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How it Works - Planning Your Tour

We learn about your interests, travel style and other needs.
We begin the process of designing your customized itinerary by gathering information from you about your interests, travel style and other needs. We collect this information by asking you to complete a brief online questionnaire. The types of questions we'll ask you include:

  • How much time do you have?
  • What are you looking for from your tour?
  • What destinations do you want to visit? It's okay if you're not sure!
  • In what types of activities does your group like to participate?
  • Are their any hobbies or interests that you'd like us to consider when designing your trip?
  • How much time can your group handle spending in the vehicle at one time?
  • What types of accommodations do you prefer?
  • Is there an accommodation budget within which we need to work?

The questionnaire usually takes between 10 and 20 minutes to complete, but can take a bit longer if the interests and needs of your group are diverse (as is sometimes the case when several couples get together for a joint trip).

We use your input to create a draft itinerary.
Once we receive your tour-design questionnaire, we review it carefully and contact you for any clarifications or elaborations we might need to best design your itinerary. Once we're comfortable that we know enough about you and your group, we put together a draft itinerary, including our best recommendations on destinations, attractions and activities. The draft itinerary is a day-by-day description of the trip we believe will best bring your vision to life. It includes:

  • a map of your route
  • highlight destinations and notes about each
  • recommended attractions and activities for each destination along with alternatives, where applicable
  • travel times and distances

Along with your itinerary, we will include notes indicating the rationale behind decisions that we made in coming up with the proposed plan, along with alternatives where applicable.

Depending on the time of year, it generally takes from three days to a week for us to complete your draft itinerary.

You review the draft itinerary and provide feedback.
Your draft itinerary represents our best effort to marry our local expertise with your tour vision, as expressed in your tour-design questionnaire. It is by no means meant to be a final say on what your ultimate tour will look like, and is completely open to change.

When we send you your itinerary, we ask you to review it with your group, and provide your feedback. Among the questions we ask you to consider are:

  • What parts of the itinerary do you like?
  • What parts would you like to change?
  • Would you like to spend more time in certain places or less time in others?
  • Do the travel times and distances look good for you?
  • Is the itinerary too busy, too slow or just right?
  • Are the activities and attractions we've recommended the right ones, or do some of the alternatives look better?

In addition to these questions, there may be other questions that are specific to your tour that we'll ask in the notes that accompany the itinerary.

Once you've had a chance to review your itinerary and notes, you can simply provide your feedback via email, or we can schedule a time to discuss your feedback via telephone, Skype or instant messaging program.

We revise and refine until you're thrilled with your tour.
Using your feedback as our guide, we revise the original itinerary and resend it to you for additional feedback or approval. We do this as many times as necessary to complete an itinerary that best matches the dream vision you have for your trip; no itinerary is final until it meets with your enthusiastic approval. The final product will include a complete description of your daily schedule, a set of specific activities and attractions for which we'll need to make reservations, and a set of recommended optional activities and attractions from which to choose during the course of your tour.

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