can create, and how you can arrange your vacation is unmatched in our experience. I say that without hesitance, and despite the high praise, we want you to first understand that we are not being compensated in any way for writing this honest review of our experience with Tripmasters.com (and the sister website, europeandestinations.com), having used their service around a dozen times over the past 6 years.

How Tripmasters.com Got Started

When we start telling people about Tripmasters, which we do often, we nearly always get asked questions such as the following;

• “How long have they been around?”
• “Where do they have trips?”
• “Is it hard to book a trip?”
• “Where is Tripmasters based?”

The company started long before there was a Tripmasters.com, when in 1984 they began as a tour booking company assisting with tailor-made itineraries to South America – namely, Peru. Over that time, Tripmasters continued growing wildly as the internet burgeoned in the late 90s, and into the 2000s.

Today, Tripmasters offers trips to 6 of the world’s 7 continents, and remains a completely customizable platform for people trying to book trips. We’ve used the platform to book myriad trips to England, Scotland, Greece, Peru, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, and many more, many of which we have visited through Tripmasters multiple times (such as England, which we’ve visited four times through the platform).

Is Tripmasters Trustworthy?

We can say, with absolute honesty, that we have never experienced a critical issue with Tripmasters.

When we normally ask if a website is trustworthy, we want to know;

• Am I going to get what I pay for?
• Will I be treated honestly?
• Will I, in any way, be misled about the terms, service, or price?

I can emphatically support Tripmasters’ standards of quality. Their booking engine, which we’ll discuss, is straight forward. Customer service is fast, friendly, very communicative, and goes above and beyond what is asked of them. The terms of the itineraries, and their price schedule, is also easy to understand and remains consistent throughout the process.

What Options Do You Have With Tripmasters?

With Tripmasters, you essentially have two different ways to book trips. First, you can select one of their pre-organized, recommended itineraries, or secondly you can build your own from scratch.

To start, find an area where you can select specific locations. This can be done on the homepage by either using the dropdown that says “destinations”, or by selecting the hyperlinks that go to certain continent-specific areas of the website.

As you can see, there’s one for Europe, one for Asia, and so on.

Once you select one of these areas and find the prompts to go to the location-specific on the Tripmasters interface where you want to book, you’ll see all of the suggested itineraries laid out for you to review. These are not anchored to any specific date (in most cases), but is, however structured in a suggested manner.

You will have the same option at the top of any page, however, to start building a trip that is truly custom – from scratch!

This is the method we’ve used every time we’ve booked a trip through Tripmasters, and the one where we’ve saved the most money in the past. If you get creative enough with itineraries and potential travel options, you can save thousands while extending your trip several days, adding long, over-night layovers in interesting locations, and even paying super cheap prices for nice hotels in world-renown cities!

An Example of Tripmasters’ Value

Since it’s the example that requires a bit more of an example, we’ll discuss for a moment how to actually book a trip from scratch. In this example, we’ll book a trip leaving from Miami, Florida to visit London and Paris over 7 nights during the American Thanksgiving holiday.

First, build out the parameters accordingly with what you’re wanting to plan. See below for a representation of the example we discussed above.

You’ll be asked to specify how your rooms should be arranged, how many people, and what method of transportation you would like between cities….

… Before coming to a screen with your estimated price based on a suggestion of itineraries. These are all movable in terms of hotel and flight selection.

Now, if you’ve ever traveled out of the country before, especially a week spent overseas during an American holiday with an additional person traveling with you, you probably know how inexpensive this really is. Especially considering that Tripmasters’ flights include;

• International flights
• Flights and/or train to connecting international cities
• All hotels throughout the entire trip

Even if you haven’t been on this type of trip, I probably don’t have to tell you how silly it is that two people can spend a week in London and Paris for roughly the price of 5 XBOX consoles. This is why we love Tripmasters, have used them for years to book our trips, and will continue to.

That’s $2,400 for two people in Europe – EVERYTHING INCLUDED!

The value is absolutely amazing.

Customer Service at Tripmasters

The customer service at Tripmasters is where the value really stands out. On some of our previous trips, there are minor changes with your itinerary that happen over months. Flights get moved, times get adjusted, etc.

Tripmasters not only notifies you of all these changes, but each time we’ve been approached about such a scenario, they’ve presented options that solved the issue at hand, leaving us only to confirm they’re suggested changes without having to pay a dime extra.

Overall, Tripmasters is the “cheat code” of travel from the United States. What’s even better is that they continue to expand their offerings – now including African safari trips, and even trips to the West Coast of the United States, including Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

We’ll continue to use Tripmasters, and believe you should do the same. Stay tuned for specific reviews on our ongoing trips using Tripmasters and their amazing platform!

COVID-19 Caveat

I would be remiss without addressing the many complaints that Tripmasters.com received in the wake of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reality is that many of the complaints were probably warranted, given the unimaginable complexity of the situation. We didn’t have a trip booked with Tripmasters at the time, so we cannot personally verify the issues people had in terms of getting refunds, changing bookings, and dealing with cancellations. We didn’t have that experience. With that being said, we know that what happened likely left many with a sour taste in their mouths, and who could blame them?

Conversely, I haven’t heard of any travel company who dealt with this well. Complaints were rampant for many of Tripmasters competitors, and we did in fact lose money on a flight booked through Expedia. Since the pandemic, and the gradual reopening of the world, however, a glance at reviews of most established travel booking companies such as Tripmasters will show that things have picked up, and many are receiving solid reviews again.

We can only stand by our personal experience with Tripmasters, or any other company, and have only had positive experiences.