By Joe Maloney
Vice President of Travel 

If you’re booking your next vacation, and you hear the word “tour,” you should know that word means a lot more in 2019 than it did in 1979. This is much more than just sight-seeing by bus – now, tours are one of the best ways to ensure your next trip is filled with life-changing experiences.  

It’s worth booking a tour because: 

• The experience it provides you is unique, interesting, and can’t easily be recreated on your own. Remember: Tours are led by folks who do this for a living – they’re experts on the area and the sights that you’re visiting, and they know everything there is to know about local culture, and history. If you want a deep dive into whatever destination you choose, a tour is the right idea.
• Tours are also more economical. Because of their buying power, tour operators can save you up to 30 percent of what you might spend for the same experience on your own, if you could easily re-create the experience at all. 
• They also save you a lot of time, and hassle. If you were to visit the Vatican on your own, for example, you might wait hours to get in. But tour operators are often given priority entry and access. 
• When you book each of these sorts of experiences yourself, you lose a sense of cohesion. The best trips are curated by experts who know exactly what’s worth seeing in a region – so you don’t miss out on anything. This isn’t out a tour-bus window, either. Tours immerse you in the destination you’re visiting, and they do that by engaging you, intimately, with every facet. You can be confident you’re not “missing out” on anything. 
• It’s the best of both worlds. They combine expertise and adventure. There’s an excursion for everyone, at the pace that’s right for you.
   

What’s something you can do on a tour that you can’t do on your own? 

• What immediately comes to mind are food tours, or culinary retreats. What better way to get immersed in a culture than through food? If you book a food tour of the Roman Hill Country in Italy, for example, you’ll get to experience everything from an olive mill tour and cooking class to a prosciutto tour to making your own gnocchi to learning how to pair the right wine with whatever you’re eating. And you’ll learn all of this from experts in environments that you wouldn’t be able to get into on your own. You experience the destination as chefs who live there experience the destination. That’s immersive. That’s real.  
• Sure, you can experience different foods by going to different restaurants, or lining up a cooking class on your own.
• But for that immersive culinary experience, a tour just makes sense: Experts will lead you from locale to locale, and you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look (and taste) of each culture – all for less than you would spend arranging the experience on your own.
   

Examples of tours worth taking:

• Broncos Champions Cruise! This is a one-of-a kind experience where fans get to combine their love of football, their favorite all-time champs, while on vacation. Fans get an opportunity to hangout with Broncos Alum over 5 days. From playing beach volleyball with Steve Atwater to getting to ask them questions during a Q&A to running into them on deck while relaxing, it’s an exclusive and unique opportunity for Broncos fans. 
• Iceland! Only through a cohesive, curated tour can you get the best of Reykjavik’s culture and history and, the very next day, go get to see whales on an excursion led by a naturalist who knows how to find them. You risk more disappointment when you book for yourself, because you’re not the expert that the people who live in these destinations are. Why take the risk? The same is true if you traveled to Croatia and wanted to learn everything about the region, while still taking advantage of their world-class beaches, for example.
   

Bottom line: If you haven’t been on a tour in a while, it’s definitely worth giving them another look. They’ll change your life.