Guest Author - Leyla Garofalo

Being on vacation with a local expert showing you around, is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, it can also be as expensive as it gets. Even if having a private guide at your beck and call is not an option, you can still enjoy a tour on your next vacation. This article will hopefully give you some fun, cost–effective and perhaps daring tour alternatives to consider as you plan that next adventure. There are tour options fitted for even the smallest travel budget. Let’s start with the cheapest one.

DIY Tours, or “Self Contained Tours”, are tours that you plan yourself from scratch. It could be as simple as downloading a map for a free walking tour that will take you through San Francisco in three hours. Or it could be as hard as arranging all the logistics for your 2–week vacation, from transportation to lodging, from researching the area to mapping out your biking or hiking route. The point is that you do it yourself, and usually that maximizes your savings. If you’re not up to planning the whole thing, maybe a “Self Guided Tour” is more up your alley.

Self Guided Tours are active vacations that are put together by a travel company. Depending on the company, you will be provided with lodging arrangements, meals, luggage pick-up and delivery, emergency services and expertly chosen routes. The idea is that you guide yourself from point A to point B using the routes given to you.  
Self Guided Tours are a perfect way to experience the country and interact with locals. They are fairly flexible too, and will let you decide how long you want your tour to be. Another plus could be the fact that you’re not traveling with a group of fellow tourist strangers, like you would with a Guided Tour. Because of the simple fact that there's no professional guide assigned to you (instead, you are your own guide!), Self Guided Tours are much cheaper than their Guided Tour counterparts.

Another type of Guided Tour would be the tours that can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a day. These can be a good option for a vacation on a budget. The money you spend on a tour, you might have spent anyway trying to experience your vacation destination on your own. This way you receive the benefit of having an expert guide, and maybe even discover hot–spots only known to locals, a pretty valuable experience. There are several companies that arrange free half–day guided city tours in major European cities.

There is nothing more valuable than having an expert guide show you around, but you shouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for the experience. There are many tour options out there in different price ranges. So wherever you set your budget, with the right planning a tour of one kind or another should be within reach.