A good Tour.

The title of this story is simple, but over the last two years and especially after my last Cuba-tour, I know now that this is something I should appreciate.

 After 9 months of having less luck than I usually have, this tour had a good timing. I was running very low on money and also started to worry a bit if I had lost my touch with the tour guiding. This tour solved both.

Although I work for Shoestring, the red line of this story can also be the name of our competition B.O.B.. It was the first tour with two new local agencies, who seem to have a history in working with B.O.B., so in almost every hotel we had to explain that we were Shoestring and no B.O.B.. In South America B.O.B. switched to work with the same local agency as we do and now in Central America we do the same the other way around. In the end we all use the same contacts, hotels and transport, witch will make it difficult to distinct the different agencies from each other. Tours get very similar, prices get similar (I thought that B.O.B. use to be a bit more expensive to be able to distinct themselves, but that seems to have changed as well) and competition gets stronger.

 How to win this competition with so many similarities? The solution is simpler (or maybe not) than you would think. Most tours have reached their limits in offering low prices, but unfortunately I hear the same complain from costumers who book with different tour agencies: the (personal) service went down…

 The past few years several agencies have worked very hard to improve their hotels, their bus services and their brochures and still stay on a low budget. For this their employers have to work harder and have less time for the costumer and details of a tour.

 It is almost a circle, the pictures of luxury hotels and transport attract new costumers with higher expectations and less tolerance towards things that don´t meet their expectations. My Cuba tour was a great example of this. These costumers complain more and cause even more work for the people in the tour offices.

What if tour agencies start to concentrate again more on personal service and details of the tours instead of luxury? Yes, the tours need to be sold at low prices, because that is still the first costumers will look at. But out of experience I know that during a tour and especially after the tour the price the costumers have paid is soon forgotten if the service was great. A good service and great tour that excided their expectations will be remembered and make costumers come back again. This last tour was a good example. We suddenly got private transport instead of public and some hotels were upgraded.

I will try to explain how service and details that are not in the official itinerary ad to the good experiences and give a heart to an otherwise soul less tour.

 For example when we had a nine hour bus ride from Merida to Palenque. On advise of our bus driver we stopped halfway to swim in the Golf of Mexico and have lunch on a white beach. An unexpected, but welcome refreshment during a long journey.

The hotel in Palenque was luxury and had a big swimming pool, but it was far out of the centre and had no soul. At the end of the tour people remembered the hotel from the sterile atmosphere, not the big swimming pool.

On purpose I had recommended the group not to take a guided tour over the hot site of Chichen Itza, because it is more touristy, there is not a lot of shade, I don’t know a very passionate guide and otherwise they have to hear the same Maya story too often. Instead I had arranged a good and enthusiastic guide for our tour on the site of Palenque. The group now had a great tour over this site with a guide who could keep the attention of the group in the humid heat. I even suspect that this tour made such an impression on some group members that it affected their judgment about Tikal. 

For the village tour in San Cristobal I had done the same. Not just make the tour a bit cheaper to go with our own bus, but pay a bit more for a tour with a passionate guide that leaves the group with a more intense feeling.

Unfortunately in San Cristobal I had to help a passenger who urgently had to go home. This is another good example of how service can make a huge difference especially in bad situations. In the end I didn’t have to do very much, because her insurance company was a great help. They arranged that she could fly already the same day back home and were even so thoughtful to recommend her not to take the first flight option (probably cheaper, but not direct), but the second. She would be an hour and a half later in Holland, but didn’t have to change plane. Luckily she made it back just before most airports in Europe closed, because of the huge ass cloud from a volcano in Iceland.

Last year around this time it was the special flu that kept the world occupied and this year it was the big ass cloud and locally (in Guatemala) also a possible epidemic of Hepatitis A. Again it went mostly past our group and it didn´t disturb our mood. We are on vacation.

