Aspire Down Under

We returned several months ago, but somehow much of the adventure seems like yesterday! from reading other reviews, it seems most folks enjoyed their trip as much as we did!
I did a review for TIME on Trip Advisor — they were absolutely superb, and what a great way to get started! Ceilhe and Sophia were so personable and gave us such a great appreciation of the Maori culture. Driving was a wonderful way to have flexibility to see many unique places and events. The plans and suggestions provided in our package which we received on arrival were wonderful — we took advantage of almost all, and found quite a few of our own…
In Australia, seeing the penguins come in was a true highlight. Having the special guide made it especially meaningful. Daintree Forest, and Port Douglas were very unique and restful. The helicopter flight over the Great Barrier Reef was a real eye-​opening experience. Sidney lived up to all our expectations — a wonderful city!
All of our guides throughout the trip were outstanding. The excursions were always prompt, well organized and added great value to our experience. The hotels always comfortable and conveniently located, a real plus!
We loved the people and the hospitality. We are very grateful to Shelley for her care and expertise. We enthusiastically recommend her and Aspire Down Under!!!

As good as it gets! Shelley helped us with an amazing 25 day trip to New Zealand and Australia. Accommodations were top notch… if there was a special view we had it! Tours were exceptional, and down time always came at the right moment. Shelley knows her stuff!

Shelley arranged for my group of 7 to have an awesome time while in Australia. We trusted her expertise to select activities that were enjoyable, and we were right to do so. She was really responsive to all correspondence, and answered our questions with the utmost professionalism. I’d definitely recommend her!

We had an action packed vacation in Australia thanks to Aspire Down Under! Shelby is AWESOME and was a great help in planning our excursions, which exceeded beyond our expectations! We stayed traveled to three cities (Sydney, Port Douglas and Melbourne) and two of the three accommodations were great. We would suggest to reconsider bookings at Mercure Melbourne Albert Park for future customers.
Thanks for making a memorable experience we will never forget!

I had a wonderful experience with Sharon at Aspire. After performing some research on flights, hotels, and tours on my own, I decided to see if there were any tour companies that specialized in where we wanted to go in the South Pacific. Aspire had great reviews. I called to get a quote, and it was surprisingly cheaper (and less stressful) than booking everything on my own. Sharon asked great questions to get an idea of our needs, budget, and interests. She was professional, courteous, and patient. We enjoyed the trip immensely, and would definitely use Aspire again!

We went on a 2 week trip to Sydney, Port Douglas and Melbourne. Joanne was instrumental in planning our trip. She had alot of suggestions for what to do in each city. Loved the Sydney Bridge Walk and the Penguin Parade in Melbourne. Hotels were great, shuttle pick up and delivery were very well organized. Would go again tomorrow

Aspire Down Under planned an incredible honeymoon for us! We spent 2 weeks in Australia and visited Melbourne, Port Douglas, and Sydney. Their expertise was absolutely critical to our having an amazing time. They knew all of the best day trips at each city and had great food recommendations to boot! Considering the complexity of our trip, our agent, Joanne, was so professional and helpful. We probably changed our itinerary a half dozen times and she was always responsive and helpful. She even saved us a couple thousand dollars when we had to make a last minute change to our flight plan. I don’t know how we could have had a better trip!

My husband and I just returned from our honeymoon in Fiji and Australia, and it was absolutely perfect thanks to Joanne at Aspire Down Under. From the accommodations, to the transportation, the excursions and the special champagne waiting for us at each hotel, Joanne’s planning was exceptional and exactly what we wanted! I would highly recommend anyone planning to visit Fiji or Australia to use Aspire Down Under… our trip was perfect!

Just returned from our 2-​week vacation to Australia, and Shelley did a great job! The tours and accommodations were excellent, and Aspire Down Under staff were accessible before and during our trip! Perhaps the most notable part was their willingness to jump in and help us make adjustments to our itinerary… even during the trip!

Shelby did a great job in helping us plan our honeymoon for us. She asked us to start our budget and our desired destination, then proceeded to ask us about our preferences on what we like to do/​what we want to do on our trip. She took all of that down and then proceeded to get us the best package we could, along with quality hotels and quality excursions. The best thing about it all, was that we were a bit scared of our transportation services not being prompt or on time, or even showing up, but it was perfect, they all showed up 5 minutes early, and we had no issues with anything. My wife and I both agree, this was a trip of a lifetime, and she definitely made it happen. Thank you Aspire Down Under and Shelby for such a great trip!

