You Suck at Travelling and Don’t Even Know It
How TourRadar solves a problem that most travellers don’t even know they have.
I’ve independently travelled to more than 30 countries across 6 continents all before the age of 25 and I sucked at it…
With that being said, like any kid that grew up in the age of social media, that did not stop me from bragging about the many places I travelled to and posting the “Look how cool I am!” photos and videos online.
Being naive, I pursued a career with the “love” of my life — travelling — and quickly found myself working for the world’s largest online marketplace for multi-day tours, TourRadar.
Throughout my first year at TourRadar, I persisted in my denial and ignorance and kept believing that I was some battle-hardened traveller and that the customers I was assisting in booking tours did not have the same experience or street smarts as me and that’s why they needed a tour.
One day, things changed.
TourRadar offers an extremely important employee benefit that would change my relationship with travel forever, and how I looked at myself as a traveller. They are called FAM trips (familiarisation trips) where TourRadar will pay for you to experience the product that we promote and sell, tours from the most amazing tour operators in the world. Most people that join TourRadar are not from the touring industry so these trips are critical in our employees understanding the “why” behind taking a tour.
Again, being naive (or maybe just dumb at this point), I went into this tour close-minded and still convinced that tours were just not for me. Boy, was I wrong…
What followed was an eight-day trip filled with some of the best people, sights, and activities I’ve experienced in all of my travels.
It was what I had fallen in love with, it was travel.
It was seeing something from someone else’s perspective and making this big crazy world feel slightly smaller and closer.
So I started to think to myself: Why was I not a believer in this type of travel? And how had a company put together a better trip than I ever could have? Why was I trained to believe that taking a tour meant that you are some mindless tourist wearing socks and sandals with a camera around your neck, travelling on a coach bus and following a flag to the Eiffel Tower?
Why did I suck at travelling?
The truth is that I was never told that I sucked at the way I travelled. I didn’t know that it wasn’t my fault, and most importantly, that there was already a solution.
Travel can be extremely hard, and there are very few people in the world that can plan an itinerary that packs in as much of what a tour delivers.
When planning my own travels, I was horribly confused, walking through a maze of travel guides, online blogs, and magazines just to land on a country I’d like to visit — and that was before getting sucked into the spider web of organising transfers, accommodation, and activities within said country. I have worked in the travel industry for a long time and still struggle with this.
Plus, the older I get, the more I appreciate efficiency, and the butterflies I used to get in my stomach when planning and researching a trip just aren’t there anymore.
I wasted an incredible amount of time on trip-planning in the past.
Unless you have the financial freedom to book everything private, you will spend a ton of time in bus stations, trying to find a restaurant, waiting in line to buy a ticket etc. etc.
Our brains quickly replace the memories of this wasted time with memories of sunrises and sunsets because we choose to store happier memories, but trust me, they are still there and they still happened.
Tour operators take care of you, and they make it easy for you to maximise hard-earned vacation days. They do not waste time at bus stations.
Those were my problems with travelling and why I sucked at it.
I wasted a lot of time and I did not make the most of a destination.
Ultimately, those problems led me to realise there was a product that removed all the BS from travelling: the solution already existed with touring and TourRadar.
The people behind the tours listed on TourRadar should be considered travel artists. They craft the most beautiful, complex multi-day itineraries and break down the insane amount of logistics behind travel to package it on a single tour page filled with words and photographs. Travel is not about having a million tabs open on your browser trying to piece together a 10-day trip, it’s about being there and experiencing it yourself. Close those tabs and stop wasting your time.
Whatever your problem is with travelling, whatever the reason that you “suck” at it is, I am confident that touring and TourRadar has a solution for you. For starters, check out Why Touring, but please reach out if you need a diagnosis on your traveller behaviour and what your problem is.
The good news is that the touring industry has come a long way over the years. The socks and sandals days are long gone, so the odds that TourRadar does not have something that matches your travel needs is slim to none. There are fast-paced tours, laid-back tours, culture trips, small groups, large groups, private tours, party trips, trips for young people, trips catered to older travellers, river cruises, the list goes on and on…
To wrap things up — I am very sorry to be the bearer of bad news to you today.
I’ve seen through the Instagram filters and witty captions you have been posting on your #traveller account and I know that just like me, you suck at travelling.
But you don’t have to.
Check out TourRadar and give touring a chance.
I am proud to be an advocate of tours and the problem that they and TourRadar solve.
My traveller stories and outlooks are not unique and it takes a very special industry and a very special company to convince someone that they have the solution to their problem.
Especially when they don’t even know they have it.
#gotouring
