Tips for finding great deals on European group tours

A good tour guide gives you a richer understanding of what you're visiting. Photo: Kennisland

For years EuroCheapo has extolled the benefits of booking every aspect of your trip yourself — the flights, the hotels, the transportation, the meals and the activities. Aside from giving you more independence, it can often be cheaper to arrange everything on your own.

But hold on: Is it always cheaper? And is a trip always better when you book every aspect of it yourself?

It might surprise independent-minded travelers to learn that sometimes, in fact, you can find quite a deal by hooking up with a European tour group or travel package. How is it cheaper? Tour operators who run the group tours are able to negotiate special deals with hotels, guides, coach companies and restaurants that aren’t available to independent travelers — and, in turn, they’re able to offer an entire tour package cheaper than you could book it yourself.

And aside from the cost, organized group travel is, well, organized. A guide is in charge and traveling with you. He or she can crack a whip, which can result in a fuller travel experience. You might, after all, be the kind of traveler who needs to be told to meet downstairs at 8 am… sharp.

In the best cases, your guide will also be a wonderful source of insight, educating you about the places you’re visiting, introducing you to new experiences and inspiring you in ways that you might have missed out on if managing everything on your own. A great guide can make a great trip.

Okay, so you’re sold on the potential benefits of group travel. Now, how can you find a good deal? Or at least avoid a clunker?

Our research

We’ve spent a lot of time over the past month researching many of the most popular tour operators and their group tour offerings. We’ll soon be launching a comprehensive list of the top value group tours on the market. But first, we thought we’d compile some of the advice we’ve gleaned while analyzing all of these tours.

Most of the tours that we’ve analyzed are offered by major tour operators, including Contiki, Cosmos, Discovery Nomads, Europamundo, Exodus Travels, Expat Explore Tours, Flag Travel Holidays, Globus, Intrepid Travels, Trafalgar, and many more.

These tour packages are being offered through our tour partner, Tourradar, which is a booking site for group tours. We’ve used the most current pricing information offered in order to judge the relative value of the tour.

Traveling with a group tour by coach in Europe. Photo: Glen Wallace

Travel packages vs group tours

First of all, if you’re new to this, the terminology might be confusing and should be cleared up. “Travel packages” are deals put together by travel agencies and bookings sites that package together the big-ticket items from your trip. This usually means selling you flights and hotels together, along with perhaps a rental car and sightseeing tickets. When booked together, you can certainly find substantial savings over booking everything separately.

A group tour is a different beast altogether — it involves joining a group that travels together (usually by bus or coach) throughout Europe. The group stays in the same hotel, eats at least some meals together, and takes part in sightseeing activities together. These tours are usually led by one or two guides, although other guides may join you at stops along the way (for example, a walking tour in a particular city or museum).

For this article, we’ll be exploring ways to save on group tours in Europe. Although for excellent deals on travel packages, we can recommend checking out another one of our partners, Great Value Vacations. (That have some shockingly good prices for bundled travel.)

Types of European group tours

When shopping for group tours in Europe, you’ll find a wide range of types of tours. These include:

• Multi-country “grand tours” of Europe (i.e. “Best of Europe in 24 days”)
• Tours that focus on one country or city (i.e. “Best of France in 8 days”)
• Tours focused on one kind of traveler: Youth, retirees, cultural travelers, etc.
• Specialty tours: Culinary tours, wine tours, bicycle tours, boat tours/river cruises, etc.

There are hundreds of tour operators and thousands of travel agencies who will book them for you.

For this article, we’ll be focusing on the most common of these tours: The multi-country and single-country tours.

How much will you spend on a typical European group tour?

A little bit of searching will show you that it’s easy to find tours for every budget, from budget-friendly to deluxe. The cost of the tour is usually linked to a number of key factors that we’ll address in greater detail below. These include:

• Tour itinerary
• Size of the group
• Hotel locations
• Hotel quality
• Meals
• Included activities
• Extra perks and “overall quality”

Some tours will include the cost of flying to the city of the tour’s departure. (We haven’t factored this in, as it’s usually an additional expense.)

And then there’s one more biggie: Timing. Off-season tours will almost always be cheaper than summertime, and if you’re flexible and open to last-minute offers, you could score big. When a tour group has a lot of extra spaces, the tour operator often cuts the cost of the tour — sometimes dramatically — in order to fill those seats.

Thus, prices vary widely depending on all of these factors. One thing we look at in analyzing the tours is the per-day cost. Most of the tours we’ve selected as Editor’s Picks have daily rates in the $100-$200 range.

Note, however, that price is not always an indicator of quality: You can have a lackluster experience on an expensive tour and a fabulous time on a budget tour. That’s why you’re doing your homework!

Tips for finding the best deal on European group travel

We’ve spent the last few weeks here at EuroCheapo researching the best deals on European group travel in order to put together a comprehensive list of the best group travel deals. One thing that’s become abundantly clear is that, as with hotels, finding the best value tour is much more difficult than simply finding the cheapest.

