Jimmy, if I may... I don't know your circumstances of why you had to cancel but I'm fairly well versed on the inspection trip game .. I say game as thats the way I see it.
I don't know Georgia but it sounds like he/she (sorry Geo I'm taking no chances!) is highly recommended and that's often the best way to find a good 'un...but anyway here's my bit just to ease me into this forum thingummyjig.. this is a bit long but maybe worth a read by anyone thinking of going on such a trip.
I've been on one two three four FIVE inspection trips and never bought directly off any of them. The first one I was wet behind the ears regarding spain but I work in property in uk and couldn't believe the way brits were falling over themselves to buy stuff after only being there 3 or 4 days. I went with a friend (instead of wife) and we really made it hard for our guide - not deliberately or in a nasty sense - we just asked lots and lots and lots of questions and raised issues with probably most of the things our guide showed us.
Anyway he left us to our own devices (phew!) for 2-3 hours on the last day and in that short space of time I viewed 4 resales to get a flavour of what the "real" market was like. A dutch bloke showed me the last one and after we chatted for only about 15 mins I could tell he was on top of his game..and he knew what he'd need to do to sell to me. Anyway he asked me (and my pal) to stay for another day or two and he would pay for the extra hotels and flight home..I was sorely tempted but we declined as had to be at work next day and our original guide was picking us up from our hotel to take us to airport in half an hour!
Within a week I was back out (on my own), I got a dirt cheap flight (paid for it myself) and my dutch contact covered my one night in a hotel. He paid for a couple of drinks and so did I - no fancy restaurants but I didn't want that as I only had 2 days and wanted to view loads of property not fill my face
He took me to a lot of different places (as I told hin everywhere I'd already been). Nothing came of that but we kept in touch for a few months before he finally stopped calling me.
3rd trip was with same company as my first one! (confusing isn't it). They approached me and I told them I'd been out with them before and virtually drove my guide suicidal..no prob they said..so off me and wife went for a long weekend, mainly so she could see what all the fuss was about.. If I'm honest I would say that particular trip we were there just for the hell of it. I told them the score with the first trip but no, the person on the phone obviously wanted her commision for getting us on a trip so badly that I couldn't resist. Believe it or not my wife decided she really liked one place, but we had said before we went out that we wont buy on the actual trip. About 3 months later we decided to go for it and put a deposit on the off-plan my wife had picked (you can see who wears the trousers in our house).
That was the worst thing we could have done, builders were complete plonkers, letters, emails, phone calls bac and forth, god only knows how some of there companies stay in business. Completion was put back and back and back until they finally couldn't really decide on a completion date at all... time to book another trip and look elsewhere we thought.
4th trip with one of the big players. We told them we'd had a bad experience with another builder but we didn't tell them we were still waiting for completion on it. This wasn't a bad one and no pressure whatsoever (unlike trip 1 and 3), but we just couldn't find anything to suit.
After about a year we instructed solicitor to cancel our contract and get our money back (which he did with no prob). During this process we were (coincidentally, but I do believe in fate) contacted again by the same company as trip 4...so off we wnt again.
This time our guide was absolutely fantastic, couldn't be bettered by anyone, or any company, no chance. In summary he introduced us to the place we've bought now, but at the time we were there the place was just sold out. We returned home once again without securing anything.
We really liked the place we had seen so I contacted the builder direct and said if anything comes up or someone pulls out give me a call. About a month later they did and we secured it. It was no skin off my nose to point out that we were originally introduced to it by an agent so his company might be due their commission. They were having none of it. I knew this saved them typically anything between 3% and 8% of the purchase price...so I... well someone had to make something out of it didn't they?!
What have I learned from all this? I would say you MUST decide on two things to begin with (apart from your budget obviously) LOCATION and TYPE OF PROPERTY.
Any tom dick or harry can take you round loads of properties so I would say use an insopection trip just to decide on the type of property you want ie. apartment, villa, town house, bungalow, etc etc. It doesn't really matter where you go they are all pretty much the same (I'm NOT referring to standard or quality here).
Once you've decided on the type of property then you can start to work on location. I don't care who takes you where, you're not going to get a clear picture of what a location has to offer by sitting in a fancy restuarant or driving around it in a people carrier for an hour or two. Do your own research, ask your friends, go there on your holidays.
Once you have the property type and a couple of locations in the front of YOUR mind (not theirs) get yourself on another inspection trip, or three or four...
Goodness me is that the time already?