Banff Private Tour - Beyond the basics

Great tour by Rick, our driver, who was extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and funny to go with it. We had a private minibus for 10 of us, when to Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Bow Valley Parkway, and a few other viewpoints and lakes. Best way to get around and see a lot of places without worrying about driving, parking, permits etc, and some roads are closed to private cars. Only downside is you fit so much in that time can be limited in any particular place, but that's the trade-off if you want to cover it in a day.

Banff Day Trips was outstanding. Our family of 9 was in the Banff area for a week. We set a one day private tour up with Kevin who was great to work with. Our tour guide, Murray, who was also great, picked us up at our door at 9:30 AM near Ghost Lake, Alberta and we visited Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and Norquay (with chairlift ride). We picked up lunch at a deli in Canmore for the trip. Murray gave us all the time we needed at each location without rushing. Arrived back at the home we were renting for the week at 6:30 PM. We had planned to also stop at Johnston Canyon last, but were too pooped. Visited there on our own a few days later.

We were searching for a Banff Tour Guide company from Calgary when we found this company called Banff Day Trips. Their website mentioned that they can do the tour in Tagalog. So we were sold. We originally booked a one day Private Banff Day Trip for July 19th. The communications with Kevin was excellent. He always made sure that he got back to you in a timely manner. We arrived in Calgary on July 16th and the plan was to spend two days of sightseeing in Calgary on the 17th, 18th and then go do the Banff Day trip on the 19th. However, we completed all the sightseeing we wanted to do in Calgary on the 17th. So on the afternoon of the 17th, we contacted Kevin and told him that we wanted to add an extra day of Banff sightseeing for the 18th which is the very next day, if that was even possible to arrange. Kevin told us to give him a couple of hours to see what he can do. On the evening of the 17th, he got back to us and told us that he had made the arrangements that we wanted for a private tour of Banff with a Tagalog-speaking guide for the 18th in addition to the tour on the 19th that we had previously arranged more than 3 months ago. In a span of a few hours, Kevin was able to arrange their schedules and accommodate us with just a few hours to spare for a private tour for the very next day. He did an awesome job with the arrangements and we ended up with 2 days of a private tour to Banff with a Filipino guide called Melvin. Melvin is an awesome guide, very flexible and accommodating. Being Filipino travelers ourselves, we were able to connect with Melvin and very quickly it was no longer a tour guide to guest relationship. He was like a close friend or family member showing us around. He was very like-able and very friendly. He volunteered to be our personal paparazzi and took lots of photos of us. He even took us to their "secret" locations where you can take wonderful photos that very few tourists know about. We have many wonderful photos taken by Melvin during the 2-day tour and we enjoyed every minute of it. We even had lots of very interesting conversations about living in Canada and life in Canada, especially his own. He gave us some useful tips about driving in Canada since he found out that we were going to be driving to Jasper after our day trips with him. Most important thing, be very careful with driving as there could be "ghost cars" around. These are unmarked police cars in SUV or pickup trucks that look like vehicles driven by ordinary citizens. We highly recommend going with Banff Day Trips and working with Kevin. If you are Filipino travelers, request from Kevin that you want Melvin to be your guide. We are glad that we ended up with a 2-day tour of the Banff area as a one day tour was definitely not going to be enough to see all the wonderful sights that you need to see between Calgary and Lake Louis. If you can stretch the budget a little, going with the 2-day private tour would be the ultimate arrangement. We truly appreciated that Kevin was able to arrange for us an extra private day tour at the last minute. That is truly exceptional customer service.

Anton picked us up right on time, took us to our destination (Lake Louise) and was there and waiting for us when we were ready to go. Making our trip so much easier without worrying about parking or anything.

I just did a private tour with a group of 4 adults and 3 young children. I told them what our priorities were for sightseeing and a timeline of when we wanted to get back to our hotel, and they were more than accommodating! I’ve been to Banff before and have done all the driving myself, but it was so nice to not have to worry about the logistics this time around! We even saw a grizzly bear right at the end of our tour 😊