How about joining a tour group?

Which is better, a group tour or a self-help tour? In fact, this question is very difficult to answer. It can be said that each has its own advantages. If it is better to travel with a group, it will make tourists who love self-help tours sneer. If it is better, it can't explain why so many tourists take part in group tours.

In fact, this question can be answered from two aspects:

First of all, please note that the package tour mentioned here refers to individual package tour, not package tour, because there are great differences between the two in terms of tourism service and quality.

First, the benefits of participating in group tours.

1, Cheap: This actually needs no explanation, because travel agencies can get a lot of advantages that tourists can't get from hotels, motorcades, restaurants and even tickets, which may be the reason why a large number of tourists choose to join group tours. In addition, because the travel agency industry is already a highly competitive industry, most of them are in a state of meager profit operation.

At the same time, participating in group tours also saves tourists a lot of spare money, such as transportation expenses between stations, docks, airports, hotels and scenic spots, as well as telephone consultation, reservation, car use, dining and other expenses.

2. Convenience: Most tourists have no experience of self-help travel. Going to a strange place for self-help travel means very complicated preparation and unpredictability, which will increase their fear of the journey, especially for the elderly, children and tourists who lack travel experience. However, it is different from a group tour. All these jobs are handed over to travel agencies, and tourists just need to be in a good mood.

At the same time, in the process of traveling, some details are also completed by travel agencies, tour guides and drivers, and it is very convenient for tourists to implement them one by one.

3. Time saving: Self-help tours need a lot of time to prepare for the preliminary work, such as checking scenic spots, transportation, accommodation, booking tickets, making appointments, consulting, etc. And group travel doesn't need so much preliminary work.

In the process of traveling, the travel agency arranges the itinerary in a unified way, and generally has a relatively clear tour time, so it also saves a lot of time in the process of traveling. Visitors only need to concentrate on experiencing local folk customs and tourist attractions.

4. Safety: Self-help travel is prone to safety problems due to too many uncertain factors, and it will also accumulate many contradictions with various service units, and even quarrel and fight, laying hidden dangers. (For example, Chongqing tourists were killed in Ya 'an on May 1st this year. )

Compared with tourists traveling by themselves, it is an indisputable fact that participating in group tours can not completely avoid security problems, but can effectively reduce security risks. To take a step back, if there is a safety problem, you can also get compensation through travel accident insurance and travel agency liability insurance. At the same time, safety problems are relatively easy to be properly handled, while self-help travel is relatively difficult, and sometimes you can't even find the responsible person. For example, in the process of joining a group, tourists who are sick or injured often get careful care and timely treatment from travel agencies or tour guides, while self-help tours are sometimes hard to say, and it often takes luck to meet good people.

5. Tour guides: Tour guides can be said to play a soul role in some tourist routes. Traveling without a guide is unthinkable. Although many people are not satisfied with tour guides, I believe that most tour guides are recognized by tourists. Tour guides not only bring tourists the knowledge, history and culture of scenic spots in a short period of time, but also bring happiness, care, warmth and good luck to tourists, and even some tourists fall in love with tour guides, which cannot be brought to tourists by self-help tour.

Second, the disadvantages of group tours

1, passive: Because tour groups need to follow the unified route formulated by travel agencies and tourists need to follow the unified itinerary, tourists are passive in grasping the time and scenic spots, and it is difficult to exert their subjectivity.

Solution: In addition to self-help tours, tourists can try to choose the route that best suits their needs, and can discuss with travel agencies to choose some scenic spots or adopt a more flexible method in time, or choose a semi-self-help tour route, but this is not always applicable.

2. Unequal treatment: divided into two aspects:

A. Unequal prices: After getting on the bus, tourists often find that their prices are different from others', some are high and some are low, which is unacceptable to most tourists and they feel cheated.

In addition to the normal price difference caused by different levels of participation, there is indeed a price difference, which should be said to be a relatively common problem. There are several main reasons: first, the tourists in the same car come from different travel agencies, and there is no uniform price for travel agencies to accept tourists' registration; The second is the price difference caused by the different registration time of tourists. Generally speaking, the earlier you register, the lower the price, but there are exceptions. Because travel agencies are influenced by many factors, some of them are difficult to grasp, and it is also possible that tourists who sign up later enjoy preferential prices because of temporary price adjustment. Third, the more tourists who sign up together at the time of registration, the more discounts they may get. Fourth, it is related to the bargaining power of some tourists. Another reason is that, in order to reduce losses, travel agencies have to reduce prices or buy tourists from other travel agencies at low prices. The price difference does not exist for a certain part of tourists, because the price difference of a single package cannot be completely eliminated. The only way is to minimize the price difference. Maybe your price is higher than others this time and lower than others next time.

