New Zealand Self Drive Tour Reviews

We loved our first visit to New Zealand! Two weeks was barely long enough but we covered a good amount of highlights on both the North and South Island. Now we know which areas we’d return to spend more time exploring! Nicole did a wonderful job of getting to know what we were interested in and incorporating everything we requested as well as leaving us time to do some hiking throughout the trip. It was so helpful to use First Light Travel to plan our trip as we were traveling during a busy time of year and had left our planning fairly late. I knew it would be best to use a local company that are experts in the field. We had some busy days and some slower days but they all flowed smoothly. The itinerary Nicole created for us kept us on track to see what we wanted at a pace I knew would work for us. Our family favorite was Rotorua Canopy Tours. My adventurous kids from the get-go were excited and, although I was more apprehensive, the guides on the tour made it easy for me to feel comfortable and have such a great time! With all the accommodation, rental cars, domestic flights, and activities to organize, I would definitely recommend First Light Travel to plan your travels!

First Light Travel made me and my husband’s honeymoon a wonderful, stress free experience! I originally tried to plan a trip to New Zealand on my own, that proved to be very difficult. There’s so much to see and do!! So, we reached out and ended up working with Jasmin and she was THE BEST. She got to know us a little and we told her we loved the outdoors and wanted to experience NZ but didn’t know where to start! We decided to use our two week honeymoon completely on the South Island. Which included: Christchurch, Mount Cook, Dunedin, Te Anau, Doubtful Sound, Queenstown, Wanaka, and Franz Josef. She kept us busy with both large and small group adventures which we loved. Wildlife cruises to see albatross, island nature walks with great views, and our all day cruise to Doubtful Sound just to name a few! We had something almost every day, but she did schedule in a couple free days for us to explore. Her communication skills were amazing, she gave us an itinerary, to which she made it easy to change a few things (we live in MN so we didn’t want to kayak or jet ski, we do that every summer). She finalized booking, and saw us off! We wouldn’t have had this experience without her. Thanks Jasmin and First Light Travel! 10000/10 would recommend.

You created a fabulous and well thought out trip for us. I so appreciated the accuracy of the travel time planned into our trip. You were spot on accurate. The hotel selections were wonderful and excursions were fun. Thanks for a memorable lifetime adventure in your beautiful country .First Light Travel did a phenomenal job planning our trip. You have created an experience of a lifetime and EVERYTHING was seamless ! I have already recommended you to friends who are interested in the same type of experience when they visit NZ .

First Light Travel exceeded all our expectations. They worked with us creating a 3 week self-drive itinerary of New Zealand that included both the North and South Islands followed by an additional week spent in Australia and Fiji. They arranged airport transfers, car rental pickups, hotel accommodations, and several of our tours. Whenever we had a question, they would respond in less than 24 hours. Prior to our trip, we were provided a detailed day-by-day itinerary, which included contact information, how long it would take to get from one location to the next, and if we needed to confirm activities with the supplier. They also provided us with an emergency contact number in the event something came up during non-business hours. We would highly recommend Danielle and First Light Travel for your travel arrangements.

Excellent service and guidance from First Light Travel advisor Anna Caudle! We communicated over email and phone for the planning and the resulting self-driving tour itinerary was excellent and perfect for 15 day visit. We requested some golf be included and Anna set us up at 4 beautiful courses with morning tee-times. The hotels she booked for us were consistently great and the activities were fantastic, especially booking us on Air Milford to fly to Milford Sound! Flight was the highlight. Everything was perfect. Can’t recommend their service enough. Top rate!!

We did an adapted version of First Light Travel's Classic 14 day South Island Explorer as added in a few nights initial stay in Wellington, ferry to & overnight stay in Picton, and a 5 day hike of the Queen Charlotte Track (through a different company). The trip was brilliant. It mostly worked like clockwork and if we hit a small hitch First Light Staff were on hand and responsive to our queries. The varied experiences were wonderful and fun and the accommodations were again varied but very comfortable. We particularly loved the Mornington personalised wine tour, the Doubtful Sound, the Glowworm caves, the nature tour on Lake Wanaka, the wildlife cruise near Dunedin, the Mt Cook Glacier lake trip, the Gibbston Valley e-bike tour, the train trip from Greymouth to Christchurch and the drives through much beautiful scenery. If we could do it again we'd have 1 more night in Queenstown with a free day as there's so much to do there and 1 extra night in Wanaka as it's so beautiful. Our trip from mid Nov to mid Dec 2024 meant there was still snow still on some peaks and it was very green with lots of spring flowers. The days ranged from 7 degrees to 23 - fortunately we'd packed for all seasons. Overall, we were lucky with the weather with only the Franz Josef Heli Hike being cancelled due to rain (150mm in 1 day!). Can't recommend this tour and First Light Travel highly enough.

Arranging our last minute 10 day trip to New Zealand with First Light Travel and Travel Designer Taylor Nguyen was a great experience that yielded fantastic results. Highly recommend to anyone looking to design a trip to New Zealand. Taylor took the time to understand our profile and interests for the trip, and developed a first class itinerary that required only subtle modifications. She was diligent in ensuring we were comfortable with the plan, range of accommodations and tours. We had an incredible time and the itinerary, accommodations, and tours were awesome and a perfect fit. Taylor's guidance in developing the overall plan and catering it specifically to our needs was outstanding. We are frequent global travelers with multiple major overseas trips per year. Our New Zealand was right up there with any other top tier travel we have taken over the decades! It was so good to return to NZ once again after over 40 years.

First Light Travel and Gina, my Travel Adviser, in particular were amazing! From helping with suggestions initially, to detailed planning - flights, transfers, car hire, fantastic hotels, amazing attractions and expected travel timings, throughout, they had our back. My wife and I fell in love with this amazing country, it's people and culture and this was made possible with Gina's itinerary. Can't wait to come back.

Great trip, went mainly to plan except one cancellation which the team handled very well and looked after our alternative arrangements. Before we left the operations team sent us road conditions which was a great heads up.
Felt like we were being monitored and looked after the whole way.

Had an amazing time in New Zealand thanks to Gina! She was able to answer all my questions and assuage any doubts I had while ensuring I was getting the exact itinerary I was looking for. The tours were fun, the accommodations were great, and the itinerary was perfect with plenty of free time to explore!