If you want to book the cheapest tour out there, well… search for tours and choose the cheapest! However, you’ll probably wind up with a tour crammed with more than 50 other participants, sleeping out in the suburbs, eating sub-par food, and paying extra fees for sightseeing. Not a good choice.

So how can you sift through the offers and find the best possible group travel experience for your budget? Here are some things to look out for when shopping around:

1. Be wary of “Best of Europe” tours that over promise.

A 10-day “Best of Europe” tour that whisks you from London to Rome via Paris, Nice, Florence, Venice — and 10 other cities — is going to leave you with whiplash, a blur of memories, and aches from sitting so much on your tour bus as you sped from city to city.

Most of the “Best of” tours are marketed to first-time tourists to Europe who want to cram everything in and are looking for a rock bottom price. These travelers are probably not as familiar with the cities they’ll be visiting, so they probably won’t notice when booking that the hotels included are outside of the city center, and the meals are typical tourist fare.

Our advice: Stay away if anyone expects you to see Rome in a day.

2. Itineraries affect cost.

A quick note that’s obvious, but sometimes overlooked: Certain destinations cost much more than others. All else being equal, a one-week tour through the Czech Republic should cost quite a bit less than a one-week tour through Switzerland.

Our advice: Want more bang for your buck in Europe? Choose tours that stick to more budget-friendly destinations, like Eastern and Central Europe, and Portugal. When opting for France, Italy, Spain and the UK, rural or smaller destinations can be much cheaper than the big cities.

3. Group size is key.

Think about it: A group of 16 travelers can fit into a local restaurant. They can be divided into three or four tables and it really won’t be a big deal. They can be led around a museum, they can walk through the streets without creating a traffic jam or pushing locals off the sidewalk.

A group of 50, on the other hand, is another beast. Granted, sometimes 50+ person groups will get divided up into smaller groups for sightseeing purposes, but don’t count on that happening, especially if you’re booking a budget tour.

And that’s just eating and sightseeing. Logistics are speedier with a small group — checking 16 people into a hotel (in eight rooms) moves much faster than checking in 50 (in 25 rooms). Ditto for taking headcounts when out and about.

But probably the biggest advantage is on the coach (or “bus”). Smaller groups require smaller buses, which allows for more freedom to explore small, curving European streets that large coaches simply couldn’t drive on. Smaller groups also usually result in more free spaces on a bus, which makes things much more comfortable for everyone.

Of course, larger groups usually mean cheaper tours and vice versa. But not always! So do your homework and factor in the group size when choosing between tour options.

Our advice: Smaller is always better when it comes to group size.

4. Know where you’re sleeping.

Regular readers know that we’re obsessed with European hotels, especially those with great rates and super central locations. When shopping for a tour to join, we insist on getting as much information as possible about where exactly we’ll be sleeping at night. However, it can be surprisingly difficult to get this information out of tour operators!

Why? Because accommodation is probably the tour operator’s biggest expense when organizing the tour. A cheaper hotel is going to allow them to offer the tour at a lower rate, which will probably attract more interest from customers.

And a really cheap hotel (located way off in the outskirts near a freeway) will allow them to offer the tour at a much lower rate. See where I’m going here?

As we researched hundreds of tour packages, we realized that most — although not all — of the cheapest group tours lodged their travelers in far-from-central hotels. These might lower the price of the tour, but it means that you’re basically stranded in the hotel and at the mercy of your tour organizer. (Want a night off to run around Venice? You’re out of luck — because you can only return to that hotel in Maestre by bus.)

Fortunately, many tour agencies will show you where their groups sleep. Look up those hotels, double check their locations, and read some reviews. If you have a free afternoon or want to take the evening off, can you imagine yourself being able to easily get around?

And if they don’t offer any hotel information before you book? That’s not a good sign. If they were proud of where they were putting you, they’d tell you!

Our advice: The more central your hotels, the better.

5. Double-check that hotel rating.

Aside from the hotel’s location, what hotel category will your group be frequenting? Will you be staying in two-star budget hotels? Three-star comfort hotels? Four-star upscale hotels? Or on the other end… youth hostels?

Along with a hotel’s location, a hotel’s classification has a huge impact on the price of the tour. However, be aware that hotel star ratings change from one country to the next, and can be easily manipulated. Furthermore, a four-star hotel next to the highway may be much less desirable than a three-star hotel in the center of Florence. It’s all relative.

Some of the low-cost tours that we researched only use hostels for accommodation, which is an effective way of lowering costs. However, hostels are clearly not for everyone, and some even require single travelers to sleep in a room with another member of the tour. That just isn’t going to work for everyone.

Our advice: Know exactly where you’ll be sleeping.

6. What’s for dinner?

On the subject of meals, one thing is almost entire certain: Breakfast is nearly always included in any group tour. It’ll be served at your hotel. You might grow tired of it (croissants again?!?), but at least it’s reliable.

Lunch and dinner are another story. You might think that the more meals that are included, the better. But hold on — just because lunch or dinner is included doesn’t make it desirable. Let me explain…

Having all of your meals covered can be a good thing if you have a small group, and if your group makes it clear that you’ll be eating in great local restaurants. What you want to avoid is a group tour that feeds your enormous group at low-quality “tourist grade” restaurants, often at off-peak hours.

