When searching for value in travel, everyone comes in contact with the package travel vacations. Before you recoil in horror, let's face it, if you are going to a place for the first time and want to do this safely and within a budget, packaged holidays often can't be beat. They will provide you with airfare, hotel, often with a choice of several grades, from economy to luxury and travel from the airport. Keep in mind that the hotels often offer 2 meals with this kind of booking and the package usually includes a sightseeing bus or vouchers for sightseeing. Often the vacation package includes other helpful discounts, such as museum passes. The vacation package may not be your style, but unless you have the time to really research your destination, this type of tour may provide the ultimate in sightseeing at a good price and safe and comfortable conditions.
However there is a type of vacation travel value that is growing in popularity. It is a sort of organized tour for the independent traveler. Several companies has sprung up that offer a type of unguided but planned holiday that offers perhaps not the cheapest price but undeniably great value for your holiday dollar.
The prototype of this kind of company is an American based purveyor started 35 years ago called Idyll Untours. Untour is aimed at the independent traveler who doesn't want to do everything him or herself. Untour offers a many destinations throughout the world and a choice of apartments therein. They book the apartment for your and sort the traveler out with maps, information on the area and a travel car or car rental, both obtained at group rates not offered to the independent traveler. These savings are passed on to the client, as well as the name of a contact person at the destination in case something goes wrong. This person is also a helpful source of information and will coordinate activities with other people traveling independently through this company. Idyll sends brochures with information on the history of the region, entertainment, things to do and general information, everything you want from a tour. However the difference is that once the information is given, Idyll bows out and allows the traveler to experience travel on his own and at the desired pace. The traveler has the full knowledge that, should a problem arise, there is support and help available.
This type of organized tour, but not a tour, is to my mind the ultimate travel value. The nuts and bolts of travel have been solved, and the traveler is left to discover the destination at his own pace and in his own way.
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