Are You a Griswold-Style Traveler? The Problem With Hit-and-Run Tours

There is a great scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation where Clark Griswold brings his family to the Grand Canyon. They walk up to the overlook, stare at one of America’s greatest natural wonders for a few seconds, Clark gives an appreciative nod, and off they go.

It’s funny because it’s ridiculous.

Yet every year, travelers spend thousands of dollars doing essentially the same thing in Europe.

I call it Hit-and-Run Travel: get there, get off the bus, take the picture, get back on the bus and move on to the next destination.

And a lot of travelers apparently love it.

Or at least they love buying it.

You Know the Tour Companies I Mean

I’m not going to name them here. You know who they are.

They’re the tour companies that send those gorgeous glossy brochures to your house. The cover might feature a magnificent Norwegian fjord, a Tuscan vineyard or a couple raising champagne glasses beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Open the brochure and it gets even better. Rome! Florence! Venice! Paris! Switzerland! Twelve attractions! Eight cities! Three countries!

It looks like an incredible amount of travel for the money.

But remember something: those glossy brochures aren’t free.

Somebody pays for the printing, mailing, advertising, call centers and enormous marketing operations behind them. Ultimately, the travelers are paying for that one way or another.

But that isn’t even my biggest objection.

My bigger question is: What are you actually buying once you get there?

Stop Counting Destinations. Start Counting Hours.

Tour companies have figured out something important about travelers: we like to count.

Eight cities sound better than four. Three countries sound better than one. Fifteen “included sights” sound better than eight.

More must mean better value, right?

Not necessarily.

A tour visiting eight cities may simply give you more hotel changes, more early departures, more packing and unpacking and a lot more time staring through the window of a motorcoach.

So when comparing tours, stop counting destinations for a minute.

Start counting hours.

How many hours will you actually spend in Florence? How much time will you have in that Norwegian village? How much of your “day in the Scottish Highlands” is really a day on a highway?

There is a huge difference between going someplace and experiencing someplace.

That’s the part of the itinerary you need to examine.

Nobody Dreams About Spending Five Hours a Day on a Bus

I have never met a traveler who told me, “My dream is to go to Europe and spend five hours every day sitting on a motorcoach.”

Yet look carefully at some traditional escorted-tour itineraries and that is essentially what you are buying.

Wake up early, put the suitcase outside the hotel room, eat breakfast, check out, board the bus and drive. Get off, see an attraction, get back on and drive some more. Eventually you arrive at another hotel, get your suitcase, unpack, go to bed and prepare to do it all again the next morning.

There is nothing inherently wrong with buses. Sometimes a motorcoach is absolutely the best way to travel.

My objection is when the tour is designed around the bus rather than the destination.

Good tour planning should start by asking, “What is the best way to experience this place?”

Not, “Where can we drive the bus next?”

Then We Saw It Happen in Flåm

Flåm, Norway gave me one of the best examples I have ever seen of hit-and-run travel.

We were staying at the Fretheim Hotel, dramatically located at the head of the fjord. At about the same time, one of those large tour companies arrived with a bus full of travelers.

Again, I’m not naming them.

We watched their travelers check into the same hotel. Our travelers had beautiful rooms facing the fjord and mountains. The big-bus group was put in rooms looking toward the parking area.

Think about that.

You travel thousands of miles to one of the most spectacular fjord settings in Norway and get a view of the parking lot.

Then came dinner. Their travelers were herded into a back room for a scheduled group meal. Maybe they were hungry. Maybe they weren’t. It really didn’t matter. Dinner was on the schedule, and the schedule was in charge.

The next morning they had enough time to visit the gift shop.

Then they were loaded back onto the motorcoach for another full day on the bus.

Technically, that tour company can put FLÅM in big letters in its brochure.

Technically, those travelers stayed in Flåm.

But did they experience it?

Here Is How We Experience Flåm

We approach Flåm almost exactly the opposite way.

We get there by taking the spectacular train across Norway from Oslo. At Myrdal, we transfer to the famous Flåm Railway for the dramatic descent through mountains, waterfalls and the Flåm Valley to the fjord.

