Why You Should Consider Group Travel to Go Overseas
- Jennifer Evans
- Oct 24, 2024
- 6 min read
I get it, traveling overseas can be intimidating.
You may not have well-experienced travelers to go with.
Or know the country’s native language.
Or understand their cultures.
Or have several thousand dollars to put down on a trip all at once.
Or even know what to plan.
The key solution to ALL of these hurdles is to find a group travel company to go with.
TRAVELING “SOLO” WITH OTHER PEOPLE
Group travel is the perfect way to travel if you don’t want to wait for someone to be available to come with you, but you don’t want to go alone.
It can be tough to find travel companions who have the time off, the funds, and the same travel desires as you do.
But the cool part about group travel is that you do find the people whose goals align with yours - they’re just initially strangers.
But after you spend 7-15 days with the same group of people 24/7, these people quickly become more than strangers as you’re experiencing once-in-a-lifetime moments together.
Something about riding a hot air balloon in Morocco or hiking Machu Picchu in Peru with total strangers forms a unique bond that you don’t hold with anyone else on the planet.
Some of these relationships I’ve made along the way have become lifelong friendships and a group of us are even doing a reunion trip together soon!
Even my husband who tends to be more introverted absolutely loved meeting other people on our first group trip together.
LANGUAGE BARRIER
These travel companies normally do a lot of prep work to help you prepare for your upcoming adventures.
For EF Ultimate Break, this includes a “Know Before You Go Guide.”
This guide informs you about your destination countries, gives you phrases to learn in their native languages, and more.
Once you arrive, your Tour Guide is also an extremely useful tool if there’s anything you ever need to know or if you have any questions about the language once you get there.
When I visited Israel with Birthright, we had eight Israeli students who were with our group throughout the entirety of our stay and when we would visit markets and places like that, they would come to walk around with us to help us negotiate prices on things and make sure we didn’t get taken advantage of or hackled.
This made me feel a lot better about being overseas for the first time and not only did we have assistance with people who were fluent in the language, but we had the opportunity to learn and use the language in a practical setting as well.
CULTURE
It’s crucial to have at least a basic understanding of the cultures that you’ll be visiting - as some actions done in America can be seen as offensive in other countries.
And vice versa.
For example, holding up a peace sign in some other countries is equivalent to holding up the middle finger in the States.
Some people in other countries take offense to asking them what they do for work.
Some countries prefer for women to have their shoulders and/or ankles covered.
Sometimes tipping is considered offensive and it comes across as you being “rich” and the wait staff being “poor.”
This list could go on forever.
And if you aren’t aware of the day-to-day actions or preferences, it may lead you to have unpleasant encounters with locals - something you don’t want to find yourself doing.
Traveling with a group, having your “Know Before You Go Guide” and having your local tour guide to use as a resource will help teach you what you need to learn so you can have a pleasant experience while you are a guest in another country.
Culture to me, is actually a very fascinating topic to learn about and has inspired some unique perspective shifts for me.
For example, Peru has a very scheduled culture per se. Monday to Friday is meant to work hard, Saturday is an entire day to reset yourself for the following week, and Sunday is strictly for family.
Experiencing Peru during the week while everyone is working versus experiencing Peru on Sundays when everyone is relaxing was an intriguing thing to watch.
After discussing this observation with my tour guide, she advised me that Peru had a violent history where the older generation had literally seen their relatives die in front of their own eyes.
Therefore, they take their family day seriously.
It made me wonder why the people with the most dark histories come out the most grateful - and why people who haven’t experienced that type of trauma in their lives take life for granted sometimes.
It was a healthy reminder for me to be grateful for what I have in life and I never would have understood the deep reason why Peru looks so different on the weekends had I not had that amazing resource to discuss it with.
MONEY
One of the biggest reasons people don’t travel is because they believe they can’t afford it.
And this honestly crushes me.
Sure, when you look at a trip and think “This trip is $4,000 and I don’t have that,” it can be easy to rule it out and move on with your life.
But the beauty of most of these group trips is that you can book them 1-2, if not 3-4 years in advance.
Then, all of a sudden, your $4,000 that you don’t have becomes $100-$200 a month, if not less, and it becomes affordable.
Our younger generations are known for craving that immediate satisfaction but the truth is, the best things come with time.
And if the two options are:
Go on this trip next year
Don’t go at all
Why not start planning NOW?
If you treat this payment just like any other monthly payment you have to make - you’ll be amazed how far it can get you!
I understand that so many people are living paycheck-to-paycheck right now but if you think creatively, take advantage of some openly available freelance type jobs like DoorDash or Uber where you can make your own schedules, and stick to it when times get hard, it’ll all be worth it in the end!
I’ve paid for an entire trip by DoorDashing before - and I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world!
PLANNING
As a huge planner myself, it’s nice to just not sometimes.
My husband recently went on his first group tour with me and one of the things I told him right off the bat was how nice it is to just show up and be along for the ride. Most of the time, you’re literally told what time to wake up, what time your activities start, where to be, and what to bring.
You don’t have to worry about public transportation, booking certain activities, figuring out where to sleep, renting a reliable car, or even trying to navigate figuring out how to drive in another country.
You literally just go.
If you’ve ever traveled internationally (or even domestically for that matter) and you planned the entire trip on your own - you know how much of a luxury it is to not have to worry about any of it.
Now this does come with some cons that you should be aware of and willing to speak out about.
Maybe you have a destination on your bucket list because of one very specific thing that you want to do there.
Sometimes, that one bucket list item is pretty much everyone’s bucket list item and therefore, will be on your itinerary of a group trip.
But other times, you may have a specific niche you enjoy and therefore, it’s not.
Thankfully, it’s the tour guide's job to guide you and not babysit you, and as long as you communicate your wants and needs with them, they’re usually pretty good about helping you make it happen.
For example, I recently got back from an EF Ultimate Break trip to Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.
This is a very popular trip for EF Ultimate Break and typically includes seeing Dachau - a concentration camp from the Holocaust.
However, due to the time of year we visited, the typical day to visit Dachau is replaced with us visiting Oktoberfest in Munich.
Since I come from a Jewish family, I really wanted to see Dachau and it was one of the things that drew me to this itinerary in the first place but since my husband has a high desire to see things like Oktoberfest, we chose the Oktoberfest route instead.
Once we arrived on our trip and started getting to know some of the others, we found out that two more people from our group really wanted to experience Dachau as well.
The four of us told our tour guide that we wanted to see Dachau and sure enough, instead of waking up mid-morning to catch a bus to Germany with the rest of our group, we woke up at around 5 am to take a train to Germany instead.
We visited Dachau and eventually caught an Uber to where the rest of our group was and continued the rest of the trip like normal.
CONCLUSION
Traveling can be intimidating, expensive, and challenging if you’ve never done it before.
But if you really want to go on a trip overseas, booking a group tour will give you confidence, let you conquer your fears, and you’ll be hooked on wanting to see the rest of this gorgeous world that we live in!
Traveling has the power to change your perspective on life - start living your dreams now!
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