Travelling with a Tour Company : Trafalgar versus Globus

Here is a video of the string sex-tet we hear playing in Piaza Navona


I hope to make a number of blog posts based on my travel experiences so this evening, while winding down in my hotel room in Rome, I will write the first. Later I intend to talk about my experiences using the Garmin Nuvi GPS to navigate the streets of Europe and other topics related to visiting these foreign lands, but tonight I will focus on the issue of using guided tours.

For this trip we booked with a tour company. I know, it seems absurd for a self-respecting world traveler to be led around by the nose, not unlike so many head of cattle, while a chirpy tour guide waves an umbrella in front that we dumbly follow behind.

Yet, I have come to realize a few simple facts. If you intend to visit a top tourist site, especially at the height of tourist season (and your goal is see 'the important stuff') you better book a tour if you have any hope of seeing it at all. In fact, as this trip winds to an end I feel completely satiated with palaces, castles, art museums, and churches. I doubt seriously I will ever take another vacation again in my life where the primary motivation is to visit these relics of Western Civilization. That is not to imply I didn't enjoy it, it's just that I have had enough to fill a life time.

I fully expect my future vacations to center around natural beauty which, just happens to be bountiful in our own United States.

On my last official vacation to Europe my wife and I booked with Globus tours. We had a wonderful experience and it firmly convinced me that using a tour company was a wise decision. In fact, before taking this trip, I tried to book it online by myself yet, by the time I added up the hotel, air fare, and transfers, it came to a much higher figure than I could book through an organized tour. I do know that you can travel more inexpensively if you are flexible with your times and willing to avoid the most expensive hotels and some other travel luxuries. However, this simply isn't my style. If I'm going to reward myself for a years hard work with a vacation then I intend to travel in comfort. A good example is when we took the train from Paris to Rome I was shocked at how few of our traveling companions paid the extra money for a private sleeper room. While I arrived in Rome fresh from a good nights sleep these grumpy groaners were miserable and generally unhappy.

Since our first trip with Globus was such a positive experience this time we decided to use a tour company as well. In fact, because this was such a special vacation, we decided we would upgrade to a higher class touring company; or at least so we were told. We booked our trip with Trafalgar having been told it was indeed a more 'upscale' company than Globus.

Probably, needless to say after all of this preamble, Trafalgar left a lot to be desired. It is worth noting that as I type this message using my ourageously expensive Italian Internet connection that I have just arrived at my hotel room for the second day in a row where my room key failed to work. It appears that the Hotel is convinced that we have not yet paid for the room that we, in fact, prepaid through Trafalgar. A number of attempts to straighten this out have still failed to be accomplished.

I can't say that Trafalgar was 'bad' it just wasn't particularily 'good'. Especially compared to our previous experience with Globus. Probably our biggest source of irritation was the fact that when we arrived in Paris on Sunday we still did not have an agent available until Tuesday! We did speak to him briefly by phone on Monday evening. When we got off of the plane we were met by a Trafalgar agent and had to wait over an hour until our ground transportation arrived. Meanwhile, we had to schlep our own luggage around the entire time.

I would like to contrast this with our previous experience with Globus. With Globus when we got off of the plane we were immediately greated by a bright and chirpy Globus representative who whisked us immediately onto a waiting bus. Our luggage was taken from us and stowed away. We had a lovely tour through the city on the way to our Hotel and our guide was charming and helpful. Once we arrived at our hotel we were immediately sent to our rooms without any waiting. Our luggage was already sitting ready in our rooms. After we had freshened up a represenative of Globus was available in the lobby to provide us with a wide array of tour options and, if we wanted to do something off of the beaten path, was ready and able to help.

The pre-arranged tours with Globus were of high quality and allowed us to experience as much of the city as we wanted in our limited time available.

While our tour experience with Trafalgar in Paris was extremely weak, to say the least, it picked up once we arrived in Rome. Nevertheless, we did not get much assistance with our efforts to do any activity off of the beaten path. As you have already heard, our rooms were not taken care of properly according to our schedule. One oversight was that even though we extended our stay in Rome an additional two days, including Sunday and Monday, no one ever bothered to inform us that the Vatican is closed on Sunday and all of the Museums are closed on Mondays. All I can say is we have seen a *lot* of Churches the past two days.

I've only been on two tours now and I don't know if I have enough data to make any sort of sweeping statements. I did, however, speak to a number of people who were on Globus tours while we were on this trip and they reported the same high level of service we had experienced before.

All I can say for sure is that before you attempt to book a vacation by yourself, you need to make sure that you couldn't do it much less expensively using a tour package. Realize that all aspects of a tour that have a strong smell of cow-herding are entirely optional. You can book a tour soley to get the package price for hotel, airfare, and ground transfers, without going on any of the organized tour aspects. Then again, you should also consider this. If you are traveling to a country that has a number of extremely popular attractions with a high density of tourists, then the only way you may be able to see the things you want to see is *on a tour at all*!


I know that there is no way we could have seen the number of attractions we saw in Rome, especially the Sistine Chapel and Saint Peters, had we not booked through the tour. Also, having an experienced and knowledgeable tour guide is a definite improvement to trying to go it alone.

I think that wraps up my post for today. I am looking forward to getting home again, but this has certainly been one of the greatest travel experiences of my lifetime; especially so because I got to share it with my wife and daughter.