TrovaTrip China Review: Amazing Destination, Disappointing Tour Company
In October 2025, I spent a great 8 days in China on a TrovaTrip hosted by 2 influencer friends of mine. We walked on the Great Wall, saw the famous Terracotta Warriors, and enjoyed all the incredible food. Visiting China for the first time was intimidating – from the complete lack of English to the firewall blocking the western internet – so joining a group trip took some of the pressure off. Group trips are also a great way to meet people and allow you to travel “solo” without being alone. While overall the trip was a success and I can’t wait to go back to China, all the negative sides of the trip were TrovaTrip’s errors and I walked away with a bad taste in my mouth about their operations. I don’t like to write negative reviews, but I hope this review helps you if you’re considering joining a group trip.
Note that this review is not a reflection of our hosts, but rather TrovaTrip as a tour operator.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you.
How TrovaTrip Works
I have seen some people on Reddit calling TrovaTrip a scam and I don’t really agree with that. First of all, this was a real trip with real activities. I saw some amazing bucket list places in China and met some incredible people. On the other hand, I do think that the pricing felt a inflated for what we got. More than anything, the operations of the trip just left something to be desired.
I myself am a content creator and while I’ve never hosted a trip with TrovaTrip, I’ve sat on sales calls where they pitch creators to work with them, so I have a peak behind the curtain many others may not. Essentially, they work with influencers to sell group trips to their audience. The influencer takes a cut – the amount varies based on the price of the trip and number of signups. In the case of this trip, it was actually 2 influencers co-hosting the trip (but that didn’t make much difference as an attendee).
Keep in mind the influencers aren’t really leading the trip. Every TrovaTrip has a local guide taking you around and showing you the sites. The influencer is there to bring the vibes and be the glue that holds everyone together. For this trip, one of our influencer hosts happened to speak Mandarin, which did come in handy several times!
If you want a brutally honest review of what it’s like working with TrovaTrip as a host, check out this post by Have Clothes Will Travel.
Pre-Trip Communication
Ahead of the trip, TrovaTrip provided a packing list and a letter with an official itinerary to provide government officials (for visa purposes, entry/exit, etc). Interestingly, the paperwork said Intrepid at the top, not TrovaTrip. This makes me think TrovaTrip is just a middleman for this Intrepid tour (increasing the cost in the process).
China has more specific requirements and visa rules than most countries, so which can be stressful for travelers. I was traveling so much (and almost out of passport pages) that I couldn’t get a Chinese visa, so I chose to utilize the newly expanded “240-hour visa free transit” program. This allowed me to save hundreds of dollars on a visa and stay for up to 10 days. The trip was only 8 days so this was perfect.
Unfortunately, TrovaTrip was incredibly unhelpful at answering my visa and visa-free-transit related questions. I kept being bounced around to various AI chats (there’s no helpline phone number to call). Eventually I just did my own research, including messaging the official Chinese government website to ensure my plans were ok.
When I got to China, I found out many people had no idea the “240-hour visa free transit” program was even an option. Some of them had spent $800 on a visa they had no plans to use beyond this trip!
Information about what apps to download to pay, get around the firewall, etc. came from one of our hosts (thankfully!). Only limited, vague info was provided by TrovaTrip.
The last thing I wish they’d communicated ahead of time is that you have to be under 60 to take the toboggan down the Great Wall of China. We had 2 older women in our group who were upset to find this out only as they tried to board.
Costs (Especially What Isn’t Included)
The sticker price of the trip was $1895 for a shared room. Hotels, the bullet train, and most activities were included in the price, but as I’ll explain, a lot was left out. Flights to/from China were not included (which is standard for group trips since people are coming from all over). This price also did not include visas for those who got one or mandatory travel insurance (my policy cost $75).
Rip Off Prices
When booking, TrovaTrip offered an add-on for an additional $45 Muslim Street Food Walking tour in Xi’An. Everyone on our trip added this, but it turned out that it was just our local guide taking people around the Muslim Quarter with 4-5 food samples along the way. Given that this was the same guide who was with us all week (who we tipped VERY well) and very limited food, this was a waste. The Muslim Quarter was very safe to walk around by ourselves and the food is very inexpensive.
TrovaTrip gave us the option to book transportation to/from the airport through them. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to figure out transport in China, so I pre-booked it for peace of mind. In hindsight, I was drastically overcharged, paying $45-50 each way for a trip that would have been $10-15 in a DiDi (Chinese Uber). I wish I’d been given more information on how to get around on my own.
