Convinced a group tour isn’t for you? Here’s why you’re wrong

If you’ve landed on this page, you’re probably someone who has mostly ruled out the idea of a multiday group tour.

You’re the sort of vacationer who likes to plan every little aspect of your trip on your own — from where you’ll stay and what you’ll do to how you’ll get from place to place. You only travel with friends and family. You generally eschew the idea of having a guide accompany you along the way.

If so, I have a message for you: You don’t know what you’re missing.

As I’ve learned during my decades-long travel writing career, which has offered me a glimpse of almost every sort of travel imaginable, group tours can often be the best way to see a place.

Here are six advantages to signing up for a group tour instead of booking (and traveling) on your own.

It makes travel planning easy

You say you love planning everything about your vacations on your own. You like finding just the right hotels for your getaways and mapping out each day’s activities, whether it be visiting historic sites and museums or getting lost in the great outdoors. You don’t like leaving anything about your trip to chance or someone else’s tastes.

But think about how much time you spend planning trips. There’s the stress of having to figure it all out on your own, and, perhaps more importantly, there’s the risk that you won’t get it right. Are you sure you know enough about the destination (or can learn enough in a short time) to pick the perfect hotel location, the best sights to see and the best places to eat? Will you be able to figure out how to get around in a way that doesn’t waste your precious vacation time?

When you sign up for a multiday guided tour of a destination, you’re letting someone else figure this out — someone who probably has a lot more knowledge than you about the place you want to visit. All the complex logistics, vendor research and scheduling hassles that are part of trip planning just melt away.

It can save you money

You may be thinking that you are saving money when you book travel on your own. You may think you’re getting a better deal, for instance, by booking a hotel on your own instead of letting a tour company book it for you. Ditto for the cost of transportation or tickets to major tourist attractions. That isn’t always the case, though.

As major purchasers of hotel rooms, airline seats, attraction tickets and other elements of travel, the tour companies that sell group tours often can negotiate lower rates for each element of a trip than you will find available to the public — and they can pass on some of those savings to you.

This may not be immediately obvious when you are comparing the cost of a group tour to the cost of booking a trip on your own. When you book a vacation on your own, you are buying a lot of different elements of the trip — lodging, meals, transportation, attraction tickets — one by one at different times both before and during your travels. The total cost of the trip isn’t always clear in advance.

With a group tour, by contrast, most of your travel costs are bundled into the one price you’ll pay the tour company in advance. In addition to a hotel room each night, the pricing for a tour often folds in quite a few meals, transportation from place to place (no need to pay for a rental car, Ubers, taxis or trains) and, perhaps most notably, an extensive amount of guided touring (more on this in a moment) with most or all admission costs to attractions included.

If you take a hard look at the true costs of each type of travel, you may find you’re paying more when taking the do-it-yourself approach instead of booking onto a group trip. Indeed, tour companies often say that the average cost savings when booking a group tour versus booking travel on your own is around 30%.

Additionally, there is one more way you might save when booking a group tour — one that is particularly relevant in this time of persistently high inflation. Tour operators typically set their pricing for tours a couple of years before the tours take place and then do not raise them again, even if the price of hotels, transportation and other elements rise. In other words, it is the tour company, not you, who will “eat” the cost of inflation when prices rise for travel to certain destinations.

Related: Earn bonus points and miles by booking group travel

It’ll offer more insight into what you’re seeing

As mentioned above, group tours tend to include extensive guided tours. Often, a dedicated guide or tour leader will accompany you for your entire journey; they’ll be there to explain and put into context everything that you’re seeing and experiencing from morning until night.

This is no small thing.

Sure, you can read travel guides (like the ones TPG publishes) and listen to travel podcasts that will give you an overview of all the things you can see and do in the places you plan to visit. You can bring along a travel guide book, either in book or digital form, to use as a reference. TPG’s sister company Lonely Planet is known for guides like this that can be a great help to travelers. Even so, there is nothing like having an expert with you to help you gain true insight into the things you are seeing and doing.

From my experience over the years, the guides that the major tour companies use to lead tours in many destinations are truly experts. They often go to school for years to learn about the places where they are guiding. In Egypt, for instance, the tour guides on group tours typically have a four-year university degree in tourism studies that includes a specialized focus on the country’s history, archaeology, language and culture; they have usually passed rigorous examinations and are licensed by the country’s Ministry of Tourism.

Quite simply, there is an intangible value to having an expert guide leading you on such a trip versus traveling to the same place on your own. On a group tour, the sights often come to life through the guide’s stories. It can be a deeper immersion and connection than you’d get on your own.

It’ll save you from missing out

One great thing about having a guide with you around the clock is that they serve as an always available concierge who can help guide you to local restaurants, bars and attractions during your free time. These are usually places you won’t find in travel guides — the sort of places that will elevate your experience when traveling.

In many cases, the guides on these trips are locals who know the areas you are visiting like a local. Even if they are not, it’s their job to know everything about the places you are visiting.

If there is something wonderful that you can do in your free time during the tour, they will likely point it out and steer you in the right direction. They will also steer you away from things that may not be worth doing. And even when you’re with your group, they’ll likely point out things that you would have missed if you were on your own.

It might be safer

One of the things that I’ve learned from years of travel is that the world isn’t nearly as dangerous as some people think it is. That said, there is always some risk involved in traveling, and getting into trouble when far from home can be a stressful experience. Taking a guided tour instead of visiting a place on your own can help mitigate some of that risk and provide a safety net when the worst happens.

Call it safety in numbers. But whether it’s the risk of getting into a car accident when driving in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar roads and driving customs, or the risk of being the victim of a robbery or other crime, you may find your biggest concerns about being safe when traveling melt away when you’re traveling as part of a guided group.

This can be especially true when you are traveling in the most far-flung, off-the-beaten-path locations.

One area, in particular, where you may feel safer on a group tour is in and around your lodging. Tour companies typically pick hotels in very safe locations in any particular city or town and guide you in and out of the hotels each day.

And if the worst should happen and you are involved in some sort of incident that could ruin your vacation — maybe someone swipes your passport, leaving you panicked about getting home — you have a dedicated guide there to help you figure everything out.

These guides also typically share cultural insights about the places you are visiting, such as cultural norms around dressing, which can aid you in staying safe.

Related: How to protect your travel documents

It’ll come with built-in travel companions

If there is one thing that might surprise you the most about group travel, it is this: You will likely have a great time getting to know the other people on the trip. You might even meet some new friends for life.

Over several decades of traveling the world both with groups (mostly on cruises and combined land-and-cruise “cruisetours,” which has been my travel writing focus) and on my own, I’ve learned that traveling with a group of like-minded people can really augment the experience.

It’s wonderful to share the experience of seeing and doing things with other people who share your passion for travel. One thing that I have noticed time and again on group tours is how what starts as a group of strangers morphs into what almost feels like a family traveling together by the end. Spending days together seeing new sights and trying new things has a way of bonding people together.

If you’re a solo traveler, like I often have been on tours, it can really enhance the experience.

Bottom line

If you think a group tour isn’t for you, you just might want to reconsider and give one a try. From offering an easier travel experience to providing a group of built-in traveling companions, group tours have a lot of advantages.