An Organised Tour Vs Planning Your Own Trip

I have been asked many times whether I think a planned tour with a company is needed for certain destinations or whether it is easy enough to plan your own trip. There are pros and cons to both: One costs more but you don’t have to put much effort into the organisation and execution of the plan, and the other is a lot more effort but you save A LOT of money.

These are a few factors that will influence your decision:

• What is your budget? (Check out my Budget vs Luxury Travel post here)
• Are you planning to travel long term or just a few trips/short term? (The longer you go away for, usually the less you want to spend in a short space of time)
• Are you able to problem solve if needed? (i.e. if something does not go to plan.)
• Have you been travelling much before?
• Are you willing to put in the effort of researching, comparing prices, and booking destinations, activities, accommodation and transport?
• Are there a lot of cultural differences that would make it difficult to travel solo?
• Is the chosen destination a tipping culture? (This will increase spending significantly so needs to be included in the budget)
• Are you able to speak the first language of the destination well enough to get by?
• Are there specific activities you can only do as part of a tour group?

When Did I decide to Use an Organised Tour?

When I started travelling, I went to countries where there was a huge cultural difference and I was unable to speak their language. I went to my very first destination (Thailand) when I was 19 and hadn’t travelled much before this. I felt it was safer and easier to go on an organised tour group holiday for the initial week and found a pretty good deal with the Thai Intro group. This allowed me to meet other people who I continued to travel with for another week after meeting them. I then split and went to another part of the country on a different tour. Again, I met some great people and stayed with them for a little while after the tour ended.

Logistics

The other countries I decided to use an organised tour for were China, India and Fiji. This was mainly due to logistical reasons. China is very different to the UK in terms of culture, language, pricing and the government. Not only is it difficult to find people who speak any English, they do not allow Google to work in their country. I had an Android phone so I was unable to use it or do any internet browsing for the duration I was in China. This made research and planning extremely difficult if not impossible. It also meant that google translate wouldn’t work.

I had to take multiple modes of transport to places I’d never heard of and it would have been a pain in the butt to figure it out…in fact I probably would have been lost 90% of the time! (When left to ‘free time’ we did still get lost on occasion but luckily we managed to find our way back to the hotel at least!)

Pros of an Organised Tour

The China tour was planned well and we got out of a difficult situation. We encountered a typhoon on the way to Hong Kong. Our planned transport was cancelled and the only way we were able to get to the next destination was to get a minibus which the tour guide sourced from her head office. If we had not been on the tour, I have no idea what would have happened! It was nice knowing there was that added security of having someone ‘look after’ us. It also meant we could meet a fantastic group of people who we probably never would have met otherwise. I still keep in contact with them and visit them across the world from time to time!

I’m also glad we did a tour in India because of the safety aspect, the language barrier and difficulty getting around on transport, however it would have been much easier to self-plan than China.

Cons of an Organised Tour

The aspects I didn’t enjoy about the tours was the fact that they cost soooo much money compared to if you planned it yourself. THEN the expectation/requirement to tip the tour guide and different drivers and just about everyone else on top of the amount paid for the tour. BUT this may be because I:

1. am from a non-tipping culture and
2. was feeling stingy because I wasn’t earning money and
3. was planning on travelling for a long time and wanted to make my money last for as long as possible. 

Just remember to consider tips in your budget!

I also found that the amount of ‘free time’ given was a little too much and that we were paying for nothing a lot of the time. It was nice to be able to do what we wanted away from the group occasionally but often there wasn’t enough of a time frame to be able to relax and get fully involved doing things you wanted without clock watching.

Fiji wasn’t so much a tour. It was a ‘package deal’ where you are given a timeline and a certain quality level of accommodation and food. It was maybe the easiest thing to do but I would recommend maybe just booking your first night in advance. You can then book from there once you know more about which islands and resorts are the best to stay at. You can make changes to your itinerary, but they charge for each change you make.

Activity specific tours

In Australia and New Zealand we opted for a few tours due to activities that we wanted to do. An example was the Fraser Island trip, and the Whitsundays sailing trip. We also went on the Kiwi experience bus as it was highly recommended for meeting people and having great fun. After comparing the prices of camper vans etc it didn’t work out too much more expensive and it meant we didn’t have to do the endless hours of driving ourselves and had accommodation and transport sorted for us with less hassle. 

Budgeting 

Borneo is a great example of how much more it cost to take a tour rather than planning your trip yourself. We had flights booked to Borneo and considered booking a tour for there, however, when we looked at the tours the cheapest we could find was £5,000 for 2 weeks (including climbing mt. Kinabulu)! We managed to plan and travel for 2 weeks for only £800 all in…so that’s a huge price difference. We also decided against climbing mt. Kinabulu because we had none of the gear needed, it was expensive, and we had not done any specific training for it. People train for months to do that climb!

It’s safe to say that budget played the biggest part in the planning of our trip and we managed to stay away for over 1.5 years due to self-planning rather than using guides.

So should you choose an Organised tour or plan the trip yourself?

My advice would be that if you do not feel confident with the language barriers, cultural difference and the general logistical planning then it would be worth looking into different types of tours. However, for most countries it is easy enough to get around and have a great time with a bit of research. Set a few hours aside, look at social media and on the internet for ideas about activities, places to go and things to see, and then how to get there.

Here is a guide on how we planned travel around a country:

1. Decide on the country based on current destination and budget (maybe look at sky scanner to find the cheapest flight by searching for flights from here to ‘everywhere’). 
2. Look on Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration on activities within the area. Also search for ‘free activities’ or ‘things to do in…’ for ideas.
3. Come up with a rough plan for how long you will need in each place in order to do everything you want.
4. Come up with a rough route around all of the destinations.
5. Look at accommodation locations near to the activities you want to do and compare prices.
6. Look at transport connections between the destinations and prices. Plan the best route for you in terms of price, distance covered and desired comfort levels. Check out my types of transport post for some ideas.
7. Book everything at the same time once you’ve made a plan
8. Get excited and do a celebration dance!

Do you have any other factors/ steps to your decision process in choosing between an organised tour or self-planning? I’d love to know!