Pros and cons of group tours

January 18, 2016 11:32 PM

I'm hoping to spend my next vacation exploring Vietnam. Can you tell me about the pros and cons of taking an organised group tour to somewhere like Vietnam? What do you wish you had known before you went on your first group tour? Would it be safer than travelling alone for a Western woman?
posted by EatMyHat to Travel & Transportation (10 answers total)

I haven't traveled to Vietnam, I have (however) traveled with group tours by myself. It's been a really good experience, with the following caveats:

I only book group tours when there's really an adventure component-- for instance, climbing, hiking or cycling. The more difficult the level, the more likely the group will not contain people who annoy me. The big draw back I find in travel groups is when you are stuck in one with someone who doesn't actually want to travel-- whines about food/hotel/locals/etc. If you get in with people who know and accept more difficult conditions from the beginning, then this is much less likely to happen.

If you are at all a delicate sleeper, get a single supplement for the hotel room or a solo tent if one is available. It can ruin your trip if you're a night owl and are stuck with an early bird or vice versa. For me, it also gives me the space I need to take time for myself and unwind after a long day.

Read the reviews! I tend to go only with groups which have some serious sustainability/CSR creds. Yes, that makes it more expensive. But it also means that you know that your money is going to small business owners and that you are not supporting something awful (elephant rides in Thailand) and that these people can really help you see and understand local life. Many NGOs and non-profits offer group tours, and these are usually my favorite.

Have fun! I've met some of my closest friends and long term travel buddies on adventure travel tours. It's a great way to find people with whom you have a lot in common.
posted by frumiousb at 12:59 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yes, there will likely be THAT ONE PERSON who bugs the living shit out of you the entire tour. But, bright side, you might also meet someone new and then have a lifelong friend.
posted by Brittanie at 1:24 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just did a 9 day bus tour in the North Island of New Zealand. I wish I'd worked out before I paid for it that the reason the accommodation was so cheap was because i had to put up a tent most nights and take it down by 7am. I wish I'd realised that there was very little opportunity for flaneuring, exploring, ambling and just taking my time -(usually it was - we're dropping you off here for your activity which should last between this time and that time and this other mob will immediately bring you back to the camp site which is miles from anything else), I wish I'd known that "any level of fitness" actually meant "goes to the gym twice a day, cardio in the morning and extreme yoga and the evening and runs half marathons on weekends just for fun". I wish I'd known that when they said you could charge your electronics on the bus they didn't mean a USB port at every seat (like some buses) but that one person (out of 25) could charge one device at a time and at most campsites you had to sit in the kitchen guarding your phone. I wish I'd know that wet events (swimming / kayaking) did not include a change room at event destination and that some people think mature, curvy women with dodgy knees can change into swimmers designed to support very large breasts in their seat space on a bus and that modesty is a nonsensical word. That's about it.
posted by b33j at 3:13 AM on January 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I spent 2 weeks in Vietnam traveling by myself and it was completely fine. Well, ok, I have an old friend in Saigon who helped me get my bearings...

I highly recommend the website Rusty Compass - everything he recommends is spot on and not overly touristy. Everything my friend recommended is also on Rusty Compass. I like to walk around by myself and it was always ok.

If you do go by yourself, you can do a few group tours while there - in Saigon/HoChiMinh City I did Sophie's Art Tour that was a wonderful half a day and we got to see private collections and learn a lot of history.

In Hanoi there are street food tours you can take, and I really wish I'd done that.

Hoi An is a smaller city with a more relaxed vibe and I was very happy there. The only time I felt lonely was the couple of days my friend insisted I stay at a luxury resort on the beach. It was lovely, yes, but I realized I prefer walking around among living people :)
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:58 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I cycled in Vietnam and Cambodia with a company called Explore and they were really good. You see a country differently when you potter along by bike, and it unites a tour group when you're doing something together.
posted by kadia_a at 9:52 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Group tours can be great, but they are definitely not everyone's cup of tea. For sure they are safer than independent travel. There are lots of different types of tour companies, you might want to look at INTREPID, they offer a great variety of tour types that seem ideal for solo travelers.
posted by pjsky at 11:05 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: A big advantage of group tours is the time you save (either at home or on your trip) not having to arrange things (accommodation, travel, activities) yourself. The corresponding disadvantage is that you don't get to pick where you are going and sleeping, and what you are doing.
posted by quaking fajita at 11:32 AM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've been on two group tours (about 50 people) to Italy. While overall I liked those trips, I will not do a group tour again if I can help it. Yes the advantages are that you don't have to think about the schedule or planning aspects. However - you get rushed between attractions. You don't get to choose where and when you eat. There's no time to go off and explore or even to just sit at a cafe and relax for an hour. We were rushed through every single attraction in Rome for example in one day flat and they made us get up at like 5 am for that and we didn't get back to the hotel til after 10pm... Days like that were downright exhausting and really not that fun. There were several assholes in our tour and they generally made life unpleasant to say the least.

I wish I had vetted the group leaders more too. They were pretty incompetent on my second trip and it was aggravating that they were in charge. At times they even randomly changed what we were doing that day because they wanted to do something specific to their personal taste.

I agree with what was said above - if I had to pick a group tour again I'd look for a smaller group and one that was doing more adventurous stuff to lower the chance of tons of annoying assholes.

Feel free to memail me with any specific questions. I know it's not Vietnam but I can comment a lot on group trips in particular. Also for the record I used two different tour operators too.
posted by FireFountain at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2016

I'm not generally a group tour person, and have enjoyed Vietnam on my own. But a fortyish female friend just returned from a Vietnam tour with Intrepid, and she loved it. I did an assignment in Cambodia a few years ago with Buffalo Tours, and can also recommend them highly.

Have fun!
posted by cyndigo at 2:31 PM on January 19, 2016

I would agree with everyone above who said it very much depends on the tour company. I went to Vietnam two years ago with Contiki (caters to the 18-35 set), and while it was a wonderful country and I had a great time, there is absolutely zero chance I would do a Contiki trip ever again.
There were real positives to the tour thing: without having to put any effort into planning, I stayed in pleasant hotels, ate good food, had mostly excellent local guides, had easy transportation between cities, and did a few neat activities that I might have struggled to arrange on my own in addition to the standard tourist stops. I also thought that Contiki did a couple things particularly well, including keeping the group size small (I think there were fewer than 20 of us?) and giving us some blocks of free time for exploring and relaxing.
BUT: there were definitely activities that felt very rushed, there seemed to be very little concern about the sort of sustainability/CSR issues frumiousb raised above (Here, have some bananas to feed to the wild monkeys!), and the other people in the group were the absolute worst - just walking stereotypes of ugly Americans (and their Canadian/British/Australian counterparts) on a level that I had had no idea existed in real people, the nicer ones just completely lacking in any curiosity about the local culture and history, the worst ones constantly spewing racism and sexism. Almost all of them were super focused on spending every evening partying late into the night at expat bars, even if it meant being too tired or hung over to attend the following morning's activities. I like to drink a fair amount, but these kids could just as well have been staying out all night in Berlin or Rio (or at home) and not noticed the difference, since they missed or were half-asleep through lots of the actual tour. I also heard some stories from the folks who had been on the tour since the Thailand leg that I found kind of disturbing.
I also want to add that Vietnam felt very safe to me - I wasn't alone much, but I was often out at night in a smaller group of 2-3 women and I was never worried. Please do go, I think you'll love it no matter how you decided to end up traveling - but I definitely recommend doing your research! Feel free to message me for our itinerary, more rants, or anything else that might be useful.
posted by naoko at 7:22 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]