Groups that travel together, year after year

Tour and pilgrimage groups are our most common work, and they share a shape: a lead organiser who is not a travel professional, a roster that firms up slowly, a departure date that cannot move, and a group of people for whom this is a significant trip.

The organiser’s real problem is rarely the fare. It is not knowing, in March, how many people will actually go in September.

Pilgrimage and parish groups

Fixed religious calendars, destinations with genuine seasonal peaks, and travellers across a wide age range. Three things matter more here than in ordinary group travel:

• Book early, in the literal sense. Peak pilgrimage windows fill and price up months ahead. The advantage of a held block is largest exactly when demand is concentrated.
• Mobility and medical needs are common. Wheelchair assistance, oxygen, seating near lavatories, and dietary requirements need to be on the booking, not mentioned at check-in. Some require airline approval with lead time.
• Connections should be generous. A 55-minute connection that a business traveller would take happily is not the right choice for a group of forty including people who walk slowly.

Tour operators and escorted departures

If you sell the trip on, your constraints are commercial as much as logistical. We quote so that you can build a costing, and we are explicit about what is held and what is not.

Open-jaw and multi-country itineraries

Most escorted tours do not return from where they arrived. Flying into one city and out of another is standard for us and is priced as a single itinerary, which usually gives better fare rules than two one-ways stitched together. Internal sectors between countries can be included in the same booking where the carriers interline, which matters when a delay on one leg threatens the next.

When the roster moves

It always does. What we ask is that you tell us as it happens rather than in a batch at the deadline: