May 15, 2008
At last! A company that will book your shore excursions for less than you'd pay to a cruise line -- and it will be a better tour
"Should I buy my shore excursions in advance?" "From the cruise line?" "Or should I take my chances once at the port?" "What if the ship docks at a pier far from town?"
On our Sunday radio show (noon to 2pm, streaming live on www.wor710.com), Pauline and I receive more calls about cruise ship shore excursions than on any other topic. To all of them we loudly respond: No! Don't buy these overpriced tours from the cruise line. These canned and artificial experiences! Don't squeeze into a 45-passenger bus. Wander on your own. Enjoy the authentic aspects of the ports you visit.
But though this advice is politely received by our callers, it's obvious that they would still like to tour with a guide, and possibly as part of a small group.
Today, help arrived, in the form of a website called ShoreTrips (www.shoretrips.com), administered from a small town in Wisconsin. Its founders, former travel agents, have apparently toured all the major ports in the Caribbean, Mexico and Europe, interviewed scores of local tour companies, and made arrangements with the best of them to handle the shore excursions of the clients of ShoreTrips for prices that average 50% of what the cruise lines charge. And the tours in question usually run with 4 to 8 persons, far fewer than the depressing groups of 45, squeezed into a giant motor coach, and operated by the cruise lines.
We'll be interviewing the principals of ShoreTrips on this Sunday's broadcast (I spoke with a junior employee when I phoned ShoreTrips late this afternoon), and will obtain far more detailed information to appear in a later blog post. But a glance at the website is encouraging. It asserts that ShoreTrips looks for unusual, unique, memorable tour experiences, and not for the canned sights of the standard cruise ship-sponsored tours.
Stay tuned.
Write and read comments about this post.
On our Sunday radio show (noon to 2pm, streaming live on www.wor710.com), Pauline and I receive more calls about cruise ship shore excursions than on any other topic. To all of them we loudly respond: No! Don't buy these overpriced tours from the cruise line. These canned and artificial experiences! Don't squeeze into a 45-passenger bus. Wander on your own. Enjoy the authentic aspects of the ports you visit.
But though this advice is politely received by our callers, it's obvious that they would still like to tour with a guide, and possibly as part of a small group.
Today, help arrived, in the form of a website called ShoreTrips (www.shoretrips.com), administered from a small town in Wisconsin. Its founders, former travel agents, have apparently toured all the major ports in the Caribbean, Mexico and Europe, interviewed scores of local tour companies, and made arrangements with the best of them to handle the shore excursions of the clients of ShoreTrips for prices that average 50% of what the cruise lines charge. And the tours in question usually run with 4 to 8 persons, far fewer than the depressing groups of 45, squeezed into a giant motor coach, and operated by the cruise lines.
We'll be interviewing the principals of ShoreTrips on this Sunday's broadcast (I spoke with a junior employee when I phoned ShoreTrips late this afternoon), and will obtain far more detailed information to appear in a later blog post. But a glance at the website is encouraging. It asserts that ShoreTrips looks for unusual, unique, memorable tour experiences, and not for the canned sights of the standard cruise ship-sponsored tours.
Stay tuned.
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: cruise, tour companies
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
