Tour Group vs. Personal Travel

We'd never do a tour except day tours where since we no longer drive, having the transport to places difficult to reach is useful. We had a wonderful one out of Montpellier last year to villages, geological formations and an abbey for example. But from florence our booked tour to Volterra/S. Gimignano and a rural abbey was cancelled for lack of sign ups.

I agree with you that tour groups tend to be rude - blocking whole corridors in museums and pushing ahead of other people. I now just walk between the blathering group leader and the group in museums when they block the way and just avoid the art they are clustered around till they are gone.

We don't want the schedule that tours usually keep and in our experience we get a lot more bang for the buck planning ourselves e.g. in St. Petersburg we had the hotel concierge organize a car for us to the Peterhoff and we spent the day in the gardens then grabbed the hydrofoil back -- we paid about a third for this than people the cruise booked into our hotel paid for their Peterhof trip and they were disgruntled about the time wasted. Similarly in Moscow I hired a private guide for Novodivitchy Cemetery and subway tour and we saw 8 subways as well as the cemetery -- people on the tour in our hotel who did it with their tour as an optional, paid twice what we paid and only went to 3 subways. Our guide hellped us get the pass we needed for the rest of our time in Moscow and after that first day we did it all on our own.

How delightful! As an avowed independent traveler, sometimes I think about taking a tour , especially in more complicated locations. But I quickly reject it for many reasons you mention. The slow moving large groups, buses (hate ‘em!), rigid schedule, being forced to do a tour in heavy rain ‘cuz that’s what the plan is. We juggle our days based on weather, energy, interests that day. Some important things get scheduled and committed to like major museums, but otherwise the plan is easily shuffled. We stay longer in most places than a tour would and we dig in deep enjoying the place, not just the sights. Occasionally we pop for a private guide to tour some thing special and now-and-then a private transfer as we don’t rent cars.

Each traveler has to find their metier. Sounds like you found yours!

25% of my European trips have been on tours. What I like about tours is that they go to locations or see sites that I would never have chosen on my own, but that I really enjoyed, such as a sheep farm on a tour to New Zealand.

After 12 European trips where I was planner, organizer, and “tour guide,” I took my first Rick Steves tour. I loved that I could just show up and be led around as if I were a fourth grader on a school field trip! I’ve since taken another Rick Steves tour and a Viking river cruise. They were fantastic. My next overseas trip is one that I have planned on my own, but I have to say that I have loved the organized tours that I have taken.

Have taken 2 RS tours: Istanbul and Florence.

Enjoyed both especially getting into the Accademia before the doors opened to the public. Seeing David with an art historian was very enjoyable.

However, as an only child learned early in life how to enjoy my own company.

Thus have been to Amsterdam, Belfast, Brussels, Dingle, Dublin, Florence, Havana, London, Munich, Paris, Rome, and Zurich on my own.

Leave for another solo London adventure next week.
Will see friends, theatre, galleries, libraries, museums. Meander in parks, eat when and where I want and enjoy the solitude.

I took a Globus tour @ 20 years ago to France which included Paris, Nice, Cannes and smaller villages. The tour guide was fantastic, knowledgeable and took care of everything. What was difficult for me were the long days, some of which began at 6 a.m. and ended at @ 11:00 p.m. We had to have our suitcases in the hallway by 6 which meant I was up at 5 a.m. to shower, etc. I am not an early riser and was sleep deprived much of the tour. Now, if the tour had had later times, I think it is a good way to be introduced to a country for the first time. We visited the Louvre and saw only the highlights with some time to tour on our own. I've been back 6-7 times and toured at my leisure. Think of it as a 101 course and go back later, on an independent trip, for the graduate level ones.

LOL - “I loved that I could just show up and be led around as if I were a fourth grader on a school field trip”.

I can see why this appeals. However, I have distinct memories of being that 4th grader and wanting to do my own exploring, to see and do what I wanted, to spend the time I wanted, to follow the corridor or enter the room that was determined not to be Included by the tour planner,. This was true whether as a school child with my classmates or within my family on my mother’s planned vacation.