Yep, this group was on vacation and there wasn´t much that could disturb that. Even some virus that hit the group from San Cristobal and caused stomach problems for some group members couldn´t disturb the general positive atmosphere in the group. I do have to admit that at that moment the biggest part of the group was probably more recovering from the alcohol and short of sleep from the fun nights they/we had in San Cristobal ;-)

The tolerance of the group became under some pressure at Lake Atitlan when I ‘lost’ part of the group during a walk. I had to get this part back through a rain and hail storm, while the other part was waiting dry and already ready to go back to the hotel. Later most members looked back at this experience as an adventure, witnessing a waterfall going down the streets of San Pedro and the locals eating the biggest hail stones they had seen in 20 years. Also the funny fact that one girl broke through the bridge while walking to our boat is well remembered by the group ;-) Luckily she didn’t hurt herself.

 No, at the end of the tour no-one seemed to remember how freezing we all were, waiting for our boat to go back to Panajachel.

The rain we had during our tour on the Pacaya volcano resulted in more complains. But because it stopped raining when we reached the ‘top’ and we were treated with great mystic views, the excursion was still no failure. In the end the group was mostly disappointed that we couldn’t see the lava streams, like I have seen in my tours before. However there was a good reason for this, because the area where you could see these was unstable and not safe. The day before some tourists had convinced their guide to go there, but a small earth shock and some falling rocks took the lives of one tourist and the guide…

In Copan we had an enthusiastic guide again to tell us about the history of the Mayas and Honduras. In the afternoon it was time to relax during a massage, at a swimming pool or take an adventures horseback riding tour. Unfortunately now more people got sick, so the nights in Copan we had to take it a bit easy.

However in Rio Dulce almost every one felt good again and the next day the group could finally sleep in a bit longer, so this needed to be celebrated ;-) It started at the swimming pool of our beautiful located semi jungle lodge and after a good dinner we wanted to continue at the bar of the lodge. Unfortunately the service was uninterested and the group wasn´t allowed to drink their own drinks, kind of logic. Part of the group went to the dock and after the bar completely gave up, the rest of the group followed. Here at the dock we exchanged deep conversations with funny useless discussions until early in the morning J The only down side was that we runned out of cola and part of the group decided to borrow some cola and ice from the bar that was already closed. They wanted to pay next day, but of course shouldn´t have taken anything from the closed bar. The owner of the lodge could really not appreciate this and wrote directly a complain towards the local agency. This would have worried me, if t wasn´t for the fact that the complain was, except from the ‘stolen’ cola, full of lies. Just before we left one of his employers gave me a copy of the complain. I had already the owner three times that morning and he hadn´t said a word, the drinks were already paid for and some group members had even apologized towards the manager, case closed I thought. But if he then comes with a complain full of lies and doesn´t have to balls to speak with me/us about it, I even tried to find him after reading, I can’t have much respect for him. Most important for me was that the group had a great time :-)

Although Belize makes it more and more difficult for tourism to grow, it is still always a nice break to visit Caye Caulker. Especially the diving tours and relaxing snorkeling tours from the sailing boats of Ragga Muffin are a guarantied success. We had a basic hotel but a good location on the ‘beach’ and with our own dock above the Caribbean sea…

In Playa del Carmen Rio Secreto becomes less of a secret, but is still very special to visit. Also the bars and discotheques are, with the right people, still a guaranty for fun/hot nights.

 Yes, this last is very important, the right people. Tour guiding is still a life-style for me, but I learn more and more that this works best with people who are capable of enjoying themselves. People who try to get the most fun out of their tour, but still accept when reality is different than expected.

So tour agencies have to put more effort in giving good (personal) service and watch over the important details during a tour.

 Costumers have to be willing to enjoy their tour and I,

 I still have to learn to be less obvious to the people I don’t like…

I also might have to start in making chooses for the future. Although I usually complain about things for the right reason and even come with possible solutions, it still feels a bit wrong. I complain from a comfortable position with almost no responsibility. I switch lives between working with animals in the jungle and experience adventures with tourist in half of Latin America. But my responsibilities are usually not more than my own pride to do the things I do the best I can. Maybe it is time to take more?

 For the moment I still enjoy both life-styles and can I still make myself useful at Merazonia, so I guess,

 To be continued…

Saludos,

 Martijn