Small-group tours: just you and a dozen of your closest friends, doing what you all love to do most. What could go wrong? Plenty!
A lot can go sideways on a small-group tour — missed flights, misbooked dates for that once-in-a-lifetime experience, mismatched energy levels or confusion over how to get from point A to point B. You get the idea. Traveling with a group adds layers of complexity you just don’t face when it’s just you, or you and a travel buddy.
It’s also a lot more fun and can be far more personalized than just signing on to an anonymous big-group tour.
Small-group tours offer the sweet spot of scale and savings. Now, it’s easier than ever to organize or get in on a small-group trip, with new services, tools, specialty advisers and tour operators.
Bryan Lewis frequently works with people who want the best of both approaches. He’s the founder and CEO of Boston-based Tenon Tours, which specializes in small groups and independent travel in Europe. Midlife travelers, he says, want to center itineraries around passions — hobbies, sports or once-in-a-lifetime events. And that means that it’s worth it to them to engage advisers and tour operators for the supporting logistics.
The key, says Lewis, is getting the members of the group to agree on the trip’s priorities, pace and pricing. “People want to slow down, and they’re able to do that when they’re not on a scheduled tour,” he says.
With the plan structured, apps take over as virtual tour guides. With each day’s itinerary mapped out on your phone, you and your companions can connect with local guides, drivers and hosts.
Groupthink Grows
The current boom in small-group travel emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, says George Balogh, president of East Greenbush-based Blue Skies Travel. He and other travel advisers agree that the pandemic undermined the already-fading appeal of big-bus tours when the prospect of being trapped in a small space with several dozen strangers became anathema.
Multigenerational families can be large enough to gain the benefits of small-group travel, Balogh notes, while empty nesters and young retirees prefer trips that reflect their passions rather than cookie-cutter bus tours. If small-group travel appeals to you, Lewis advises starting with the must-see experiences on your bucket list and, if you’re organizing your own group, sketching out destinations that will engage everyone. You can gauge general costs by reviewing packaged small-group tours, but the real picture emerges as you price out the details of your customized itinerary.
That includes more than flights and hotels. Tour operators are in business to help travelers secure entry to coveted events and destinations. Often, groups can avoid long lines by being admitted to museums and events through separate entrances, saving time and hassle.
If you want to combine a land tour with an ocean or river cruise, an adviser can stitch together the itinerary. Usually, hotels, destinations and local carriers, such as a private car to ferry you around, all pay a commission to the operator or adviser to cover their cost, says Richard Krieger of New York-based Sky Vacations.
It is possible to craft a complicated itinerary by chasing down individual deals, he says, “but by the time you’re done, the price differential is not much different” than working with an operator, who also connects all the dots so you don’t have to.
One of the biggest advantages of working with a tour operator, Lewis says, is handling logistics — how to get from place to place, what to do there, and how long to stay.
For instance, he says, Americans chronically underestimate the distance and difficulty of getting around the northern European countryside. Scandinavia is a fast-rising destination, especially for hardy types who want to hike or bike its lonely cliffs and winding coastal roads. But steep and snowy Scandinavian landscapes are “hard to navigate, literally, because of the terrain,” says Lewis. “If a town is 200 miles away, it’s not a four-hour drive, it’s nine hours, because of how slow and windy the roads are. And you don’t necessarily know which towns are worth visiting and which aren’t.”
Similarly, it’s no small feat to get to remote Alaskan lodges, perched deep in the woods, says Elizabeth Hall, second-generation president of longtime tour operator John Hall’s Alaska.
In Alaska, the beaten path is well-trod by rail and boat, but it’s the unpaved path that brings you close to brown bears, eagles’ roosts and salmon rapids. It takes a seasoned operator (and a boat captain) to get small groups from, say, the tiny town of Seward to the lodge at Kenai Fjords National Park.
It’s those shared interests that elevate a small group to a community, says Krieger. Once-in-a-lifetime journeys — the wilds of Alaska, the Nordic Arctic, a South African safari — resonate in sharing memories long after the group has returned home, still together in spirit.
