Welcome back to Philip James Travel!
Wow, can you believe that nearly one-twelfth of the new year is in the history books?!? Have you written any chapters in your travel story? Not yet? Do you wish you had? Where would you have gone? What would you have liked to have seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard? I’d have liked to have rung in the new decade with a front-row fireworks viewing in one of the great, iconic New Year’s destinations like Sydney Harbor or in Rio on Copacabana Beach. But I guess most of all, I would have simply enjoyed traveling and making memories with my family. No regrets, however; let’s just start planning now for next New Year!
So last week we left off talking about individual travel…. remember FIT’s (pronounced, “eff eye tees”), and how that is differentiated from Group Travel? Within Group travel there are several different ways you can go. First, it can be with people you either know well (or very well like family) whose purpose for travel is a celebration of some sort, a wedding, an anniversary, milestone birthday, or simple R&R; or maybe your group travel might be with an affinity group -- those with whom you share some common interest like perhaps you’re a pickleball player and you travel to tournaments with other pickleball players. Or maybe you’re a Mayflower descendant and you want to partake in one of the many planned group tours this year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the sailing of that famous ship. These are just a few examples of social groups, but there are myriad more, alumni travel, museum patron tours, and dare I mention sports teams’ fanatics!
Alternatively, you might like to travel to see and experience a far-off land or culture, and within that desire, you might also have the intention to meet and get to know fellow travelers with similar interests. Many, many opportunities like this exist in what we call, “Escorted Tours”. An escorted tour is most often a motorcoach tour (domestic or international) in which you join a group ranging in size from 20 to 50 on a pre-planned, set-schedule itinerary called a “departure”. Everything is pre-arranged and basically all you must do is pick the departure of your choice, and then show up. An escorted tour will give you some free time to set out on your own, but overall, you follow the itinerary and the tour leader does all the heavy lifting. It’s travel made easy. These kinds of tours run the gamut from “budget” to “five-star”, and everything in between. Of course, they’re not suited for every traveler, but for those who enjoy an expertly coordinated journey where someone else handles logistics, and if you want to have a shared experience with a relatively small group, this travel-type can be incredibly ideal.
I’m happy to discuss any kind of group travel needs that you might have from small corporate retreats to full-blown destination celebrations, exclusive charters of yachts, barges (I’ll tell you more about these another time!), small ships, trains and/or planes, or maybe you’d like to learn more about escorted tours. Let’s talk!
Philip -