Solution: try to bargain, sign up as soon as possible, and gather as many people as possible to join the group.

B. unequal treatment: due to the large number of individual groups, most of them don't know each other. Every tourist's background, experience, personality, hobbies and temperament are different, and they often suffer or think they will be treated unfairly, such as the front and back seats, the attitude of the tour guide and the way of speaking.

Solution: First of all, we must admit that a tour guide is inevitably thoughtless in the face of many tourists, and should be considerate and have a peaceful mood. I believe that most tour guides have a minimum professional ethics, and they will treat tourists equally. At the same time, they should communicate more with tour guides to gain mutual understanding.

3, deceived: Many tourists are always worried about whether they will be deceived when they join the group. What if they are cheated?

It is undeniable that tourists are cheated from time to time because of participating in the group. However, with the strengthening of the management of the tourism industry, there are fewer and fewer cases of being cheated (in this case, the big ones are cheated), and there are few illegal travel agencies or "black clubs", although they cannot be completely eliminated. If it is only aimed at some minor "cheated", such as quality problems and price problems, it can't be described as "cheated", it should be another kind of problem. Solution: The simplest and most effective way is to check the business license and travel permit and ask the local tourism bureau about the legality of the travel agency. If you join a tour group, you must sign a travel contract with the official seal of the company supervised by the Tourism Bureau and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, and ask for legal tickets for regular travel agencies. If you have any problems, you can complain to the local tourism bureau and it will be properly handled.

4. Round-the-trip tour: Participating in individual package tours will inevitably lead to the problem of mutual round-the-trip between travel agencies, which makes many tourists feel uncomfortable.

Reason: Quite simply, unity is strength. It is difficult for a travel agency to support the task of organizing tours alone, especially in some major tourist provinces, where there are many and rich tourist routes. However, it is impossible for a travel agency to organize tours completely independently because of the current situation recognized by China travel agencies: scattered, weak and small. It is also impossible for tourists to find a travel agency that can send tours separately, so they need to transfer tours between travel agencies. In fact, it is also beneficial to tourists in turn. It is precisely because of the alliance between travel agencies that the cost of tourism has been effectively controlled. Otherwise, it is conceivable that each travel agency will send tours independently, and the result will definitely be that the number of tours is not enough, either temporarily canceling or increasing the tour fee, so that the tour price will rise. Solution: ask the travel agency one by one whether to contract out the price tour separately; The travel agency is required to indicate the contents of the tour transfer, and the travel responsibility shall be borne by the travel agency that signed the contract.

5. Guide:

If you meet a good tour guide in the group tour, the tour process will be icing on the cake, which is a pleasure; On the contrary, the fun of traveling will be discounted. And many complaints are also caused by tour guides.

Solution: Choose a better travel agency, record the advantages and disadvantages of the tour guide and report to the travel agency or relevant departments, so that the tour guide can get due rewards and punishments, thus forming a good atmosphere in the tour guide.

6. Shopping:

In fact, shopping itself is not a bad thing, but what we are talking about here is not shopping in the general sense, but shopping in the process of traveling.

Among the six elements of tourism, shopping accounts for one of them, which means that tourism shopping itself is a very normal thing and understandable. However, in the process of tourism in recent years, tourism shopping has become the biggest "heart disease" for tourists and tour operators. There is a contradiction, that is, the contradiction between price and shopping.

On the one hand, in order to gain an advantage in the competition, travel agencies try their best to reduce costs to attract tourists. However, when the price can't come down, other methods will be used to make up for it, for example, shopping, and a part of the commission will be made up for the profit or even the cost, but when the commission is disproportionate, it is not shopping in the general sense. On the other hand, many tourists try their best to reduce the travel price, but if the price is too low, it will inevitably increase shopping during the trip. Therefore, it takes up travel time.

For tourists, this is also a contradiction. On the one hand, it reduces the travel expenses, on the other hand, shopping in the travel itinerary affects the time. No wonder some tourists say it's time for money.

For travel agencies, this is also a contradiction. On the one hand, they want to improve the quality of tourism and make tourists have fun. On the other hand, they don't know how to choose in the face of lost customers.

Solution: spend more money to choose a pure sightseeing group or a pure play group; If you join an ordinary group, you only look at the dissatisfied goods and don't buy them. Even if you are satisfied with the goods, you should compare the prices before buying. In addition, you can choose some newly developed routes, because the development time is relatively short, the tourism products have not kept up, and the tourism shopping function is not fully available.

Through the above analysis, you may have a general understanding of whether to travel with a group or on your own. In fact, no matter which one you choose, it is correct, and you don't have to do it because of others. As long as it suits you, it is the best choice. It is impossible for a person to travel only once in his life. Every experience can bring you good memories and make you know more about the world we live in. That's the most important thing.