For those who wish a hassle free travel experience to see the key points of a travel destination, there is only one company we recommend and that is Tauk Tours.  Tauk Tours offers the antithesis of what this site has to offer....DIY advice, experience and insight to create your own adventures.  However, for many people with limited time, energy, money and those who do not feel comfortable exploring on their own or those who do not wish to risk their well earned vacation time chasing a red herring, Tauk Tours offers a solid product. 


Many websites boast that when hotels have unsold rooms, they offer it to the website and the savings is passed on to you.  We have found this is not true.  On the more popular of these sites, we have never found a case where the lowest priced room was posted, but was often available by contacting the hotel itself.  The fact of the matter is that such sites can offer a fair comparison of all the hotels in an area, with availability and rates making it easy for consumers to find the hotel and the price they want and immediately book the room.  A majority of hotel bookings come from these sites and they are no longer a secondary market to sell discounted rooms. 

How does this relate to Tauk Tours?  Our road Scholars have been on over 15 Tauk Tours.  In each case, our buses pulled up to our destination, and at least one hotel stay, there were unrented rooms far above the price we paid for the tour that the hotel upgraded to Tauk Tours because they could bring in the repeat customers, leaving the lesser quality unsold rooms to be auctioned off on the websites as there is a smaller market for higher priced and higher end rooms. 

This explaination did not come from Tauk Tours....in fact, we tried to get an official statement from them, and they declined....but several managers and assistant managers which regularly receive Tauk Tours have confirmed this fact to us....that when you book a Tauk Tour, a room is confirmed at a group rate to the tour company because they can bring in the repeat volume of steady customers far more than a website.  When a higher end room becomes available...rather than discounting it on the web....they will upgrade the rooms to the tour company that can promise repeat customers in the future, and discount the cheaper room. 


Tauk Tours does not claim to have this pull nor do they make any promises or statements regarding these upgrades...but in our experience, the upgrades have not been insignificant....and there are reasons for this.  On one Tauk Tour I personally took, every hotel stop our bus made gave each guest an upgrade to a hotel suite whos posted rate was over 800 dollars per night....a value far greater than the cost of the tour itself  When the tour concluded in Las Vegas, most every guest on the tour complained about the quality of the "Basic" rooms at Cesears Palace (which did NOT give the tour the upgrade).  I guess you can't please some people. 

On one tour, one of our Road Scholars on a Tauk tour in Canada was upgraded from a basic room to a full lodge that was built decades before specifically for Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Windsor on a state visit to Canada.....The lodges that were built exclusively for them were over the top and cost more money than any of us would have spent even if we were the heirs to the Bill Gates' fortune, and could have funded a grub stake in many countries to keep us on the road for at least a year if we went native....  One thing we could not understand is why we got the upgrade when the Lodge grounds was hosting a convention of Texas oil millionaires who were investing in Canadian Oil Sand deposits....Tauk tours got the the upgrades for all the guests on the tour and the oil barons with the really big bucks got the rooms they booked through normal channels. 

Our tour guide told us this upgrade was atypical and we believed her....Tauk tours books its guests in some very nice rooms at great rates and seems to play hard ball to upgrade for their guests whenever possible...but in the end,its a crap shoot if they can get an upgrade for you on your tour...so there are no promises....Nor should there be...even if our Road Scholars never once got an upgraded room on a Tauk Tour, the basic rooms were still exceptional, and booked at a volume rate with the tour company that was better than anything  we could have gotten ourselves....(and we know a lot of negotiating tactics).

The discounts that are advertised by major booking websites are not really true as they appear to be.  Most people go to those sites to find a good price on a good room....and the high end rooms that have a smaller market and are more often available are not discounted on these sites as often as they are given away as perks to established clients like a tour company or other source of steady and repeat customers...and the cheaper rooms are sold at a discount on such websites where people are looking for a price driven deal...It not uncommon to pay the lowest cost for a hotel room through a tour company, and get the top upgrade if it happens to be available, while the room they originally booked for you is auctioned off on Orbitz or Priceline for more than what was originally paid. 


One of the best things about Tauk Tours is the consistency in their Tour guides.  It is said that Tauk Tours does not accept applications for tour guides, but that their corporate executives are constantly on the look out for exceptional guides, and hand picks and recruits them.  We don't know if this is true or if this is only an Urban Legend, but we would not be surprized given the quality and consistency of their tour professionals. 


We believe that if you want to take a tour and have the itinerary pre-arranged, Tauk Tours does it right.  They have been called the "Cadillac" of tours, and they live up to their reputation for what they deliver.  In some years past, Tauk Tours seemed to cave into pressure from their competition to offer many sites at a break neck speed so that none of the tour sites could really be enjoyed.  This is a common travel mistake and in recent years, Tauk seems to have stuck to their guns and returned to their tradition of excellence. 


There is only one draw back to the Tauk Tour....by the time the tour is over, we have always felt that we had just begun to make a friendship, and then it was time to go home. 


This website is absolutely not about tour package travel.  We feel that that an immersion experience to the place you voyage is best to make the most out of your travel experiences, and the wonder of discovery, and the connections you make by venturing out on your own are simply unmatched by a tour bus approach.  We believe you should step out into the world where you travel, and not view it from the window of a tour bus.....


Yet such services can be important...and if it is important to you, Tauk Tours is very consistent in delivering a solid product for a package tour.