Self-Guided Versus Guided Tours on Vacation

Should You Pay for a Tour or Explore Solo on Your Vacation?

One of the best parts of creating your own vacation itinerary is enjoying the freedom to create an adventure that’s exactly how you want it.

Do you love breakfast in bed? Are you a fan of strolling around new places? Do you seek out harrowing adventures every time you travel?

You can arrange your vacation to suit your every interest, whether you want a hotel with room service or a city with lots of streets with cozy sidewalk cafes and hidden nooks.

One option you have is to pay for a guided tour where you might experience something with a group, or you might enjoy the personal attention of a private tour guide.

What type of experiences are best with a guide? Should you always set up a tour when you’re traveling somewhere new on your vacation itinerary? Or perhaps, would a hybrid schedule suit you better, with some personal exploration and a few tours thrown into the mix.

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

Go On a Google Street Map Exploration Of Your Destination

One of the determining factors in whether to book a tour guide or go on a solo day of exploration is the ease with which you can get around town.

When I went to Iceland, I booked a few tours, but I didn’t book a guided tour of Reykjavik, deciding that we could enjoy a stroll around the city’s different points of interest without assistance.

However, when I went to Cartagena, I decided to book a local tour guide, so we would have a guide through the labyrinth of the old town section and some of the historical areas.

Sometimes, it’s not necessarily the amount of history you might experience with the help of a tour guide, but how easy or difficult it is to get around town.

I booked tours for every city we visited in Colombia, but I also arranged to walk to a few places (usually restaurants) on our own.

Meanwhile, in Iceland, we only went on a few tours when it was impractical to go it alone on our road trip. There’s no way I would have been able to get to the top of a glacier in Iceland, so I booked a tour!

Taking a look at the actual physical environment where you’re staying can tell you a lot about whether a tour guide would be helpful or not, particularly when the city isn’t very walkable, and a tour bus would offer significant assistance getting you to different points of interest.

Tour Guides Help You Enjoy the Scenery, Culture, & History

One of the reasons I gravitate toward booking tours is that I find it much easier to look around and enjoy all the sights when I don’t have my head buried in a map.

When I’m staring at my phone, trying to figure out which street to turn on to get somewhere, I’m mostly paying attention to street signs a phone screen, rather than all the cool sights around me.

With a tour guide, you don’t have to concern yourself with directions. That’s the job of the tour guide, who can lead you along and tell you about everything as you walk.

Sure, it’s helpful to have a map of your tour route, but you don’t need to stare at it constantly when you have a tour guide. Even if you’re really good at reading directions, getting around can still become quite difficult, especially when you’re in a place with crazy, twisty streets.

Booking a guided tour is also a great way to experience a day trip from one of the major cities you visit on your vacation. I booked two day trips from Hanoi when we visited Vietnam because I wasn’t keen on renting a car and dealing with the traffic there (it’s CRAZY).

For one tour, we had a small tour bus and got to visit several sights (like the one pictured just above) and didn’t need to navigate our way out of the city (which was an adventure in and of itself).

For the other tour, we had a large tour bus that took us all the way out to the coast for a tour of Ha Long Bay (you can’t go to Northern Vietnam and not see it, right?). With a tour guide – or even some arranged transportation – it’s much easier to experience everything you want to see without worrying about renting a car to get there.

Solo Exploration & Road Trips Go Hand in Hand

One of the countries where I can categorically recommend solo adventures is Iceland. We spent about a week there and got to see loads and loads of awesome geological formations, but the driving was super easy.

There aren’t a lot of people in Iceland, and the drivers there aren’t as hyper as in some other countries. If Vietnam is a ten on the Richter Scale of insane drivers, Iceland would be a one. The United States would probably sit around a five, unless you’re in a big city, and then things get bumped up a notch.

Either way, if you’re looking at a road trip as your transportation style in the country you’re visiting, you don’t necessarily need a tour guide every step of the way. There are tours that will take you all around the country and last several days, but you do have the option to drive to all those different places on your own.

If you feel up to taking the wheel yourself, adventuring on your own is certainly something you can greatly enjoy. To get the most out of your experience, you can consider booking one or two tours along the way, just to experience a particular spot with great understanding.

Choosing the Right Type of Guided Tour

As you explore your options for guided tours, you’ll want to pay attention to the different kinds of tours available. Not only are there large-scale tours with huge tour buses and dozens of participants, but there are also small tours with anywhere from five to ten people, as well as private tours where you and your family or traveling partner are the only people on the tour.

Personally, I often opt for private tours, because I enjoy the interaction with the guide. The guides you’ll meet in most locations are locals, or they’ve lived in the area for quite a while.

However, if your main aim is to reach a particular tourist spot, you can also choose a big group experience where you’re taken to a particular place on a big bus and then left to explore on your own for a set amount of time.

If you’re visiting another country for the first time where driving requires taking your life in your hands, a tour bus is a great option for getting everywhere you want to go, especially if there aren’t high speed trains available and taxis are expensive.

As you search for the tour you want, make sure to read all of the particulars, so you know what you’re getting. Don’t book a small group tour and expect a guide at your destination unless the tour specifically states it includes a guide.

Some “tours” are just transportation and tickets into a museum or other tourist spot, which means you’ll need to do some learning on your own when you arrive. But perhaps that’s exactly what you want anyway. Like Bob Ross might say: it’s your vacation, you plan it how you want!

---

---