Escorted tours Voyage Tips and guide

Escorted tours are comprehensive tour packages in which a professional "tour director" escorts you through a multi-day itinerary covering multiple travel destinations and multiple overnight accommodations.

At a minimum, a standard package includes the services of the tour director, plus the costs of all transportation, accommodations, one or more mandatory excursions at each destination, and some meals. Most packages include free time each day for optional excursions or meals for additional fees, or you may rest or go sightseeing at your leisure.

Escorted tours should not be confused with guided city tours within a single city. An escorted tour will usually check in and out of hotels in two or more different cities.

Escorted tours should not be confused with self-drive or independent tour packages, in which the tour company or travel agency prepares a set of reservations, tickets, coupons, and/or vouchers and the burden falls on guests to redeem them with each vendor. On a true escorted tour, vendors deal with guests only as part of the group and send invoices to the tour company.

Escorted tour package prices do not include the cost of transportation between your city of residence and the start and end of the tour itinerary. However, your tour company or travel agency can usually add on such transportation for an additional fee, or you can choose to book that separately.

Some itineraries start and finish in the same city. Others are one-way itineraries between different cities which will require a so-called "open-jaw" reservation (returning home from a different city than the outbound flight).

The primary advantages of escorted tours are that they move fast and greatly reduce the stress and expense of travel.

When done right, an escorted tour should be a seamless turnkey experience. You do not have to think about details, because the tour company does that for you. All you need to do is show up in the hotel lobby each morning as scheduled, follow your tour director on and off the bus all day, and enjoy the ride.

The tour director typically meets you at the airport when you land at the first destination on the itinerary, or in the alternative, arranges for someone to meet you. The tour company handles all transportation and accommodations from that point onward, until the tour director drops you off at the airport at the last destination, or arranges other transport to the airport. Some tours start from a city center meeting point and return to the same meeting point, and there may be connecting coaches from other cities to this meeting point.

After collecting the group, the tour director personally escorts the tour group to every destination on the itinerary (hence the name) and usually stays with them at each hotel on the itinerary. The tour director escorts the group on all mandatory excursions to all included attractions and restaurants. While en route, the tour director provides interesting facts about each destination and attraction, and briefs the group on practical information (for example, if a particular location is infested with pickpockets or is vulnerable to unstable weather). The tour director will also coordinate optional excursions and may accompany some of those excursions as well.

Escorted tours are especially valuable for international travel to other countries. They are an excellent option if you are too young or too old to drive in another country; or where you cannot read or speak the native language and most locals don't speak your language; or the destination country has a high violent crime rate and you are worried about being targeted or wandering into the wrong neighborhood if you were to drive around on your own in a rental car. If this is your first time crossing a border, you may be overwhelmed with learning local laws, customs, and culture to avoid getting into trouble in a foreign country. An experienced tour director can accurately answer your questions and brief you on what is truly important to know.

Escorted tours usually include land transportation on full-size motorcoaches driven by professional tour drivers. If the tour needs to cover vast distances or cross large bodies of water, the itinerary will include flights, trains, or ships arranged for by the tour company.

Escorted tours move fast because everything is planned and booked in advance for you. The tour director focuses on efficiently moving from one attraction to the next, while the bus driver handles the driving and parking.

For each attraction on a mandatory excursion, the tour bus will drop off the group and drive away to park in a less congested area. The tour director hands off the group to a local tour guide already waiting there, who leads the group through a dedicated tour group entrance (past all the individual tourists waiting in line), and heads straight to the most important parts of the attraction. After some time for sightseeing and taking pictures, the tour director will contact the driver to bring back the tour bus. Everyone gets back on the bus and relaxes or rests, while the motorcoach glides away to the next attraction.

Since the tour company buys everything (lodging, meals, attraction tickets) in large quantities all at once, the company may be able to obtain bulk discounts unavailable to individual travelers who purchase those items separately.

Escorted tours often include baggage handling. You will not have to wrestle your baggage in and out of the motorcoach. Each morning when you check out of a hotel, you will leave your baggage outside your room at a designated time and turn in your key to the front desk. The tour director coordinates with hotel staff to get your baggage from your room to the motorcoach. At the next hotel on the itinerary, the tour director will check in the entire group, obtain a stack of keys from the front desk clerk and pass them out, and coordinate with hotel staff to deliver everyone's baggage directly to their rooms.

The exceptions are for air segments where you will have to personally check in and claim your baggage, and certain off-road destinations for which you will need to bring a backpack or carry-on and pack only the supplies you need for the off-road location. In the latter scenario, the motorcoach carries away your full-size baggage and meets the group several days later. These exceptions are usually indicated on the tour itinerary.

The main disadvantage of an escorted tour is the lack of flexibility. Escorted tour schedules are tight and rigid.

A tour group can only move as fast as its least punctual guest. After periods set aside for sleep and free time, it is a constant hassle to meet up with the group at specific times on the tour schedule. If any guest fails to show up, that may lead to significant delays while the tour director goes to look for them.

A tour group can only move as fast as its slowest guest. Escorted tours often attract families and elderly retirees. Children have short legs, some old people move slowly to minimize falls or injuries, and both groups may tire easily. Young adults with stamina and energy should focus on tour companies catering to active young adults.

To stay on schedule, the tour director may prod the group to keep moving. You will probably not have the flexibility to abandon the rest of the schedule for that day to further enjoy any particular attraction.

It is nearly impossible to satisfy every guest all the time, especially larger groups on longer itineraries. On at least one or more days, you may find yourself trapped in one or more accommodations, transportation, restaurants, or mandatory excursions which are not to your satisfaction, which you would not have included if planning your own trip from scratch, and which you will tolerate only because you already paid for it and you want to stay on schedule.

Unless you are booking an expensive luxury escorted tour which promises only the finest accommodations at every stop, most tours will stay in at least one hotel which is booking tour groups because it is overdue for renovation or is located in a noisy, unattractive, or inconvenient area.

When booking an escorted tour, the vast majority of the tour itinerary should fall squarely within your must-see preferences. If only one or two attractions are must-see items, keep shopping or book your own independent trip.

Another disadvantage of escorted tours is the risk that the tour may not proceed as advertised because it failed to attract enough interest. Escorted tours require a lot of resources to put together, so the tour company will not undertake that work until enough people sign up for a particular date. If no one or only a few people have signed up, the company may ask for an up-front deposit first, and then you will have to wait for many months and hope the tour goes forward as scheduled.

This is usually not a problem for tours of the most popular destinations in high season. If you are trying to visit a less popular destination, especially during its low season, then prepare for a possible "staycation" or a backup trip if your tour is cancelled.

Escorted tours usually include multiple free time segments, but their exact length is rarely indicated on tour companies' published itineraries. For free time, the tour company may make available one or more optional excursions for additional fees, and the tour director will try to "upsell" those excursions to you. You might find the additional cost of optional excursions to be annoying, since you already paid so much for the tour package in the first place.

The tour company will not finalize and send you the actual schedule for your particular tour until you pay the full price for the tour package. At that point, you can calculate the free time at each destination, then decide whether to take an optional excursion or plan your own sightseeing.

• Guided tours, tours within or around individual city destinations
• Travel agencies