Case in point: My first trip to Europe was as a high school student, traveling with a large academic tour company. Our group was more than 50 students and adult chaperones, and we most definitely slept on the outskirts of most of the cities we visited. We also ate rather uninspired meals in restaurants often hours before the locals ate in the same spots.

Granted, they usually use the “they’re American” excuse to feed you much earlier, and, to top it off, we were a group of students. But the same thing happens with large groups of adults. Given the choice, I’d rather venture off to find dinner on my own than be forced into a lackluster meal every night with a huge group.

Some group tours only include a handful of lunches and dinners — which at first might seem underwhelming, until you note that they’re all “special” meals, perhaps a lunch on a boat or dinner at a castle. And meanwhile, some group tours don’t include any lunches or dinners — in which case, the price of the tour should reflect this.

So take note of which meals are included, and pay special attention to where those meals are located. Do they name restaurants? Do they seem special? Or will you be eating second-rate pasta with a group of 50?

Our advice: More meals isn’t necessarily a great thing. Research where you’ll be eating.

7. Which activities are included?

Most tour operators will make it clear to you which activities and sights are included on the tour — it’s part of their sales pitch. (“Get ready to spend an unforgettable afternoon at St. Peter’s Basilica!”) However, they probably won’t be promoting what isn’t included until you get there. (For example, you’ll need to pay extra for a guided visit of the Vatican Museum, which is located next door to St. Peter’s.)

On the flip side, many tour companies pride themselves in how much sightseeing they do include. So read the trip details closely and try your best to read between the lines. It can be helpful here to read the reviews left by previous tour participants. Are there several complaints about extra charges?

The most common extra sightseeing charges are city walking tours, museum tours, wine tastings, boat tours, and extra day trips. And then, of course, there are restaurant outings, and add-on entertainment options (think “an evening at the Moulin Rouge”).

These extra activities will be optional, and will hardly ever be so unique that you couldn’t still do them on your own. Do you need to pay the extra fee to take the private tour of the Vatican Museum? You might spend less (and have a better time!) by going to the museum on your own.

Our advice: Know what’s covered before you get there, and then choose your “extras” wisely.

8. Other quality factors

The factors that I’ve listed above are all things we take into account when trying to determine the value of a group tour. They’re the major factors — the lodging, food, and sightseeing. But there are other considerations that are a bit harder to quantify. These revolve around the “quality” of the travel experience. These include:

Quality of transportation

Most likely, most of your tour’s transportation will be handled by coach (or “tour bus” for American readers). Some are more comfortable than others — with more spacious seating, better facilities, better air conditioning, etc. You’ll be spending a lot of time on board your bus, so it’s not a trivial concern.

The guide

How’s your tour guide? Is she or he a student just getting started or a professor or an expert in the region you’ll be visiting? How much experience do they have leading this tour? How much access do you have to the guide (the smaller the group, the greater the access)? As I mentioned above, a great guide can make a trip truly extraordinary.

Unfortunately, most tour companies don’t publish specific information about their guides. For this, you’ll need to dig into the user reviews (which can also be tricky, as some tour operators pressure their participants into writing reviews while still on the tour). And speaking of reviews…

Number of reviews and most recent

Just because a tour receives a 5-star rating doesn’t mean you should drop everything and book it right away. Take a moment to see how many reviews there are for that tour. A tour with 250 4-star reviews is almost certainly more reliable than a four-star tour with only 3 reviews. Our rating system gives more weight to tours with several reviews — especially if they number in the hundreds.

We also like glancing at the most recent reviews which probably carry a bit more weight than reviews from two or three years ago. The more recent comments might directly apply to the guide you might get or the hotels you will stay at if you are traveling on the same tour a few months after the review was left.

Quality of sightseeing

As with group meals, all sightseeing is not created equal. Imagine that two Paris tours both include a “Latin Quarter tour”. One of them is conducted by your guide reading a prepared overview into a mic while you sit with 50 others on your bus. The other tour is a walking tour for a group of 10 of you, conducted by an expat who’s been living in Paris for 20 years. These are dramatically different experiences.

In our research, we tend to account for this by awarding extra points for exceptional quality. When conducting your own research, I’d recommend doing the same.

Final thoughts

Reserving a space on a group tour can offer a fabulous and affordable way to see Europe. Sometimes it’s just easier to let someone else do the driving and planning. You have more time for reading up on the history or capturing the perfect moment on film before trying to figure out how to get to the bus station at 11 pm. You can budget your trip a little easier too — you’ll know exactly how much you’re spending on the tour, then you can set aside money for meals, experience, and souvenirs that aren’t covered by the cost.

Are group tours for everyone? Certainly not. However, some of our favorite travel moments we’ve experienced since we started EuroCheapo in 2001 have come in group settings. With the right guide and group of people, you may just come away with a new set of friends with plans to come back the next year!

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Are you ready to take off on your next European adventure? Start searching through our favorite group tours in Europe to find the best deals.