To each his own - I like the options of a day tour to simplify complicated arrangements, but am too independent to leave a lengthy trip to someone else. I even have to admit to dropping out of group day tours (after notifying the guide, of course) and leaving guided group hour long tours of gardens, museums, etc. Sometimes, the fit is just wrong. I have started hiring more private guides, but even then my preference is simply to hire transport when I can’t manage logistics myself.

It has been interesting to me to read this board with so many who speak so positively of their group tour experiences. Perhaps some day I will try a tour. I rather like the idea of a two night stay to some region hard to manage or uncomfortable as a solo. In the meantime, I’ll continue with my DIY.

It sounds like a fantastic trip with your daughter, Judithann, and that you made the right choice! I know they work great for some people, others, not so much.

I have done only one tour (solo, RS Village Italy), and I learned that they are definitely not for me. I love planning and researching for trips, and with tours it's obviously not necessary; as someone mentioned, you just pay, show up and get led around. I didn't like this either- being led through the streets of towns and cities in a pack with the audio thing around my neck and the tour guide talking in my ears (she was delightful, though). I felt disconnected from the culture, especially being bussed from place to place. I try to stay at least three nights in a location, but on this particular tour we stayed 2 nights only, everywhere, which usually left only one day, sometimes less, to see a place. I felt like I was always packing, unpacking, getting on the bus, getting off... But the most challenging (and exhausting) aspect for me was the constant socializing. I guess I'm more of an introvert than I realized before the tour. Perhaps it would have been a different experience if I had gone with a partner, but if I had, I wouldn't have done the tour. If the situation arises again, I'll go solo.

Judithann, II understand what you're saying and agree that tours are not for everyone. But I must say that you're comparing a tour company on the far end of the spectrum, while others are talking about why an RS tour is better. I've traveled independently and on tours, and must say there are pros and cons for each way. AS you noted, you'll still be fighting tour group crowds in popular places even if you are traveling independently.

I remember watching RS when he first started his travel show. It was many many years ago, and I learned so much from him thru his travels. He was always on the budget end of hotels, etc If you’re reading this Rick I thank you for opening the world to your followers. My daughter will now take up the baton.

Just one additional comment, flight staff aren’t servants. Pick up your stuff when you leave the plane. Our flight looked like the senior high school class was aboard.

This question pops up frequently and tends to be structure as Independent travel vs. tour group travel. Almost as an either/or and sometimes as my way is best. Each has different objectives. Neither is superior to the other. In recent years we are getting close to the 50/50 mark for both travel styles. My undergraduate university alumni sponsors a lot of travel groups that we really enjoy. In fact some of our best experience has been with an alumni group travel. We will often use a travel group as our "vacation within" a vacation. Maybe a week, ten days of independent travel, then a group tour or cruise, followed by another week or so of independent travel. That really works well for us. But the cap of us is the attitude, "We will see that the next time." Sometimes the next time was ten years later.

It really is irritating when a tour group forms a big blob around a specific thing and no one can get past. More and more, the RS tour guides are alert to this and encourage the tour to let people get by them.

I agree with other commenters, you do you - we like a combo of independent travel and a tour, to get the best of both worlds.

Sounds like you had a wonderful time, Judithann!
I’ve never taken an organised long tour on a trip.
I’m not sure it’s “me” just yet.
I love doing all the research and planning, so I’ll keep doing that for a few more years.
We do take walking and food tours when we go to a brand new town and learn lots about a place on our first day there as an orientation; and I’ve taken day trip tours, such as up to the Dolomites from Venice, and a day on a boat on the Brenta canal stopping at all the Palladian villas.

I just avoid the tour groups getting in the way, though most are pretty good and they don’t linger too long.
Though I have to say, most tour groups don’t look very happy!

One arrogant guy in the Accademia in Florence told me to move away from “David”, as the information he was imparting was only for people who had paid for his tour services.
I hadn’t even noticed him till he accosted me.
I just looked at him and moved in closer and stood for longer looking at every bit of “David” than I had planned.

