DIY Travel vs. Group Tours: Pros and Cons Compared
DIY Travel vs. Group Tours: Pros and Cons. With DIY travel, you can freely see many sights group tours miss, avoid unwanted shopping stops with overpriced goods, and save both time and money. With DIY travel, many have agonized over which hotel is the best deal. Not sleeping in a comfortable...
This article is compiled from the original travel notes on the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com); it is a record of trips from earlier years. Time-sensitive information such as ticket prices, schedules, and accommodation prices is subject to the latest announcements from scenic areas and transportation authorities; the itinerary ideas and attraction introductions still have reference value.
Comparison of the pros and cons of independent travel versus joining a tour group
With independent travel, you can freely see many beautiful sights that tour groups cannot show you, you don't have to go to places you don't want to visit to buy tourism products at prices much higher than outside, and you save a great deal of both time and money.
With independent travel, I believe quite a few people have worried over which hotel is the most cost-effective to stay in. Not sleeping in a comfortable, clean environment makes travel feel like suffering, but at the same time you want to save as much as possible on accommodation, which takes up most of your travel expenses. There is an approach that may help you be both comfortable and clever with your calculations.
Calculation 1: Online prices are cheaper than rack rates
The rack rate of most hotels is about 30% more expensive than the online booking price, so for budget-conscious independent travel, booking at the rack rate is not advisable. If you can compare three places online in advance and then book, you can still save quite a bit of money.
If you must book a hotel locally, you should also bargain. Judging from accommodation prices in some cities, most can be negotiated down, generally to 60%-80% of the listed price. Therefore, after arriving at your travel destination, you must not rush to check in without asking about the price; you should first discuss the price, see whether there is room to bargain, and then go through the check-in procedures. If time permits, you can also visit several places to compare. From the perspective of safety and food and accommodation hygiene, it is better to choose higher-grade hotels, inns, and guesthouses for accommodation, and you must not, just to save money, stay in individual inns with poor environments.
Calculation 2: Use the time gap
If you don't want to spend too much money but still want a good trip, then you should be good at using time gaps during travel to save expenses.
First, try your best to avoid the peak season and travel in the off-season. Generally speaking, scenic spots have off-seasons and peak seasons. Traveling in the off-season not only makes transportation easier, but because there are fewer tourists, some hotels offer discounts on accommodation, sometimes even more than 50% off. As for meals, restaurants will also offer different discounts according to the actual situation in the off-season. Therefore, choosing to travel in the off-season costs much less than in the peak season.
When traveling, carefully plan the places you want to visit and the time needed, try to fill your dates, and arrange your route well. If you arrive in the morning, don't immediately look for accommodation, because at that time many rooms may not yet have been checked out of. Also, carrying your bag makes it hard to bargain. You can first store your bag at the train station, go sightseeing first, and while sightseeing keep an eye out for suitable hotels, then look at rooms and bargain at dusk. And at that time, if no one has taken the room yet, you can stay at a lower price.
The drawbacks of joining a tour group
1. Passivity: Because joining a tour group requires following the unified route set by the travel agency, tourists must comply with a unified itinerary, and tourists have relatively little control over time and scenic spots, making it hard to exercise initiative.
Solution: Besides choosing independent travel, tourists can also try to choose the route that best suits their needs, and can discuss with the travel agency whether to include or exclude certain scenic spots or adopt a more flexible approach to timing, or choose a semi-independent travel route, but this does not always apply.
2. Unequal treatment: There are two aspects:
A. Price inequality: After getting on the bus, tourists often find that their own price differs from others', some higher and some lower. Most tourists cannot accept this and feel they have been cheated.
Apart from the normal price differences caused by different tour group grades, different prices do indeed exist, and this should be said to be a fairly common problem. There are mainly several reasons: First, tourists on the same bus come from different travel agencies, and each agency does not charge a uniform price when accepting tourists' registrations. Second, price differences arise from different registration times; generally speaking, the earlier you register, the lower the price, but there are exceptions, because a travel agency's overall pricing is affected by many factors, some of which are hard to grasp, and it is also possible that tourists who register later enjoy a discounted price due to a temporary price adjustment. Third, the more tourists who register together at the same time, the more discounts they may receive. Fourth, it is also related to some tourists' bargaining ability. Another reason is that the agency organizing the tour, having not recruited enough people, has to lower the price or acquire tourists from other agencies at a low price in order to reduce losses. The existence of price differences is not aimed at any particular group of tourists, because price differences in group tours for individual travelers cannot be completely eliminated. The only way is to minimize the price differences as much as possible. Perhaps this time your price is a little higher than others', and next time it will be a little lower.
Solution: Try your best to bargain, register as early as possible, and try to gather more people to join the tour together.
B. Unequal treatment: Because group tours for individual travelers generally have many people, most of whom do not know one another, and each tourist's background, experience, personality, hobbies, and temperament differ, they often receive, or believe they receive, unequal treatment, such as front and back seats, the guide's attitude, manner of speaking, and so on.