If you wanted to stay an extra night before or after the trip, TrovaTrip wanted up to $179 for 1 night. This is insane knowing how cheap hotels in China are. Of course, you could always book a hotel on your own.
Additional Extras
As I’ll touch on later, the itinerary was very light on activities. Several of us ended up paying for additional activities to fill the time:
- Temple of Heaven entry fee: $2
- 24 hour spa (entry fee, 30 min massage, cupping): $98
- Trip to Huashan Mountain: $265
- Dinner theatre: $40
- Tips for guide and driver: $300
Souvenirs were obviously not included, but many meals weren’t provided either. Food is pretty cheap in China, but group meals were more fun than going out on my own.
Mainland China is a very inexpensive place to visit by western standards, so this trip was still much less expensive than most of my travels. However, I would have liked to see more value from the sticker price (more meals included, for example).
Hotels
In Beijing, we stayed at the Beijing Sunworld Hotel and I have no complaints about this hotel. It seemed to be recently renovated and the rooms were clean, modern, and safe. The breakfast buffet had a good selection and the hotel was just around the corner from a major shopping street.
Unfortunately, the hotel in Xi’An was much worse. TrovaTrip put us a the Xi’An Bell Tower Hotel, named for it’s location by the city’s famous Bell Tower. This hotel was in desperate need of renovation. Our room (which did not have a view of said bell tower), was dark, musty, full of mystery stains, and smelled heavily of mold. There were also only a couple of outlets. We found gas masks in the closet – these weren’t at our previous hotel and made us nervous why they thought those may be necessary… Another girl in our group found a bug in her bed. There was also a leak in the hallway that the staff simply put a towel over. To top it all off, the hotel breakfast was practically inedible.
My roommate and I actually decided to pay for another hotel nearby for our last 2 nights. That hotel was actually the same price as the Bell Tower Hotel (starting around $50/night)! There’s no good reason TrovaTrip put us there in the first place. The location was good but impractical. The street of the hotel in front was blocked off, so DiDis had a hard time finding the pickup point around the back.
Local Guide
Here’s where TrovaTrip really shined! Leon, our local guide, was incredible. He was funny, knowledgeable, and very personable. He drank with the group, tried to teach us Chinese, and handled all of our tickets along the way. We had the same guide the entire time, which I appreciated.
However Leon was the one who set up our dinner theatre in Xi’An and encouraged us all to go. It was an extra $40 and all of us agreed it was not very good.
Itinerary Was Too Light
When I travel, I am very big on seeing and learning as much as I possibly can. Who knows when the next time I’ll be back (if ever), so I don’t want to waste a minute. At the same time, I can understand the need for a little downtime to decompress and regroup for the next activity.
The reality of this itinerary is that we had way too much time in Xi’An and way too much unstructured free time. Bad weather only exacerbated this, which rearranged the itinerary to include an entire free day. I am so glad I found friends on the trip who felt similarly and were willing to book extra tours. Going to the 24 hour spa and Huashan Mountain were add-ons we found that turned out to be huge trip highlights for me. It just felt like we had to take matters into our own hands in order to have fun, which is a bummer because part of the joy of a group trip is not having to be hands-on with any planning.
I think a better itinerary would include less time in Xi’An. Instead, I’d rather visit a 3rd city like Chengdu or Shanghai.
Too Large of a Group
This one might be the hosts’ fault. TrovaTrip allows influencers to decide how large their trips are (between 8 and 24 people). The larger the trip, the more money the influencer makes. However, larger trips don’t necessarily make for a better group trip experience.
I think that the sweet spot for a group this is around 12-16 people. Small enough that you really get to know each other, but large enough that you’re not stuck talking to one person the whole time. When the group gets too big, smaller cliques naturally form. I found I went the whole trip without really talking to 4-6 people at all. That wasn’t on purpose, just a natural feature of such a large group.
Final Thoughts
While this was my first time taking TrovaTrip, it was my 3rd ever group trip. The first was back in 2016 when I went to Costa Rica with EF College Break and then in 2024, I went to the Galapagos Islands with TBA Escapes. My memory of the former is a bit fuzzy because it was so long ago but I don’t remember having any complaints, even with a larger group size (but I was also 19 and had lower standards then). I had absolutely nothing negative to say about TBA Escapes! The trip was incredible and the perfect size with 15 people (but it did cost ~$15K so with that price point you’re getting a different level of luxury).
In the future, I’m going to be really picky about itinerary and accommodation before booking another group trip. I’ll also be sure to try and stay away from TrovaTrip altogether.
If you book a TBA Escapes trip, be sure to let them know I sent you!
Be sure to save this post for future planning!
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