I’m glad you had a good trip. I’m a firm believer that there are multiple ways to enjoy traveling and the best travelers are those who are willing to be open to those ways.

Good travel experiences can be had in either mode. And not so good as well, I suppose. We’ve taken nine vacations beyond the US or North America in the past 25 years, since 1999. Only two of those vacations included tours, both of which were merely parts of longer trips.

As one who had a chip on my shoulder, I initially looked down on tours. But then, on a trip back in 2003 while we were on our own in Florence’s Santa Trinita taking in the Sassetti Chapel, I overheard a small group tour guide comparing the depiction of St. Francis by Ghirlandaio there with what they had seen the previous day in Assisi, by Giotto. I was intrigued, though I never found a tour that really appealed to me. They seemed too rushed, or involved too much time on a bus. Or, too expensive.

Finally, in 2018, we did a small group guided bike tour in Croatia with a local company based in Split and with two local guides. It was pretty darned nice. We were pampered, the pace was great and the local knowledge was formidable - as were the translations when a couple of old timers joined our group at a rest stop and spoke to us, through our guides, of their experiences in the 1940s. We wouldn’t have had that encounter if we had been traveling independently.

This past spring, we took our second guided tour, RS Sicily. A larger group of 28. Not too rushed. No really l-o-n-g bus rides. Great tour guide (David Tordi) plus six specialty guides in six different locations, several of whom had great expertise. They provided insights that heightened our enjoyment and understanding of Sicily. And we also had some lovely agriturismo lunches on two days that included longer travel distances by bus. (After we returned, we actually wrote a TR comparing our 3 ways of travel in southern Italy, the RS tour, the self-guided bike tour and otherwise traveling on our own.)

The two guided tours were great - no hiccups or disasters, not that success is ever guaranteed.

As I think back on these nine trips, I think the ones that included self-guided bike tours brought us closest to local folks where we travelled. Visiting small towns by bike provides opportunities for conversations with locals. A real conversation starter.

OP rightly observes that one nice thing about travel on your own is that it gives you opportunities for spontaneity that a guided tour does not.

What makes travel unpleasant is rudeness, crowds, and too much time crammed into bus seats or plane seats. Apart from that, it’s usually pretty good, subject to the weather and other glitches.

As I wrote in our TR this past spring:

Three ways to travel: Rick Steves’ Sicily Tour, Puglia “self-guided” bike tour, and finally across Basilicata to the Cilento and Naples on our own.
i can’t say that any one mode of travel was “better” than any other.

Next April will be our 4th trip to Europe & Italy, and each time it's been do-it-yourself. I love the planning, the actual vision of taking the trip before doing it for real. I'm strange like that. It will be 16 days...Florence/Rome/Salerno/Taormina (Sicily). Travel by train the whole way.

And this one will be special because it will be the first with (besides my wife) other people, my two cousins. Being the de facto 'tour guide' brings a little added pressure, especially where our/their personal wants are involved. They would rather shop & knock around stores where I would prefer to visit art museums or ruins--I guess that's the biggest difference. So...I made sure that wherever we stay--AirBnB or hotel--is centrally-located for shopping purposes, and I (maybe with my wife, maybe not) can escape off...like to the Uffizi in Florence, where I'll make a beeline towards the Da Vinci & Caravaggio rooms! BTW, Fred---on our first trip to Florence I got a tip from a buddy who had taught there about the Sassetti Chapel, and Ghirlandaio's frescoes. What a thrill it was to see it, in a darkened church where I had to slip a Euro into a coin box to activate the lights in the frescoes.

Now...we are employing one group tour--with The Tour Guy in Rome, where all of us will do an early morning 3-hour tour of Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel/St. Peter's. For the Vatican scholars among you, I'm sure you're seeing this abomination as worse than a Cliff's Notes version. But...my wife & I have been before--in fact we've visited all these destinations on previous trips, so we kinda sorta have the lay of the land--and I suspect 3 hours is about the max of what my cousins will be able to handle. And...we will be 10 days before Easter in the Jubilee 2025 year, purported to be a very heavy tourist time. So I think it's a good idea to do this.

