Tailor-Made Tours: the pros and cons

Group tours can be frustrating.  You sit on a coach for hours and your guide drones on and on ‘and if you crane your neck really hard you can just see the new cement works on the left hand side…’ while you are trying to sleep. When you arrive somewhere interesting, you have to follow the local guide with a flag or a paper flamingo on a stick, or whatever, for an hour’s route march, when you would really rather explore at your own pace.  When do you finally get time to yourselves, it is only an hour, and you are so worried about being late that you get back early, only to find that two old dears have got lost (again) and the coach finally leaves half an hour late.  Then there will be the ‘character’ on the coach, who will fail to understand anything the courier tells him/her, provide loud daily updates on the state of his/her bowels, and take it upon him/herself to organise a group photo and whip-round for the courier.

Tirana, 2003

On the other hand, truly independent travel can be time-consuming to organise, particularly in countries where public transport options are limited and you do not speak the language.  An alternative, if you do not have time to research and book every element of your trip yourself, is to book a tailor-made tour with a specialist operator.  You specify what you want to see, and the operator will put together a package including accommodation, travel and sightseeing with your own guide.  Or that is the theory.

My first tailor-made tour was an 8-day visit to Albania in 2003, arranged by Regent Holidays.  We provided a list of the towns that we wished to visit and the number of nights in each, and they came up with an itinerary.  We were accompanied by a driver and an interpreter for the whole trip.  This meant that we were able to see much more in the time available than we could have would have been possible if we had had to rely on public transport.  The tourist industry in Albania was in its infancy.  There had been an influx of curious tourists immediately after independence, but this had dried up as a result of the unrest following the collapse of the pyramid savings schemes in the late 1990s.  Our interpreter, Ilir, had worked in the fledgling tourist industry in the early 1990s, but was essentially an interpreter rather than a guide, and was more used to accompanying journalists and businessmen than tourists. He was also very inquisitive. This suited us very well, as he was able to tell us a lot about life in Albania without going through the standard tour guide-type lecture on agricultural and industrial activity. It also meant that we got more than we bargained for. Asked what else we would like to see, after a tour of the main sights of Tirana, I tentatively suggested the university.  Before we knew it, we were having an interview with the Rector.  At archaeological sites and other places of interest, Ilir acted as interpreter to the expert local guides. 

The second tour was of the Silk Road, from China to Uzbekistan, with Audley Travel. Again, we sent a list of places we did (and did not) wish to see, and they came up with an itinerary.  This was most impressive on first sight, being a 30 page spiral bound document with colour photographs throughout – rather more impressive than Regent’s two pages of photocopied text. Closer inspection showed that it was pasted together from various standard itineraries and descriptions and not quite as tailored to our needs as it first appeared.  However, we were able to make an appointment to meet one of their country specialists and discuss the itinerary in detail. He certainly earned his commission, as we were there for almost two hours, while he attempted to persuade us that the best way to get from Kashgar in Xinjiang Province, China, to Uzbekistan, involved a 14 hour drive over the Torugart Pass and two nights in Kyrgyzstan.  Having eventually taken his word for it and done the trip, I am convinced that there must be a better way.

Mingsha Dune, nr. Dunhuang

This trip was different from our Albania tour, in that although we had a local guide and driver in each city we visited, they generally did not accompany us on the journeys between them. We would be taken to the airport or station, for the flight or overnight train journey and then met at the other end by our new guide. I later learned that this was in fact quite unusual – other visitors, including a family of Australians we first encountered in Dunhuang, had a guide who accompanied them en route in addition to local guides.  Only where we were travelling from city to city by car were we accompanied by our guides (Turpan to Urumqi; Torugart Pass to Bishkek, across Uzbekistan from Khiva to Tashkent). 

