55+ – Travel alone or in a group?
We dream that one day we will have the time to travel. One group, the active 55+ traveler, is living that dream and seeing the world.
But planning the perfect travel adventure means deciding whether to enjoy senior travel independently or on a group tour. Here are some pros and cons to each for the senior traveler.
Tour Groups
Creating your own itinerary involves making choices – buses, hotels, which tourist sites to visit. Many 55+ travelers prefer to be guided and have everything organized for them. And nowadays, senior travelers can find tours designed for most anything they want to experience – from sipping tea in a comfy British cottage to feeding joeys from a bottle on an Australian kangaroo sanctuary. Everyone has their own definition of adventure and tour groups help you experience it.
The success of your tour will largely depend on your group, your guide and your itinerary. If the group is going snorkeling on a corral reef and you don’t like swimming, make sure there is a plan in place to accommodate your interests. A good tour has a fixed itinerary but should have the flexibility to adapt for the senior traveler’s esoteric interests.
Guided tours offer a complete package, freeing you from thinking about destinations or timetables, but they can also be stifling, leaving little room to explore. In foreign countries, tours can be valuable in helping you deal with language barriers that can complicate ordering food and asking for directions.
Traveling alone
In the Internet age, you have access to the same information as travel agents. Your own diligent research can land the senior traveler a better deal and a more customized itinerary than the traditional group tour. Rick Steves’ Guidebook and Fodor’s travel guide are resources that can prove valuable in planning a trip and for navigating once you are at a destination. For those more technologically inclined, there are apps such as Nextstop, that uses information from friends, passionate locals and search engine reviews, to make travel recommendations…and HearPlanet, that serves as an audio tour guide to the planet.
Not only will traveling alone free you up to mingle with the locals but being away from a guided group is a great first step to not looking like a tourist.
Think about what you want from your senior travel adventure, then go out and make it happen.
