Tour Groups: Good deal or not?

Taj Mahal - photo by me.

One of the dilemmas every traveller faces is whether to join a tour group. Whenever I tell people I'm going on a trip, they always ask, "Are you going with a tour group?"

'Tours' run the gamut from simple multi-hour tours to pre-planned 'vacation in a box' package deals where a tour company organizes the itinerary and takes you around, a particular country over a period of a few weeks. On the most extreme end there are cruises.

Personally, I absolutely loathe these. When I travel, I fly by the seat of my pants, and I don't even like to book the internal flights ahead of time. One of the worst things that can happen when you travel is to get stuck somewhere which you don't want to be. Even with just a day-long tour, chances are you will be stuck in some boring place for too long, or get whisked by a very interesting place in a hurry. I could not imagine being stuck in a boring town for more than a couple of days.

There are certain specific scenarios where joining a tour group makes a lot of sense. To me, the best value which a tour group provides is transportation. Often tour sites are not located anywhere near where local public transportation goes, and taking a taxi would be very expensive. It's funny to read Lonely Planet where often the directions to find some site consist of, "Flag down bus No. 123 and ask the driver (who of course speaks no English) to drop you off two kilometers before the old covered bridge, then walk three kilometers west until you cross the creek, and try knocking on some of the doors in the neighborhood, and any of the locals will be happy to show you where to find the ruins". No thanks. I like to travel frugally, but that is way too much trouble, especially if you are even in the slightest hurry.

Usually a tour guide is provided also with tour groups, but frankly I think tour guides are worthless. If I'm really interested I can learn much more about it by researching it on the internet, which will be more factual than what a bored guide speaking broken English can provide. I find that guides tend to glorify what they are showing you, and exaggerate things.

Examples of sites where it is worth getting a tour:

• Great Wall of China
• Taj Mahal

Both of these sites are far away from the cities, and there is no public transportation easily available. There are many, many more examples from around the world, but these are two well-known ones. Basically, for something like this, your only alternative to joining a tour group is to arrange private transport to the site, which would be very expensive. By joining a tour group you are sharing transportation, and thus saving money.

On the other hand, joining a tour of (for example) the Pyramids of Giza or the Hermitage makes no sense, because you can easily get to them from the cities with public transportation. All a tour guide will provide is bad commentary in broken English and in my opinion is never worth it. I always scratch my head when I see a giant tour group getting off a bus when the site is right across the street from the subway stop.

City Tours

Tours of cities are a special case. In most big cities, there are many things to see. One way you can approach it, is to do-it-yourself and see all of the sites by just taking a taxi (or bus/subway) to each site one at a time. In some cities, I have had success doing this, but in others it has ended up being horribly expensive, and also difficult. I tried to navigate Moscow, for example, by myself using a guide book and taking the subway every where, but it was very difficult just to find my way around since everything was is Russian and nobody spoke any English, and I didn't have good maps. Some sites I could not find. I would have seen a lot more had I joined a city tour. I have had some truly incredible, very highly recommended, city tours and seen way more stuff than I could have ever hoped to see independently and trying to get around on my own.

On the other hand, some city tours are just not very good. I took one of those double-decker red city tour buses in Istanbul and thought it was way overpriced (something like $30 for only two hours). I have taken similarly dull city tours in various other cities.

City tours can go either way. I suppose my recommendation would be, if you think it is a city which you can tackle yourself, go for it, but if you find it too tough, then try to find a good local tour operator.

Adventure/Nature Tours

Adventure type tours are something which are very difficult to do independently. A great example of this is an African safari which is literally impossible to do without a tour, unless you happened to have a safari vehicle and be a licensed operator. If you want to go to Antarctica it would be almost impossible to go outside of an organized tour group.

There are tons of other things in city category, e.g. diving tours, canopy tours, skydiving, the list goes on and on. Doing these things with a tour group is the only economically feasible way to do them at all. Unfortunately, they still tend to be very expensive.