Couple other personal day tours--a driver will take us around the Amalfi Coast, picking us up at our hotel in Salerno, avoiding the tourist-laden Positano and Capri, but focusing on Vietri sul Mare, Ravello & Minori. Then in Sicily, we've hired a company that will take us--providing Etna isn't erupting--to a winery/gastronomic tour on the slopes of the mountain.

But other than that, I'm guaranteeing to my cousins that there will be plenty of time to 'do your own thing'. I can foresee us saying, OK, we're splitting up now but let's meet here at 5:00 for an aperol spritz, then decide where to have dinner. I like doing advance research--good pastime over the cold winter--so I can have options depending on the weather or how I feel.

I can see in my later years--I'm 67 now--doing a tour & not having to worry about confirmations & reservations and Plan B if Plan A goes awry. But not yet...

We used the Tour Guy for a short trip to Tuscany. Worked out well. We are very Catholic yet felt the Vatican Museum went on forever with no escape. Scaffolding all over the sites. They expect record visitors. Have fun. We wish we had about 5 more days. Ciao.

i always love the timing of some topics, like this one. We want to visit Morocco but our usual travel couple do not. I always do all the planning. I’m not sure we want to tackle Morocco on our own and some other friends, who we haven’t traveled with expressed interest.
Since we have never traveled together I am reluctant to put in all the work not knowing the final outcome, so I am looking at a group tour for Morocco, specifically the guide Rick used for his trip.
So, I am reading everyone’s response carefully.

We used the Tour Guy for a short trip to Tuscany. Worked out well. We
are very Catholic yet felt the Vatican Museum went on forever with no
escape. Scaffolding all over the sites. They expect record visitors.
Have fun. We wish we had about 5 more days. Ciao.

Our thoughts exactly, Judithann. On our own both times--did Vatican Museum/Sistine in 2010, and yes, it was a case of 'are we there yet?' meaning to the Sistine Chapel. Did St. Peter's in 2017, spent 6 hours there with a wonky earbud provided by a Skip The Line tour. Totally had to bail because it was sensory overload and I couldn't process anything.

For this Tour Guy experience, I'll do research and see everything in its proper perspective. Sometimes shorter is better...

How well I know. I’m 5’1.

i always love the timing of some topics, like this one. We want to
visit Morocco but our usual travel couple do not. I always do all the
planning. I’m not sure we want to tackle Morocco on our own and some
other friends, who we haven’t traveled with expressed interest. Since
we have never traveled together I am reluctant to put in all the work
not knowing the final outcome, so I am looking at a group tour for
Morocco, specifically the guide Rick used for his trip. So, I am
reading everyone’s response carefully.

Barbara--

If you're like me, you're going to want to plan any trip on which you're spending money. You don't want to get into day 2 of a tour and mutter to yourself...no way would I have wanted to do this if I planned this myself!

Traveling with new people on a tour is one thing, in that you've both pretty much agreed with the plan. But traveling with friends & family for the first time is definitely something else, especially if you're the planner/tour guide. My wife is a captive audience, and she's gone with my flow on three previous trips.

At any destination, inevitably there is going to be a difference of opinion as to 'what are we going to do?' For our upcoming April trip to various points in Italy with cousins, I'm going to try to balance 'doing stuff' time with downtime. Some like more, some like less. Some are more ambulatory than others. Some get the same amount of enjoyment out of hiking versus just sitting at a cafe with a drink and experiencing 'la dolce far niente', the art of doing nothing.

But if you want to plan this Morocco trip yourself and invite your new travel friends, at each place in Morocco if possible have secondary options open. For example, say you & husband want to take a camel ride but your friends think that would be a terrible idea. Just be upfront & say no offense, but we want to do this...you can wander the town, we'll return later on and we can have a smashing dinner together. And if that's the case every day, so be it!