The 10 Best Group Travel Tour Companies

CAROLINE MORSE TEEL

For those truly epic, once-in-a-lifetime destinations, you want to leave your itinerary to the experts. Whether your dream is to see the Big Five on an African Safari, trek tall mountains, explore European cities, or something even wilder, a group tour is the easiest way to do it. However, picking the wrong group tour companies is the quickest way to ruin your trip. Make sure you choose a tour company that aligns with your goals and travel styles. Do you want a small group tour or do you like making friends in a big group? Does the price line up with what you like (luxury vs. budget)? Is the itinerary going to all the places you want to see?

We’ve done the research and found the very best group travel tour companies for this year for every type of traveler.

Source: Smarter Travel a What is an advantage of going on a group tour? b What is important when picking a tour company? c Why is that so? to align: (in this case) to fit or to be similar to d Highlight the parts of the text where you got the information for your answers in this and the previous exercise. e How would you categorise the remaining information in the text? f Look up Caroline Morse Teel, the author. Does the information you find add up to the trustworthiness of the article? g The article is categorised in the section Adventure Travel. Why should you keep that in mind?

3 Read the rest of the introduction and answer the questions.

HOW TO read a text

Instead of starting with scanning the text for information it might be useful to begin by reading the introduction thoroughly The introduction should have the most important information in the topic sentence, which is generally the first and / or the last sentence. This does not mean that there won’t be useful information elsewhere, but the introduction is a good starting point. This strategy may help you decide if it is worthwhile for you to read the whole article, know what to expect, and summarise the information.

See p. 26 a Find the similarities and complete the table.

4 Look at the first two paragraphs of the body of the article.

Best Overall Group Travel: Exodus Travels

Best Budget Group Travel: G Adventures

Number of paragraphs

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3 b With a partner, summarise the first part so that anyone will know the most important information about Exodus Travels. Make sure to include the type of group trip, the target group and the budget. c Summarise the information on G Adventures independently in the same way.

5 You will get another part of the article. Read the extract and complete your part of the table using keywords.

6 Talk to other students in class and make sure you are able to complete the rest of the table. SPOKEN INTERACTION

7 Now that you know all the information in the article, think back to a previous question. Do you think that this article is for anyone interested in group travel or is it more oriented towards adventurous people?

2 / And the award goes to…

1 Pair up and try to list as many travel types as you can. Your teacher will give you some post-its. Write one travel type per post-it and stick it on your desk. Try to fill your desk as quickly as possible.

2 Match the travel types.

a Which ones did you and your partner write down and which do you recognise in the pictures?

SPOKEN INTERACTION b What do you think slow travel or long-term travel refers to? c Which description fits ‘dark tourism’ best? d ‘Holocaust tourism’ is an example of dark tourism or heritage tourism. What would the latter refer to? e Take a look at the Summary where you will find a description of different types of travel. If you find other travel types, add them to the Summary a List at least ten heritage sites that you find.

Travelling at night.

Travelling to places that are dark, e.g. caves. Travelling to places associated with death.

3 Go to Instagram and research heritage tourism by using the hashtags #heritagetourism or #worldheritage.

READING b Read the infographics from Statista and answer the questions.

1 Which organisation decides on world heritage sites?