PHOTO: With a smaller coach, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Back-Roads can travel to small locations, off the main paths. (Courtesy of Back Roads Touring)

Back-Roads Touring, a provider of small-group experiential travel programs, released its 2016 tour brochures three months early this year in response to strong demand for this type of travel, says Chris Coillet, the London-based company’s vice president of North America.

“Our philosophy is about getting off the tourist trail and enabling our guests to have conversations with local people who have a story to tell,” says Coillet, who believes personal encounters with locals constitute the heart of foreign travel.

Under the Back-Roads Touring ethos, such encounters are the way to most fully experience any place. “To be able to ask questions to someone from there about the history and their knowledge and experience — it brings the destination to life,” Coillet says. “Anyone can buy a ticket to the Eiffel Tower and go up. But it’s so much more fascinating to go to a small French village to meet the families who have been so ingrained in its life for hundreds of years.”

Loyal Clients
Back-Roads Touring’s client base is loyal, with a high return rate. “Because of a remarkable return rate, we are constantly looking for new destinations and new concepts of touring that we can use to give the loyal customer something new, a new product offering,” says Coillet. “We give them reasons to come back. If someone was on one of our longest-running and most popular tours, say the ‘Corners of Cornwall’ or the ‘Highlights of Northern Spain,’ a couple of years ago, they could do the same tour again because we’re constantly evolving and making it more imaginative and including more experiences.”

The Small-Group Niche
Back-Roads Touring is a devotee of small-group touring. “We carry a maximum of 18 people,” says Coillet. “Some operators call their products small-group touring and they are carrying 25 people on a 50-seat coach. That’s just fewer people on a coach. With a smaller coach, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, we can get into those small locations that big buses just can’t get to.”

It’s what the company calls “the Back-Roads Difference,” and it was built into the company’s DNA at the beginning of its 27-year history. “It’s a very firm bedrock of how we created this brand and this business,” says Coillet. “It’s what every tour we do, every situation we make is created around.”

Back-Roads tours are explicitly not for someone who wants to roll London, Paris and Rome into one grand tour, “the 10-countries-in-20-days type of tour when you’re ticking off countries,” says Coillet.

“It’s for someone who may have been to Europe or any of the regions previously and wants to go back and explore in more depth,” says Coillet. “The majority of our tours don’t go into a different country. They’ll stay in one region, like Cornwall in the U.K. or the Loire Valley in France. It’s about getting people up close and personal with the destination.”

Byways Not Highways
Back-Roads Touring really does travel on the back roads. “We take the back roads, not the motorways,” says Coillet. “Maybe on the first day or the last day there might be a couple of hours on the motorways for positioning reasons. It’s getting people into those destinations, into those small towns and villages and getting them to feel like they’re part of the region, and then having the local experiences as well.”

The company, which focuses primarily on Europe, the U.K. and Morocco, strives for immersion, not just in the environment but also among the people who live there.

“I think one of most powerful things that you can do as a tour operator,” says Coillet, “is to put people in situations and introduce them to people, and show them things that are unique and foreign to them that they don’t get back home, to put them in an immersive environment. They don’t want to go to Europe and spend all that money and get the same experience you get doing a road trip here in the States.”

Back-Roads tours, he adds, are “very much about those local experiences and the people we introduce them to.”

A Blend of Styles
The tours are leisurely paced and designed to be a nice blend of independent and escorted travel. Most afternoons are free to explore in villages and towns. Some days are entirely free.

“Sometimes we schedule a day when there is nothing actually planned and we’re in a location where you’ve got the ability to go out and explore,” says Coillet. “The guide will be there to give you some direction, but effectively it’s a free day to wander and explore. Over the years we’ve found that people like the ability to go and do their own thing. They don’t necessarily want to follow a schedule for every 15 minutes of the day.”

New Roads for Back-Roads
Back-Roads Touring is introducing a new selection of trips, including ones to U.S. destinations, responding to the growing demand for river cruises and family programs. Back-Roads has seen the most growth in its active river cruises, solo trips and family tours:

River cruises: The company is expanding its river cruise programs in Europe, with itineraries on the Danube, Rhine, Seine and Douro rivers. It is also offering new river cruising options on the Mekong River through Cambodia and Vietnam.

Some of the river cruise departures are designated as Breakaway trips, which are Back-Roads’ offerings for families with older teens or young adults in their 20s. Breakaways are designed to balance time spent together as a family with independent activities.

Family tours: Back-Roads is tripling its selections for families in 2016. It is offering new Family Breakaway trips in the Basque region of Spain and France, and in Croatia and Montenegro, Alaska, England, the Canadian Rockies, Patagonia, Peru, New Zealand and the lake district of Argentina. A Rhine River cruise is also designated as a Family Breakaway itinerary.

The company will continue to offer its popular Family Breakaway trips in Costa Rica, Hawaii, Tuscany and the Dalmatian Coast.

Solo travel: Back-Roads is responding to demand for more trips in its Solo series with new offerings in Peru, Maui and Lanai in Hawaii; Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal; California’s Redwood Empire and Yosemite National Park, and Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Prak.

Camping: Both families and solo travelers have responded positively to Back-Roads’ camping offerings. In response to the growing demand, Back-Roads is offering new camping programs in places where the company previously offered only hotel-based programs, including Yellowstone; the Tetons; the San Juan Islands; Glacier and Waterton Lakes; Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyon national parks; and Alaska.

The 2016 Brochure
Back-Roads’ 2016 brochure presents its small group tours of 32 countries in Europe, plus Morocco — the company’s first hop into Africa, perhaps to be followed later by a skip and a jump. The new brochure is rich in graphic content portraying the kinds of scenes and settings a traveler might expect to see on a Back-Roads tour.

“The images in the brochure enable people to see what small villages are like when you get out of the big, international cities,” notes Coillet.

The new brochure includes 15 brand-new tour itineraries out of a total of 57. The tours that are not listed as “brand new” are still also new to a large degree, says Coillet.

Brand-new tours for 2016 include “Edinburgh to London”; “A Taste of Scotland with Carolyn Robb [former Royal chef]”; “Germany’s Romantic Back-Road to Vienna”; “The Greek Ionian Islands”; “Peloponnese and Greek Saronic Islands”; “Kent and Sussex”; and “Slow Food Tour of Puglia.”

“We have a very comprehensive review policy, with the surveys we put out with our guests, getting their feedback, and feedback from the tour guides,” says Coillet. “We make changes based on things that happen throughout the year. You could almost say that every tour is almost new. We’re always looking for better hotels, and restaurants, more authentic local experiences, things that are going to really excite the guests.”

For more information, call 877-330-4850 and visit www.backroadstouring.com.