Transportation isn’t something we have to endure before getting to the attraction.

The transportation is one of the attractions.

Then we stay in Flåm long enough to enjoy the place.

There are scenic bike rides through a waterfall-lined valley. Travelers can take an exhilarating RIB boat adventure on the fjord, enjoy a sauna overlooking the water, walk through the village, have a relaxing meal or simply sit outside and appreciate the extraordinary scenery they traveled thousands of miles to see.

That is why I have long argued that travelers should spend enough time to actually discover what to see and do in Flåm, rather than treating it as another quick stop on the way to somewhere else.

One style of touring says, “We got you to Flåm. Check it off.”

The other says, “You came all this way to Flåm. Let’s experience it.”

Both companies can put the same photograph of the fjord in their marketing.

You can see exactly how we put that philosophy together on our Norway and the Fjords by Scenic Rail small group tour. 

Those are still two completely different vacations.

Here’s the Surprise: Hit-and-Run Travel Can Cost More

There is also an assumption that big, fast-moving tours must be economical.

Why?

Moving people constantly is expensive. Motorcoaches, drivers, fuel, tolls, parking, luggage handling and logistics all cost money. Every hotel change adds another layer of expense and coordination.

And then there is a cost that almost nobody calculates: your vacation time.

If your European vacation costs $500 or $600 per day and you spend four or five hours of that day traveling between destinations, how much did those hours cost you?

Price per day doesn’t tell the whole story.

I think travelers should consider price per meaningful experience.

A thoughtfully designed tour that stays longer in fewer places can sometimes cost less precisely because it eliminates unnecessary transportation and hotel changes. Even when the price is similar, you may be getting substantially more actual vacation for your money.

Count the Suitcase Moves

Here is one of my favorite tricks for evaluating an escorted tour.

Forget the beautiful photographs for a moment and count how many times you change hotels.

Every change means packing, checking out, assembling the group, loading luggage, traveling, unloading luggage, checking in and unpacking again.

One hotel change isn’t a problem.

Six or seven of them can devour an astonishing amount of a vacation.

So instead of being impressed because an itinerary visits seven cities, ask why it needs to.

Sometimes the answer is that the tour company knows seven cities are easier to sell than four great experiences.

To Be Fair, Some Travelers Love This

Large escorted tours are not automatically bad, and small group tours are not automatically good.

Some travelers genuinely prefer a fast pace. Maybe this is their only trip to Europe and they want to sample as much as possible. Others like having every meal, hotel, transfer and sightseeing stop scheduled for them.

There is nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong with believing that the tour visiting the most places automatically offers the most value.

It doesn’t.

And smaller groups can often do things differently. They can use scenic trains and ferries, get into smaller restaurants, stay in centrally located hotels and build in enough flexibility to let people actually enjoy where they are.

That is one reason I believe smaller groups can create a very different travel experience.

Read the Itinerary, Not the Brochure

So the next time one of those glossy tour brochures lands in your mailbox, enjoy looking at it.

Then put the pictures aside and read the itinerary carefully.

How many hotels are there? How many one-night stays? How often will you pack your suitcase? How many hours will you spend on a bus? How much unscheduled time do you have? Is the transportation itself interesting, or is it simply moving you from one brochure photo to another?

And most importantly:

Are you actually going to experience these destinations, or are you collecting them?

After years of designing and leading tours, I have become convinced that seeing more places does not necessarily mean seeing more.

Sometimes it means experiencing less.

So, Are You a Griswold-Style Traveler?

Here is where I expect some disagreement.

Would you rather see eight destinations briefly or four destinations really well?

Would you rather tell your friends you “did” Florence, Venice, Rome, Pisa and Tuscany—or spend enough time in a couple of those places to actually understand why people love them?

And if you enjoy big, fast-moving bus tours, defend them. Tell me what I’m missing.

But the next time somebody tells me they saw nine European cities in ten days, I still may be tempted to ask one question:

Did you see Europe—or did you see the highway between the cities?