The only reason I enjoyed this trip was the people who were in my group, my trail leader was lovely and she chose and booked great accommodation, and the countries themselves were incredible. Our leader only had online training and Frontier had not told her the process at all, it was not clear what trips/travel and transfer was included (and a lot was restricted). Breakfast and lunch (which was included) HAD to be incredibly basic, very cheap local food eaten together at the same time. However this didn't take into account any other circumstances such as illness, group size, availability, price fluctuations etc. Our budget was tiny for the whole trip and if we didn't use it all on a meal, we never saw the leftover money.
There was rules with drinking and you weren't allowed much personal freedom - it felt like a school trip really. The safety regulations were ridiculous: not being allowed to slide down a slide at a waterfall, go on a banana boat or walk by yourself unless you were 'signed out' from the company's care (this also meant you couldn't use the paid for company accommodation whilst signed out). We had to write a blog every week, which only around 2 of which were actually published.
Communication with the company was shocking, they never replied to any emails or queries no matter how urgent etc. They also failed to take appropriate action when it came to one member's mental & physical health, which had consequences later on.. They also made not a single penny donation to the local school we taught at, which is disgusting considering how much we paid - and very awkward when the teacher told us this.
Overall on the whole trip I could not understand where any of this money had gone and was hugely disappointed. So much so that I actually came back early. We had one leader for around 13 people, which is not acceptable and too much responsibility for one person.
I would greatly advise you find a different company to travel with! I regret going with Frontier.
Response from Frontier
I am sorry to hear you found your volunteering week with us disappointing. A week’s schedule consists of an arrivals day, a full day of training, 4 activity days and a free day. The free day is to accommodate people to spend some time seeing the area.
The house is in a local community where many residents take the bus to work and surrounding areas. This is only about 15 min away from the main city and we are happy to be situated in an area that is not considered touristy and is more a part of the local community and the cost of living associated with this area is far more appropriate for the volunteer experience in general. Using public transport is standard in the area and works within our aims of reducing our carbon footprint in line with our ethos as a conservation organisation.
During beach cleans you were allowed to speak with local people and were actively encouraged to do so to raise awareness of the activity, its importance and the reason for the project as a whole. Many people in the South recognise the Frontier t-shirts and know what we are doing and have always interacted with us positively and are very grateful for the work our volunteers carry out.
Thank you for your feedback about the coastal surveys, ideally we would have split the group more but it was not possible so we decided to do this activity as with the full team. We will take the feedback of taking pictures into account, we are always looking for new ideas and suggestions for improving our activities and volunteer experience.
Our star activity is indeed the boat surveys. We try to plan people on as many boats as possible but we guarantee at least one. This guarantee we did meet. Yes, sometimes a boat trip can be cancelled by our partners due to weather or as a result of busy tourism and we try to rearrange the activity to accommodate these as best we can which we did on this occasion.
In training we go through how to catalogue the data thoroughly. During the time data is put in, a staff member is always around and we explain it again if necessary. If you do not ask for help, we do not know that you may need it. The project laptops also have a step-by-step guide which you could follow in case you were confused and a staff member was not present. Every boat trip’s data has been added and most participants took incredible pictures which we can use to expand our cetacean database and our quarterly science reports.
Furthermore, this Christmas Offer is designed as we want to provide opportunities to people that may not necessarily be in a position to sign up for this project otherwise. However, some activities can be affected by the festive period due to increased local tourism, local events causing disruption or reduced local services due to public holidays. Our staff team do all they can to accommodate these factors but sometimes these disruptions can affect our activities.
Thank you for your feedback about your time in Tenerife, all feedback is useful to our team’s efforts to constantly improve the project experience for our volunteers.