Solution: First, acknowledge that a guide facing many tourists will inevitably have shortcomings, be more understanding, keep a calm mood, and believe that for most guides, they have at least a basic professional ethic and will treat tourists equally. At the same time, when there are problems, communicate more with the guide so as to reach mutual understanding.
3. Being cheated: Many tourists always worry when joining a tour group whether they will be cheated, and if they are cheated, what should they do?
It cannot be denied that cases of tourists being cheated after joining tour groups have indeed occurred, but with the strengthening of tourism industry management, such cases of being cheated due to joining a tour group (here referring to major cheating) are becoming fewer and fewer. Although illegal travel agencies or "black agencies" cannot be completely eliminated, they are already very few. If it is only a matter of some minor "cheating," such as quality issues or price issues, then it actually cannot be described as "being cheated"; this should be a matter of another category. Solution: The simplest and most effective method is to check the business license and travel permit, and inquire with the local tourism bureau about the legality of the travel agency. If joining a tour group, you must sign a travel contract supervised by the tourism bureau and the industry and commerce bureau and bearing the company seal, and ask for a formal travel agency invoice. If there really is a problem, you can complain to the tourism bureaus in various places, and it will certainly be handled properly.
4. Transfer between groups: Joining a group tour for individual travelers inevitably involves the problem of travel agencies transferring tourists to one another, which makes many tourists feel unhappy.
Reason: It is very simple--unity is strength. A single travel agency finds it very hard to shoulder the task of forming a tour group on its own, especially in major tourism provinces like Hunan and Guangxi, where there are so many and such rich tourist routes. Add to that the widely recognized current situation of Chinese travel agencies: scattered, weak, and small. A single travel agency simply cannot form tours completely independently. And tourists cannot go from one agency to another looking for one that can form a tour independently, so transfers between travel agencies become necessary. In fact, this is also beneficial to tourists in turn. It is precisely because of the alliances between travel agencies that travel costs can be effectively controlled. Otherwise, one can imagine that if every travel agency formed tours independently, the result would definitely be insufficient numbers for group departure, either temporary cancellation or increased group departure costs, causing travel prices to rise.
Solution: Ask travel agencies one by one whether they form tours independently; require the travel agency to indicate the content of the transfer, and stipulate that tourism responsibility is fully borne by the travel agency that signed the contract.
5. Guides:
If you encounter a good guide while joining a tour group, the travel process will be even better and become a kind of enjoyment; conversely, the enjoyment of the trip will be diminished. Moreover, many complaints also arise because of guides.
Solution: Choose a relatively good travel agency and record the guide's strengths and weaknesses to report to the travel agency or relevant departments, so that the guide receives the rewards or punishments they deserve, in the hope of forming a good atmosphere among guides.
6. Shopping:
Actually, shopping itself is not a bad thing. It's just that the shopping we're talking about here is not shopping in the general sense, but specifically tourism shopping during a trip.
Among the six major elements of tourism, shopping is one of them. In other words, tourism shopping itself is a normal thing and beyond reproach. However, in recent years of travel, tourism shopping has become the biggest "worry" for both tourists and tour operators. There is a contradiction here, namely the contradiction between price and shopping.
On the one hand, in order to gain an advantage in competition, travel agencies try every means to reduce costs so as to attract tourists. But when the price has dropped as low as it can and there is no way to lower it further, other methods must be used to make up for it, such as shopping, obtaining a portion of commission through shopping to compensate for profits or even costs. But when the commission becomes disproportionately large, it is no longer shopping in the general sense. On the other hand, many tourists try every means to lower the travel price, but if the price is too low, shopping during the itinerary will inevitably increase, thus taking up travel time.
For tourists, this is also a contradiction. On the one hand, the travel fee is reduced; on the other hand, shopping during the itinerary affects their time. No wonder some tourists say this is trading time for money.
For travel agencies, this is also a contradiction. On the one hand, they want to improve travel quality and let tourists enjoy themselves; on the other hand, they face losing their customer base, and don't know how to choose.
Solutions: Spend more money to choose a pure sightseeing tour or a pure-play tour; if you join an ordinary tour, for goods you are not satisfied with, just look and don't buy; even for goods you are satisfied with, compare prices more before buying. In addition, you can choose more newly developed routes. Because these routes have been developed for a relatively short time, tourism commodities have not yet caught up, so they do not yet have the function of tourism shopping, such as Fenghuang Ancient Town (basically no shopping), Wangcun Mengdong River (few shopping spots), etc.
Through the above analysis, you may have gained a general understanding of whether to join a tour group or travel independently. In fact, whichever you choose is correct. You don't need to do something just because others do it. As long as it suits you, it is the best choice. A person's life cannot have only one travel experience, and if every experience can bring you beautiful memories and help you better understand the world we live in, that is what matters most.