The Unbelievable Value of Private and Immersive Tours
Vacations are tough to plan. There isn’t any getting around that fact, but sometimes it can be difficult to see exactly why it feels like such a hassle. As someone who has worked in the industry for a long time and talked with countless vacationers who all have had the same experience, I think I have the answer, and it’s twofold - booking private and immersive tours.
You spend months and months, sometimes years, saving up for the perfect vacation. Vacations aren’t cheap. The monetary investment is similar to buying a car. But here’s the thing - when you’re buying a car, you only have to make one choice. When you only have one choice to make, you can do a lot of research and make sure you make the right decision. Vacations are different. You have dozens, maybe even HUNDREDS of choices that need to be made. What hotel will you stay in? What airline will you fly? What tours will you take? Will you make those into private tours? How much are you going to budget for gift shops and eating out? The choices start to add up fast, and it can get overwhelming. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to walk you through exactly what makes a tour great, as well as the common pitfalls, and how you can maximize the impact and enjoyment of these opportunities with just two simple changes.
But first, who am I?
My name is Trinidad, and I’ve worked as a guide for over half a decade. From raft guiding to hiking guiding, and from California to Alaska. There, I started my own guiding company, and have received nothing but five star, raving reviews from my customers. I know exactly what makes a tour special, and I can tell you what I’ve seen make the most difference for travelers in their short vacation windows. I want to give you the tools you need to maximize your vacation and make it one that you’ll remember fondly for decades to come.
Tip #1: Private Tours
It’s hard to have a bad time on a tour, but I have seen it. Here’s what’s crazy though - every single time I’ve seen someone have a bad time on a tour, it’s been because they got stuck in the same group as someone who they greatly disliked. The biggest danger of booking a tour is that you have no control over who else gets assigned to your group - unless you make it private.
As a guide, I know that I always give my best tours when I have a group of people who all know and like each other. Guides are experts at adapting to the dynamics and humor of a group, and becoming an “instant friend” to all those involved. This gets much, much harder when there are multiple group dynamics and backgrounds involved.
Private tours also give more opportunity for customization. Most guides are happy to cater the tour towards what you want to do, but when there are conflicting desires in a group it usually results in settling for some “happy medium” that really isn’t that happy for anybody.
There’s no escaping that private tours are more expensive, but I would encourage you to consider this - how much is your vacation worth to you? Can you afford to have it be less than what it could be? You have worked for a long time to go on your vacation, and have flown sometimes thousands of miles to get to the destination you want to experience. Don’t let that experience be anything less than perfect.
Tip #2: Experience the Area!
Okay, this part might seem obvious, but let me explain what I mean by it. One of the things I see the most in unhappy vacationers is that they never leave the “vacation areas”. This includes all the boardwalks with gift shops and touristy restaurants, as well as the large group tour locations. When they go out to learn about the area, they often never even leave the bus that’s taking them through the wild place that they’ve come to see. Guess what? A bus window is about the same size as a TV screen. Is it any surprise that people who have vacations like this frequently wish they’d just stayed home and looked at pictures or watched videos of the place instead?
What I mean by experiencing the area is getting off the beaten path. Adventure tours like rafting, hiking, climbing, or anything that actually gets you away from the hotels and into the outdoors are perfect for experiencing an area.
Everywhere in the world is different, and most of those differences are hard to spot. Generally, for every big, exotic thing you notice, there are hundreds or even thousands of minute but fascinating details that go completely unnoticed. By taking a tour that focuses on those details and on getting you immersed in your surroundings, you not only give yourself the opportunity to appreciate the tour more, but also the entire place you’ve come to visit.
I can’t stress enough how important of a tip this is. It is literally the number one metric I’ve seen in telling whether someone is going to have a lackluster vacation that they’ll regret, or one that they and their families will never forget.
Anytime I’m going somewhere new, the first thing I do is look at where I can learn the most about the place I’m going. As soon as you decide you’ll go somewhere, start looking into what the most immersive and most informational tours are. And don’t settle for the tour bus either. Tour buses often have excellent information, but the feel is similar to sitting through a lecture rather than being out in the woods with a friend who knows everything about anything that you could point to.
This exact phenomenon is actually why I started my guiding company. I never wanted to see another tourist leave the place they’d worked so hard to get to feeling disappointed and dejected. I structured everything around giving tours that would not just be fun in the moment, but would continue to provide my customers value for as long as they were in the state. I didn’t know if my theory was correct at first, but as more and more people told me about how special their tour with us was, I began to realize that I’d been right after all. The biggest reward from my work is getting letters and messages from the people who’s vacations have been changed by our tours.