Aspire Down Under (ADU) is the ideal travel agency to use if you’re going to travel to Australia/​NZ. Normally, I’m against travel agents as I like to plan vacations myself. However, I found myself at a loss as I was trying to organize all the tours, transfers, and accommodations across various cities in a country that I’m not familiar with. Insert Aspire Down Under. Shelby Aldo was excellent at listening to our priorities, putting together an itinerary, and changing activities/​locations/​preferences as we worked through the process. We traveled for 2.5weeks and ran into no problems whatsoever. ADU clearly has experience and knowledge of the area as all our activities, locations, and transfers were top-​notch. The itinerary they provided gave us all the necessary info (where to meet, what to pack, what to expect for the day). The trip was an experience of a lifetime and I’m thankful to Aspire Down Under for putting it together. I’d highly recommend ADU to anyone looking to travel to that area of the world — they make the trip as smooth as it can be.

We just returned from our 3 week vacation in Australia (5 days) and new Zealand (14 days). The trip was truly amazing, and probably the best trip abroad we have ever taken and we have taken many. We have to give the credit to Shelley Madsen, our expert planner at Aspire Down Under, who maximized the use of our time while providing us with the best possible experiences to suit our needs and preferences. Through a clever combination of fights, rail, car and boat transportation, we covered great distances while having ample time to explore and enjoy each destination. We originally had planned to travel last year but had to delay because of unforeseen circumstances. Shelley revamped our itinerary, switching us to Air New Zealand (great airline) from Qantas, and changing the order of our locations. We started off in Sydney, then flew to Melbourne, and then to New Zealand which we explored on land from Queenstown to Auckland. We truly made the most of every day, starting early and ending late (long days in summer there), with plenty of hiking, dining, and experiencing along the way. She spent our money wisely, mixing luxurious Bed and Breakfasts with hotels, inns, and venues that we could never have identified. For example, the Black Swan Hotel in Rotorua was beautiful and well located on the lake, with excellent food and incredible accomodations, while the Museum Art Hotel in Wellington was an art gallery in itself. We loved sea kayaking in the Abel Tasman Park, flying to Milford Sound followed by a 2-​hour cruise of the fjords, and learning about Maori culture in Wellington at the Te Papa Museum. We had a wine tour near Nelson with a half-​Maori guide and two Lord of the Rings jeep rides in Queenstown. We climbed the Sydney Bridge ane attended an opera, went to the Australian Open in Melbourne, and visited the Blue Mountains. We took the ferry between the North and South NZ islands, and the Trans Alpine train from Greymouth to Christchurch, and spent a few hours in Middle Earth looking at Hobbit holes. We could just go on and on, and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to Shelley Madsen (who we discovered on the Internet) for providing us with the experience of a lifetime.

There’s nothing new to add to the rave reviews prior to this. Aspire Down Under took care of every necessary accommodation (lodging and transportation, some meals), planned activities within our preferences AND did it all within budget. Shelley gave us more than we asked for, while respecting our preferences. She is very prompt and ridiculously flexible with changing circumstances. I definitely recommend booking your trip through this company!

My wife and I recently worked with Joanne at Aspire Down Under and she planned the most AMAZING honeymoon to Australia for us. If you are thinking about going to Australia for any type of trip, make sure to use them. I originally found Aspire online and noticed that they were endorsed by the Australian Tourism Board and after looking at a few Unilocal reviews, I figured I would reach out. In my original conversation with Joanne, we discussed why we were looking to go to Australia for our honeymoon and what we were looking to do. She prepared an outline of the things we could do given our budget and the amount of days we were working with, and we immediately fell in love with it. Working with her even further, we never once felt like we were being pressured into doing something we didn’t want to or that we weren’t getting the best pricing. She did a great of listening and asking the right questions so that she could plan the best trip possible. When we were in Oz, all of the reservations, transfers and excursions were as advertised and seamless. This really allowed us to feel at ease when we were there and only focused on having an amazing time. Joanne really knocked the cover off the ball and I wish I could give her 6 stars because it was THAT good. We will be using her again for our next trip down under!

Aspire Down Under and my agent Shelley Madsen planned an amazing trip to Australia for us in January 2014. Shelley also helped us with off– the– ship outings in New Zealand.
My wife and I shared our ages, physical condition and our travel goals. Shelley matched our needs and wants with a perfect trip, wonderful hotels, great outings that were creative and different. Her planning exceeded our expectations and as frequent world travelers our experience was significant and our expectations were high.
I can not give high enough praise for this wonderful company and to Shelley in particular.

