Questions to ask before booking a tour company
I’ve written about choosing tours in this column before, specifically about the fact that there are now terrific online marketplaces — TourRadar.com and StrideTravel. com are the best ones — that allow travellers to quickly compare multi-day tours.
But the truth is, one can’t rely on those sites alone to decide on a tour company. There are important questions that travellers need to ask before booking. Here are a few of the most relevant ones:
Who will be leading the daily excursions?
On most tours, guiding duties are divided between the so-called “tour director” and “local guides.”
The tour director is the person who stays with the group throughout the entirety of the tour, providing some commentary on the destination, but mostly acting as a fixer for any problems that might arise. The daily explorations of the destination are usually left to local guides. The problem is many tour companies simply take whoever is available from a pool of local guides on the day of the tour; these locals are almost never trained by the company. And often these men and women have varying levels of expertise and storytelling skills, making the daily tours a bit of a crapshoot for the
traveller (sometimes great, sometimes not so much).
The follow-up question to ask: Are all guides trained and vetted by the company? Or is this tour exclusively led by the tour director (some are, and I’ve found these are usually the top tours)?
Where is my vacation money going?
Some 20 per cent of the cost of most tours goes to a middleman: either a travel agency or the websites I cite here. And on tours that are run by alumni organizations, or such institutions as the Smithsonian or National Geographic, an even bigger chunk of the fee goes to support the sponsoring organization.
That’s why you shouldn’t dismiss companies that don’t work with third parties. Book a trip with an indie agency like Asia specialist World Spree (www.worldspree.com) or Europe-focused Go-Today (www.gotoday.com), and more of what you pay will actually be reflected in the hotels, restaurants, attractions and tours you receive over the course of your vacation.
Who will I be travelling with?
The majority of group tours are geared toward older travellers, people with a median age of 68 or so. So if you’re in a younger demographic, or prefer to travel with a spryer crowd, you’ll want to go with a company that gets a greater variety of ages. Those entities include G Adventures (www.gadventures.com), Intrepid Travel (www.intrepidtravel.com) and Contiki (www.contiki.com). That last tour company only accepts vacationers under the age of 36. Usually tours that include high-energy physical challenges (such as rock climbing, kayaking and canyoneering) get a younger buyer, but not always. And with seniors staying fit longer, many biking and hiking trips are booked by older vacationers.
Note to the reader: Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip. The information in this column was accurate when it was released, but prices are competitive, sometimes limited and can always change without notice.
Pauline Frommer is the Editorial Director for the Frommer Travel Guides and Frommers.com. She co-hosts the radio program The Travel Show with her father, Arthur Frommer and is the author of the best-selling Frommer’s EasyGuide to New York City.