We found the Chinese tourist industry much more organised than that of Albania. Our local guides on the Silk Road were for the most part professionals. All of our Chinese guides had degrees in tourism. Although we were not part of a group, we were given standard tours, with very little flexibility.  We were in some cases able to resist the obligatory visits to silk factories and the like which are something of an occupational hazard of tourism in China, but this did not go down too well with our guides.  Although they explained that the purpose of the proposed visit was either simply to learn how X is made, and/or to use the clean toilets at the factory, these visits all end in a hard sell at high prices.  As we learned from a guide from Urumqi, it was their ‘duty’ to deliver us to these establishments. The lack of flexibility was most apparent on our last day in Beijing, when, according to our itinerary, we were supposed to catch the train to Xi’an at around 5.30 p.m.  However, it transpired that our tickets, which we received on arrival in Beijing, were for a train at 9.30 p.m.  Our guide suggested a Kung Fu show to while away some of the extra time.  We weren’t keen on this idea, and suggested a restaurant instead, but it appeared that our tour ended at 5.30 at the station, unless we purchased the Kung Fu show tickets.  Fortunately, Beijing West station had comfortable seats and somewhere to buy food. This was a complete contrast with our experience in Albania, where our car and driver were at our disposal for the entire trip, and an invitation to dinner with a friend’s family was easily accommodated. The organised nature of the Chinese part of our trip was also apparent at lunchtimes.  According to our itinerary the only meals included were breakfasts.  However, everywhere in China we were taken to a restaurant for an included lunch.  I am never one to refuse a free lunch, but the quantities of food ordered on our behalf were rather excessive for someone used to just a sandwich in the middle of the day.

Uzbekistan was a little more relaxed than China.  Our two guides (a city guide in Tashkent, and a guide who was with us for several days as we travelled from Khiva back to Tashkent) were both very experienced, and showed a greater degree of flexibility.  We were both a bit thrown, on arrival in Tashkent  after a very early morning flight from Bishkek, to be asked what we wanted to see, rather than to be told what were going to see. Lunch was no longer included. We were still shepherded into a restaurant by our guide, but we were at least given a bit more choice over when and where we ate and allowed to choose our own meal, and the guide sat with us, rather than at a separate table. 

It is clear that the experience of tailor-made tours will depend on at least as much on the culture and nature of the tourist industry in the country visited, as on the company making the arrangements. There was a clear difference between the nature of the Chinese, Kyrgyz and Uzbek parts of our second trip.  There are some general points about tailor-made travel that apply whatever the location.

Pros

Flexibility to choose your itinerary at the time of booking. As noted above, flexibility once on the tour itself will depend on the country and, to a certain extent, the guide.

Avoidance of irritating fellow travellers. Though you may find that at certain places you will be part of a group tour of English-speaking visitors, as we did at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.   

‘Luxury’. This is not necessarily a 5-star option. The nature of the places visited may mean that some accommodation is decidedly basic, but for a peasant like me, having a chauffeur-driven Mercedes at my disposal for a week, even if it is a little old and shabby, definitely feels extravagant.

Cons

Cost.  Tailor made tours are of course not cheap.  The smaller the group, the larger the share of the guide and/or driver’s salary per head. On the other hand, they are not necessarily the most expensive option.  I have seen advertisements for a group tour of the Silk Road by private train covering much the same ground for twice what we paid.

Pressure to be interested in everything. Even on a tailor-made tour, there may be some parts that you find less interesting than others, but you may feel obliged to look interested in order to be polite.  You also need to have researched the area so that if your guide asks you if there is anything in particular you would like to see, you can come up with an intelligent suggestion.

Don’t expect everything to go according to plan.  Particularly in countries where tourism is in its infancy, things can go wrong, and it will be down to the local agents to sort things out.  In Albania, the local agency found that there was no room with a sea view available in the Saranda hotel listed in the itinerary, so switched us to a new hotel where we would get a better view.  The view was certainly excellent, but the hotel was not finished. Our room was fine, and we found the whole thing rather amusing, but Ilir was very upset.  In China, we had a couple of problems that were down to the arrangements made by local agents: the long wait for our train from Xi’an to Beijing, and a rather strange and unhelpful guide in Kashgar. Our biggest problem however was an eight-hour delay in our departure from the UK owing to a security scare at Heathrow.  Our Audley contact was very helpful during this time.

Would I go for a tailor-made package again? Definitely.