WHY TAKE A TOUR?

Not everyone is a candidate for a tour. In fact, some people don’t like the notion of tours at all.
They perceive touring as an unpleasant form of travel, with limited freedom, forced
companionship and comfortable bus rides. The prefer – indeed, enjoy controlling their own
travel experience rather than having someone else doing it for them.

Yet many others actively seek out a tour experience. Every year at least 11 million Americans
choose group travel. Why do they favor tours?

The freedom from Hassles and Decision

“When I’m on vacation, I don’t want to worry about anything” is a comment commonly heard
from tour participants (also called tour members, passengers, or clients). Indeed, travel can
be an exhausting task. Tours help cushion clients from troubles. A good tour leader solves
problems long before tour members can become aware of them. To the average tour
participant, the feeling of being pampered and catered to more than offsets the regimentation
of group travel.

The desire to save time and money

Everyone has experienced how a wrong turn on a highway or an ill-chosen hotel can spoil a
vacation. A well-designed and conducted tour minimizes wasted time, it ensures that a client
sees all essentials in a convenient, efficient manner. Furthermore, the group purchasing
power of a tour company yields substantial savings on hotels, meals, and attractions. Part of
this savings is absorbed into the tour operator’s profit, but much of it is passed on to the
consumer. The result: tour members enjoy a more upscale travel experience (better hotels,
for expamle) than they could usually afford. And because the price of a tour includes most
travel components, clients know and pay for most of their vacation costs before they event
leave home.

Don’t conclude, however, that just because tour clients seek value, they are a low-income
group. In fact, quite the opposite is true: overall, escorted tour clients possess a higher yearly
income, spend more on each trip, and take more trips than their counterparts who do not take
tours.

The companionship of people with similar interests

Several surveys have indicated that people who avoid tour sometimes fear they will have little
in common with their fellow travelers. As those who frequent tours know, this is rarely the
case. Most often, the price of a tour, its destination and its activities will automatically
predetermine the socio-economic level and interest of group members. It’s no accident that
long and deep friendships are often forged among the participants in a tour.

People with plenty in common are certainly found on those tours that are custom- designed
for clients with special interests (for instance, skiing shopping, wine tasting ecotourism,
astronomy, ballooning, bird watching) or even for specific clubs, schools, religious groups,
or corporations (often called affinity tours). Some of the most intriguing successes in the tour
business today are tours that are highly specialized and that target “niche” or special markets.
Topas Vietnam, for example, creates Vietnam trail series for all international and domestic
people who love running and fascinating with Vietnam. The routes will take all participants
through inspiring mountain range and wild areas rarely visited by anyone but locals. The
runners could witness stunning white and blossom, ripe fruits, local farmers, horses, donkeys,
buffalo, wild pigs and more. Vivujourney introduces Buffalo Dairy farm tour in Laos. For this
tour, tourists will visit the farm, feed a 750-kilogram buffalo, bath him and give the buffalo a
luxurious ‘day spa’.

Image: Buffalo Dairy farm tour set up in a beautiful rural area 30 minutes outside of Luang
Prabang in Laos (VivuJourney)

The educational nature of touring

Without a guide (or at least a guidebook), the Forum in Rome is little more than an
accumulation of pillars, stones, and rubble. On a tour, however, it becomes a place alive with
the imagined footsteps of Ceasars, senators, and centurions. A well-trained tour guide or
escort can comment on almost anything: history, geography, architecture, trees, bushes,
birds – whatever merit the kind of insight that the average tourist craves but can seldom
achieve on his or her own. Indeed, one recent poll indicates that 84% of tour travelers rated
“learning” as the most important component of a tour, and nearly half of those polled
expressed an eagerness to share what they learned with their family and friends upon
returning.

The lack of alternatives

In rare situations, all travelers perceive a tour as the most appropriate choice. For example,
tour operators sometimes corner all hotel space close to some special event, such as Mardi
Gras, a world’s fair, or the Rose Bowl. The only way for the average consumer to obtain
lodging is to book a tour. Such strategies pay off doubly for the tour company. It profits
financially, and tourists who were previously reluctant to take a tour are often pleasantly
surprised and become converts to group travel.

A travel who perceives a destination as especially strange, foreign, unfriendly, or even

dangerous will also find comfort in the notion of a tour. The great majority of tourists who visit
Kenya, China, or Russia, for example, do so as part of organized groups. Those who are
physically challenged often travel as groups, too, knowing that the specialized tour company
that planned their trip has already thought-out wheelchair obstacles, elevator access, and the
like.

HOW PEOPLE BUY A TOUR

Tour operator makes their product available to the public in 2 different ways.

One is called a public or per capita tour. A tour operator advertises a series of tour, with
departures occurring on a regular scheduled basis. For example, Victoria Mekong cruise may
schedule weekly, 5 days 4 night upstream and downstream Mekong delta, from Ho Chi Minh
– Vietnam to Phnompenh and vice versa. The consumer finds out about it from the company’s
catalog, brochures, website, social network or online-magazine advertisement, and then
book the date he or she wants. Tickets are purchased either through a travel agent (who may
even have recommended the company and tour in the first place) or by communicating with
the company directly. Of course, if the tour doesn’t fill, the company may cancel that
departure and try to shift the client to another departure.

Another is called customized or charter tour, tour companies sell tour to performed affinity
groups. One option is to one of their regularly scheduled departure for a specific group. The
tour operator may also create a customized itinerary for them, at a special price. A customized
tour is rarely advertised outside the group. Instead, potential tour participants find out about
it via flyers, a meeting, word of mouth, or an organization newsletter. They can buy the tours
in a number of ways. They may call the tour company and identify themselves as members of
the group, book it directly through their organization, or sign up directly through the person
in the organization who has spearheaded the trip ( a teacher at a school, for example)