Private Tours or Cruise Ship Tours?

Ships tours? Cons: Price, size, quality.
There are many places to go online to research private and small tours that can get you around to the sights quicker and easier than a 45 person bus.
For Rome, you can catch a train from Civitavecchia and do your own tour if you check out the internet for the most popular sights. I think we did take a ship's tour in Athens, Greece, however.
Our best tour was in St. Petersburg where they must have 50 great tour operations taking up to 15 passengers around town.

Cons: see above
Pros: seeing what you want to see, taking your time, no crowds, local to help you maximize your sitghseeing. We always go through toursbylocals.com. They have a specific link for shore excursions. We have booked through them for Edinburgh, Dublin, amsterdam, and Croatia (Split). Otherwise, we just do a little research and wander around on our own.

Barbara suggested Tours by Locals and she is correct. We used them in Southeast Asia last year. Check visitacity.com as well as airbnb experiences.

We found that these "tours" are half the price of the ship tours and we were on a private tour where WE determined the itinerary for the day, not the cruise line.

Are you "tour people" ? Because the folks on this forum could help you plan ANY Italy or Greece trips on your own. I like to have my own agenda.

The biggest con...the ship leaves without you.

True !

But even when we walked off a ship and took a "tour" with a guy that we found at the dock, the people are SO worried about getting you back in time. We have never even been close to a timing issue.

Though anything could happen.

The biggest con...the ship leaves without you.

On numerous occasions we've been caught in traffic jams that delayed our return to the ship. But we were on a ship excursion so it waited for our return. Not so if you are off on your own. At least three times (once in Naples) we've seen people running along the pier as the ship departed. Not saying it happens all the time, but it only takes happening to you once to ruin a good cruise. If you plan to stay close to the pier area and can hoof it back if need be, then doing it on your own is fine. But if you plan to venture far afield you may consider the ship tours worth the price.

I always compare the ship's excursions against available private tours. Ship's excursions are often double or more the price of good private tours that usually don't include a full bus of 40 people, but usually a mini bus of 10-12.

The only time that I book ship's tours are in these conditions:
1) The prices are not far apart (it is rare that ship's excursions are close to private tour prices).
2) The private tour is a long full day with a lot of traveling, so that increases the possibility that a private tour would be late getting back to the ship.
3) Whether or not the private tour offers a guarantee that if late, they will transport you back to the next port. Also, that the next port is not quite far away.

We have taken many private tours and only once come close to being late getting back to the ship. That tour was in Scotland and we did arrive back at the exact time that was 30 minutes prior to the ship departing the port.

We've always taken third party tours and never had any issues but there is that risk of the ship leaving without you for one reason or another. Not sure if Civitavecchia/Rome is the same as other ports of calls that you might be able to find the same excursion the cruise ship uses.

Check out Cruisecritic.com for the Italy ports of call board - you might get more information there......

It may depend on exactly where/how far the locations you want to see are from the port and how much time you're given to do that (e.g. I see you have just 6 hours in Bari and are considering Matera). Not that a private tour provided by a local wouldn't work just dandy in many instances but others may be a bit stressful to try and do on a tight timeline. It can also be a bit stressful figuring out train and bus schedules for day-tripping solo. Everyone's comfort levels are different. :O)

I'll defer to experienced cruisers here but I have read that, in some instances, the first people off the boat are those who've booked tours through the ship. That can eat time in situations where tenders must be used so maybe there are multiple factors to be weighed?

Kathy is correct about ship excursion participants have first priority on the tenders. At least that's been our experience on many, many cruises.

As soon as we take a private tour and miss the ship, we will stop touting the pros of doing your own tours !