Local Tour Groups

The tourism industry is amazingly specialized, and does a good job catering to very specific groups. I didn't fully appreciate this until I went to Turkey, which is a bit of a tourism melting pot, with people coming from all over Europe, as well as Asia (Japan, Korea), plus America, Israel, Australia, and so on. In very heavily touristed areas you will see specific tour groups catering to the specific nationalities, e.g. groups offering tours in Italian.

English is the lingua franca of tourism, so in less heavily touristed areas, everything is in English at least.

But, in many countries, there is also very heavy domestic tourism. Not all, or even most, of the tourists are foreigners, and there are also local tour groups catering to the locals, which are often much cheaper than the groups catering to foreigners.

Two examples are India and China, which both have exploding middle classes of folks who are setting out to see the countries they live in. In India, I always hooked up with local group (with help from my Indian friends), and on every tour group, I was the only white guy on it. This was an amazing experience. I was always the center of attention everywhere, and people were very interested about me. I got to meet local people which was much more interesting than being stuck with other people from my home country.

Of course, in India, English is spoken, but in China it is not spoken very widely. In China, I actually got (by accident) into a local tour group, and everything was in Chinese. Nobody spoke a word of a English. This was also interesting, if awkward, and the Chinese tourists seemed friendly, and were thrilled to get their picture taken with the white guy.

Meeting People

One of the great things about tours when you are traveling alone, is that you meet lots of people. Typically there are a lot of other solo travelers in most tour groups and you will meet them on the bus on the way there, during the lunch, or at the site itself. You can meet other people to hang out with later and this can also save you money if you find a partner or a group where you can share a ride with and other things.

Although, it is certainly not impossible to meet people at tourist sites even if you are not part of the group. Strike up a conversation with the cute but lost looking girl and who knows what will happen.

Arranging Tours

Compatible with my "fly by the seat of my pants" traveling style, I absolutely never book a tour until I arrive in the destination. For some destinations you can arrange tours on the internet but this is a hassle, and usually only the top-tier (most expensive) tour operators have web presence.

By showing up and booking a tour when you're on the ground, you get much more selection of tour operators, and also can get very good deals (e.g. going on 'stand by' for a tour in case there's a cancellation). You may have to be a little more flexible, but if you're not flexible when you're traveling you will always be frustrated because all sorts of things can happen due to weather and all sorts of other random events.

Almost all of the complaints I've ever read about tour operators has something to do with a refund due to the tour being canceled, either because the tourist backed out, or because of bad weather or similar event. By not booking until you're sure you'll be there and everything is kosher, you will never have a problem. You'll not fall victim to "fly by night" tour operators if you always book just ahead of time.

I've actually had really good luck booking tours at the "Tourist Information" booths at airports. Usually these are not very busy, and they are always very friendly, and can arrange anything. Probably they are more expensive than tour operators in town (I've never done comparison) but in the cases where I used them they seemed very reasonable.

The other 'obvious' option is your lodging. Basically, any hotel (or hostel) in the world will either have a travel agency or else be able to bring you to one. In more heavily touristed areas there are travel agencies on every street corner, in places like Africa and various other places, they are in the streets and will find you before you find them.

Never book a tour until you're on the ground and you'll do all right.

Souvenir Shop Visit

One of the biggest things I hate about tour groups, is that generally they will always, always stop in some souvenir shop or traditional healing center, or wherever. What boggles my mind is that for a pretty good number of tourists, this seems to be the highlight of the tour, and they want more shopping time, and less sight-seeing.

I don't think there is any way to avoid this, particularly if others in the group want to go shopping. I always walk through the store as fast as possible, then just wait, because there is nothing more I hate than spending money on junk. Usually they have good bathrooms, and also reasonably priced refreshments, so they are a bit of a break from sight-seeing.

The Bottom Line

Tour groups can be a good deal to take you around to certain sites. Try to hook up with a tour group catering to the locals if possible. Don't plan your whole vacation around them, but use them whenever makes sense.