Is it necessary to travel in a group?

As a travel blogger, I definitely mainly focus on free travel, but occasionally I choose to travel with a group. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of traveling with a group? The advantages are safety, less worries, and explanations; the disadvantages are lack of freedom, poor food, poor fun, wasteful spending, and unreasonable routes. Generally speaking, there are not many advantages and many disadvantages, but tour groups also have their necessity.

The benefits of traveling in a group are listed below:

1. Safety is relatively guaranteed.

Most of the safety of domestic tourism can be guaranteed. This mainly refers to foreign tourism, such as traveling to India, Egypt or the North Pole. In the eyes of Chinese people, it is not safe to travel to India, but Egypt is not bad. How to say it? From what I have personally seen, young men in Egypt like to gather together and chat in the open air at night. They look hard at foreign tourists passing by, which is quite scary.

When the author traveled to Egypt, most of the Egyptians I met were quite friendly. However, when I wanted to go for a walk in the local market with a few friends at night, I met a boy about ten years old who was half-grabbing and half-grabbing. He asked to dig into his companion's pocket, but the male friend sternly refused. The little boy chased him, scolded him in English, and threw stones at him. It scared us so much that we never dared to go out at night again.

2. Worry less and just play.

This seems to be an advantage, but it is also a disadvantage. There must be less to worry about, and I won’t give you a chance if you want to. The routes or scenic spots you go to are all fixed. If you follow the itinerary, you are still lucky; sometimes, travel agencies will replace the better scenic spots for various reasons. At the same time, because they don’t worry, tourists passively develop the habit of getting on the bus to sleep and getting off the bus to use the toilet. They are also confused when they arrive at the scenic spots.

3. With a dedicated tour guide, you can gain some knowledge.

Generally speaking, travel agencies will send a full tour guide to follow you to deal with some trivial matters in life. When you arrive at the tourist destination city, there will be a local tour guide. This local tour guide is responsible for telling you some local customs and habits, and sometimes also introduces some scenic spots. Of course, the introduction to scenic spots is usually only a superficial taste, but it is better than nothing.

The disadvantages of traveling in a group are as follows:

1. Lack of freedom of movement.

This may occur in both domestic and overseas travel, and the probability of it occurring in overseas travel is greater. When traveling domestically, sometimes travel agencies deliberately choose to stay in locations far away from the local commercial center. The advantage to them is that they avoid tourists making comparisons and pave the way for future shopping trips.

Overseas travel is even more amazing. When the author went to Egypt, the tour group's bus did not take the highway every day. Firstly, it saved money, and secondly, it did not take tourists to the hotel until 8 o'clock in the evening every day. The tour group has many self-funded items, such as yachting and diving, etc. Their quotation is more than twice the local quotation, but they arrive at night, so tourists have no time to sign up themselves.

2. Can’t eat special food.

This is most common in domestic tourism. I'm also surprised, how did the tour group choose restaurants that are uniform across the country and don't have any local specialties? Occasionally, I would show kindness and say that I would add a special dish to everyone, but it would usually not be much better. For people like me who regard food as the focus of travel, this is the main reason why I choose not to join a group tour if possible.

It’s not that some countries don’t have special cuisine, but that we don’t adapt to their characteristics. In fact, I am not used to the food of most countries, except for Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Vietnam. Countries like India, Egypt, and Sri Lanka all eat different types of curry. During the later stages of my trip to Sri Lanka, I always chose Chinese restaurants. Even if the restaurant’s ingredients were lacking and the chef’s cooking skills were average, I felt it was much more delicious than the local dishes.

3. The game is not in-depth.

The most fatal thing is that the game is not in-depth. You've spent money and time, but you can't play it thoroughly, so what's the point? If you don't play deeply, it's basically the same as not playing well. Why do group tours tend to have bad fun? Because it fundamentally doesn’t want you to spend time playing, it wants you to focus all your attention on shopping.

Therefore, it takes 3 hours to visit some scenic spots normally, but the time specified by the tour group is 1 and a half hours. People who join the tour group can only choose to partially transfer their own tour. The amount of time and transfer depends on the price of your tour. The more time you can spend at shopping spots, the better. Whenever a group member wants to buy something, the tour guide is willing to let the whole group wait for him.

4. It is easy to increase unnecessary consumption.

Whether they engage in irrational consumption depends on the person and the state the person is in at the time. For example, if this person wants to buy a bracelet for his family at that time, he will most likely spend it at a jewelry shopping mall; if this person is not in good health at the time, he will most likely go to a store that sells medicine or health care products.

There are also people who are very sensible and spend nothing on other places besides spending money on their favorite travel projects, such as me. What tour guides like most are group members who are keen on shopping.

Having said that, except for traveling to less safe places abroad, I will not sign up for a tour group. A tour guide visits countless people, and he can usually tell who his target group is in the first two days.

5. The route design is not the most reasonable, but the most economical and convenient.

If you make your own travel guide and compare the routes of tour groups, you will easily find this characteristic of them. Their favorite attractions are free. It would be better if they are free and well-known. Secondly, they like to go to places that are short distance away. The reason is simple. A long journey consumes gas and wastes time. If you have that time, you might as well go to a shopping spot. Of course, in order to make people willing to join the tour, the travel agency also has to design some particularly well-known attractions into the tour. This is like a small bank taking the initiative to send you rice in order to let you save money. It means the same thing.

I have not included things like being verbally threatened by unqualified tour guides among the disadvantages of group tours. I have only listed the general situations of group tours. The problem of low-priced tour groups will definitely be more serious. More and bigger, everyone should choose carefully. As long as you remember the saying that there is no free lunch in the world, you will not suffer a big loss.