Pronounced dead long ago by many inside and outside the travel industry, the escorted tour nevertheless continues to thrive by reinventing itself and adapting to the changing preferences of the marketplace. It has proved to be a highly flexible style of travel, and one that continues to be in demand among travelers.

“The fact is that today’s tours have evolved right along with travelers,” says Steve Born, vice president of marketing for the Globus Family of Brands.

“You’ll find the basis of most tours is now two to three nights per major city, centrally located hotels, just the right balance between scheduled activities and free time to explore on your own. It’s not too much structure; it’s just the right amount of structure. Even overview/panorama tours have evolved to this style, as evidenced by the Globus Vignettes.”

Tours Have Changed

Tour operators have addressed consumer objections to the traditional escorted tour with alternatives to answer each of their concerns.

“Mention ‘motorcoach tour’ and one tends to think of hurried trips through Europe, with travelers who do not interact with the local culture or environment,” says Emma Cottis, product and marketing manager for Goway Travel. “But today’s Baby Boomers and retirees enjoy active lifestyles and most are looking for a new style of touring that allows them the flexibility to tailor their travel to their interests.”

So tour operators have come out with programs that offer more options and less structure. As a result, Cottis said, the tours “attract increasing numbers of ‘young at heart’ North Americans. Varying levels of touring can be selected, from Goway’s Holidays of a Lifetime fully escorted deluxe experiences to our line of moderate, affordable coach tours. Many of these tours are now structured either to provide free time in a destination, or the option to choose from a range of included activities.”

Today the buzzwords in travel are “authenticity” and “experiential.” People are no longer satisfied with staying on the surface of things, and tour operators have responded with programs that allow travelers to dig in deeply and meet people at the destination, engaging with them to experience the culture, not just look at it from a distance. Tours provide insider access that clients could not really get traveling on their own.

According to Brian Stack, president and CEO of CIE Tours, “Yesterday’s reality was that people were herded around countries with little time to relax, but today’s escorted tour caters to different age groups, levels of mobility, backgrounds and travel experience.”

A Variety of Styles

Tours are offered today in a nearly endless variety of styles. You can take a small-group adventure to an exotic place and focus tightly on a specific region. You can see a destination through any number of alternative lenses, for example, by exploring the cuisine, or the art or the music. You can see it by bicycle, on foot, by train, ship or ferry. You can experience a variety of modes of transportation in a single trip. You can take a hub-and-spoke tour that sets you up in a single hotel for the duration of the trip with travelers exploring a region from that central headquarters so they don’t have to move to another hotel.

If your clients don’t want to travel with a large group, small groups are available. In fact, tour operators cater to a range of groups from large gatherings to private escorted travel with one escort for one person or for a family or friends traveling together.

If you are a 20-something-year-old person, you can travel with people in your age group on tours designed to offer activities and accommodations for your demographic. You can choose active travel or decide to take it easy. You can explore almost any place in the world with practically any theme or emphasis as the central organizing principle of the tour.

Support and Safety

Escorted tours offer many benefits. Traveling on an escorted tour is like having a friend at the destination, a trusted friend who is extremely knowledgeable about the destination and how to get around, who can tell you how to access what is best and most interesting about the destination, and who is dedicated to serving your needs and helping you have the best trip possible.

“One of the biggest advantages about an escorted tour — and it is something I hear about all the time from Collette passengers who have just been on a tour — is the tour manager or guide,” says Dan Sullivan, president of Collette. “These professionals handle so many details from getting luggage from one place to the next, to providing historical and fun commentary on the sights you will be seeing that day, to making recommendations for what to do in your free time. When you travel on your own with a guidebook and map in hand, you have to be organized and always on. I think it detracts from being able to fully relax. And isn’t that the point of vacation?”

When traveling on your own to a destination, you are a stranger. You don’t know your way around. You don’t know where to go, how to find what you need, how to avoid dangers large and small. Independent travel is best in a destination you already know. But the more exotic a destination, the more important it is to have support and guidance, like what you get from an escorted tour.

“Independent travelers may not like the demands of itinerary planning, the hassles of getting lost in a foreign country, trying to decide how to best spend time in a destination, the physical demands of handling their luggage, etc.,” says Tom Armstrong, corporate communications manager for Tauck. “With an escorted tour, none of these is an issue.”

Cost Advantages

Escorted tours also provide cost advantages. Combining the transportation costs of a number of people together creates a great savings in the cost of one of the essential elements of travel and one of the most expensive: transportation. Whether traveling with a small group of five, 10 or 15 people, or a large group of 40 or 50 people on a motorcoach, the transportation costs are shared and greatly reduced.

According to Paul Wiseman, president of Trafalgar Tours, “A Trafalgar guided vacation allows travelers to visit a number of destinations at great savings, as the price you pay includes all transportation between destinations, first-class hotel accommodations in the destinations, most meals, daily sightseeing with local guides, and the personal concierge services of our tour directors during your tour.”

Escorted tour operators also are able to bring a cost advantage to their purchase of accommodations. An escorted tour operator that buys hundreds of rooms day after day throughout the year can obtain much lower rates than an individual stopping in for a night or two. By providing hoteliers with the assurance that certain blocks of rooms will always be filled, tour operators are given the benefit of lower prices.

Interaction with Others

Although some travelers on some trips want to be completely independent, there are also advantages to traveling with other people. Besides meeting people at the destination, the client on an escorted tour is also able to meet and engage with other travelers in the group, people from various places with different backgrounds and experiences to learn from. It creates another level of experience on the trip besides the destination itself.

The Best Use of Time

“Time off is precious, and having someone intimately familiar with the destination organize your trip ensures that you get the most out of the limited time you have to spend there,” says Pamela Lassers, director of media relations for Abercrombie & Kent USA. “Abercrombie & Kent’s Escorted Journeys are designed to allow guests to travel comfortably to places where they might otherwise hesitate to go on their own, due to language and cultural differences, accompanied by top escorts who serve as cultural interpreters.”

Far from becoming obsolete, as many predicted it would decades ago, the escorted tour has evolved and adapted and shown itself to be a vibrant, ever-renewing model.