While looking at Unilocal it is clear Aspire doesn’t need another 5 star review, here it is!
Our Honeymoon was 1 week Australia, 1 Week New Zealand. Shelby worked with us to create a personalized itinerary that fit our likes and interests. Her communication skills are incredible and she was able to give us exactly what she wanted, at the price we wanted.
Some of our friends cautioned us about using a travel agency (in general, not specifically this one) but I have to say with an itinerary so personalized, not one thing was amiss. It felt as though we had planned it ourself, without all the stress.
The hotels we were placed in were in amazing locations. While we had printed out everything and brought it with us, upon arriving at each hotel, a packet from Aspire Down Under and their Australia/​New Zealand affiliate ATS was waiting for us. This made contacting each excursion flawless and allowed us to just relax and not have to worry about the little details like remembering confirmation numbers.
We couldn’t have had a better time and would recommend Shelby and Aspire Down Under to anyone looking for a personalized, stress free, memorable experience!

My (now) husband and I went to the Travel & Adventure Show in Chicago in Jan 2012 to get some ideas on how to plan the honeymoon of a lifetime. We met with Shelley of Aspire Down Under first and after talking to her for a few minutes, gave us some ideas and her email address to go further on those ideas. (We had also met someone else from a different travel agency but she was abrupt and just plain mean via email.)
We wanted to do a three week trip to Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. We wanted to see as much as possible without going too much overboard and to us, it didn’t matter if the hotels were 3 star or above. The experience was the most important part.
She also had to take into account that we were traveling during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays (aka their summer and the busy time), for Christmas we’d be staying in Christchurch to visit family, we wanted to visit Mt. Cook area of NZ, see Sydney, and go scuba diving at some point on the trip. It was a lot of info, but a wide enough net to cast.
Shelley was amazing to work with, especially considering we mainly worked together via email. She gave us a starting itinerary just over the budget we gave her (which, honestly, 3 weeks in 3 countries… easy to do!) and a couple of options to change it up. We changed one or two things, but overall stuck to the itinerary she gave us.
The trip was unbelievable and amazing. Everything that Shelley booked for us worked out according to plan… except for Fiji, but that was not her fault. She recommended that we take travel insurance out and we didn’t. (Seriously, take the travel insurance!!) We hunkered down in a hotel ballroom in a new/​different hotel that we had to pay for ourselves for 30 hours while a Category 5 Cyclone passed over us. (So not kidding.) Had we had the travel insurance, we may had been able to get that money back.
All in all, a great trip with very memorable experiences (see above) that made it so much better that I didn’t have to plan. I would use Shelley and Aspire Down Under again in a heartbeat.

I really can’t say enough about the fine folks of Aspire Down Under. I was planning a trip to Australia and… even as a seasoned traveller… I needed the kind of advice that only a specialist could provide. The staff here helped me decide where to go (my initial thoughts were a bit too aggressive) — and then made all the arrangements seamless! I’d happily recommend them to anyone planning a trip down under!

Just returned from a 23-​day custom tour arranged by Shelly at Aspire Down Under. What a great trip! We had to plan this with only a week in advance. Shelly put together a fantastic itinerary. Our major towns were Queenstown NZ, Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Douglas (Cairns region), and Sydney. The genius of travel planning is pacing and where and when to put your money. This was extraordinary. Shelly picked perfect hotels for our needs, smaller guides for the key sites, open days in the right places for pacing. Shelly was available during the trip when we had questions. Trips like this are complex, requiring many flights, transfers, bookings, etc. not one glitch and all great arrangements. My brother used her for his trip 6 months earlier, and also had a fabulous time and experience. This trip was truly «No worries, mate!»

We worked with Kerrie at Aspire Down Under to create a month-​long tour of Australia and New Zealand that included 5 different family members joining and leaving the tour at various times. Each had their own wishes (and budgets). They were coming from 4 different towns. Kerrie didn’t miss a beat. She had something for everyone and nearly everyone enjoyed nearly every single plane ride, train ride, meal, excursion and hotel stay. Coaches were on time. Everything had been checked and re-​checked. We even received an upgrade a a spectacular resort near the Great Barrier Reef because the management so loved Kerrie. We would have to agree. We LOVE Kerrie and Aspire Down Under through association. Well done!