Escorted holidays for solo travellers and couples
Our open tours are the holidays you can book a single place on. You choose a departure that suits you, we handle the rest — travel from the UK, hotels, guiding, the listed entrance fees — and you travel with a group of people who picked the same holiday for much the same reasons.
They run from Ipswich art galleries to the Sognefjord, and last from four days to eight. Some are quiet island weeks. Others are built around a single date in the calendar, like the opera at Verona or the flower carpet in Brussels.
Explore Our Open Group Tours
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Open Group Tours
No. Solo guests are a normal part of these groups, and on tours where single rooms are held without a supplement they often make up a good share of the party. Couples travel too, along with pairs of friends sharing a twin. After the first coach journey and the first dinner the distinction stops mattering much. If you would like a sense of who is already booked on a particular departure, ask us.
It depends on the tour. Several of our British coach holidays set aside a number of single rooms with no supplement, and you will see that stated in the inclusions. On others a supplement applies and the amount is shown on the tour page, reflecting what the hotel charges for sole occupancy. If the no-supplement singles on a tour you like have already gone, ask us and we will tell you what remains.
More than people sometimes expect from a coach holiday. Guided city tours in Seville, Bruges or Vienna are done on foot over cobbles, the Alhambra takes a couple of hours of walking, and island days on Scilly involve boat landings and unmade paths. Most days can be taken gently, and there is usually somewhere to sit out an excursion. Tell us about any limits on your mobility before you book and we will go through the itinerary honestly with you.
It varies by tour, so check the individual page. Some holidays fly from a named airport, with transfers at the other end included; others fly from a choice of UK airports. The Antwerp and Brussels tours travel by Eurostar from St Pancras, and the British tours use private coach, ferry or, in one or two cases, your own car. Ask us about joining arrangements for the departure you are considering.
It varies by tour and by departure, so we would rather give you the real figure for the trip you are looking at than quote an average that turns out to be wrong. Ask us and we will tell you the maximum for that departure and how many places have already been taken. In practice the groups are large enough for good company and small enough to move around a gallery without losing anybody.
Breakfast every morning, plus a stated number of evening meals — the tour page gives the exact count. Some holidays include dinner on every night, as the Madeira and Puglia tours do. Others include two or three, leaving you free to try restaurants near the hotel. Lunches are usually your own unless one is listed in the inclusions. If you have dietary requirements, tell us when you enquire and we will let you know what can be arranged.
How it works
Every open tour has its own set of dates, listed on the tour page. You choose the departure that suits you and book the places you need — one, two, or a few more if friends are coming. There is no need to find other people or fill a coach between you; that is our job.
The group takes shape around you as the date approaches, usually couples and solo travellers drawn by the same subject, be that Madrid's galleries or the Isles of Scilly. Once you are travelling you are looked after throughout: an experienced driver on our British coach tours, and further afield an Airedale representative, a local tour manager or English-speaking guides at each site.
The itinerary is fixed and published before you book, so you know which mornings are guided and where you have time to yourself. When a departure appeals, send us the date and we will tell you how it is filling, what a single room would cost, and hold you a place while you decide.
Who it is for
Open tours suit people who want the organising done and are happy in the company of others. Solo travellers, couples, two friends sharing a twin: all of it is normal on these departures, and a shared interest usually does the social work for you. If you like knowing the day's plan in advance, and would rather not drive on the wrong side of the road or find your own way into the Alhambra, this is the sensible way to travel.
It does not suit everyone. If you want to travel only with the people you arrived with, or you belong to a club that would prefer its own dates, its own pace and its own coach, a private group tour is the better fit. Anyone who dislikes fixed departure times will find a scheduled tour frustrating.
What is included
Most open tours are priced to cover the travelling, the beds, the guiding and the things you have come to see. In practice that means return travel from the UK — flights with luggage, Eurostar, ferry or private coach — plus the transport needed for the itinerary once you arrive.
Hotels are typically three or four star, with breakfast each morning and a set number of evening meals. Listed excursions and entrance fees are paid for in advance: guided walking tours, museum and palace admissions, boat trips, and on some tours a concert or festival ticket. Guiding varies, from an experienced driver to a local tour manager or site guides.
Inclusions differ from one tour to the next, so treat the individual tour page as the definitive list.
Travelling on your own, in company
Most people who ring us about an open tour are travelling alone, and it is the room rather than the company that worries them. A hotel double occupied by one person costs the hotel the same either way, which is why single supplements exist right across the industry.
We do work at it. On some of our British coach tours a fixed number of single rooms is set aside with no supplement at all — the Suffolk tour following Constable and Gainsborough and the Leeds galleries tour both do this, and those places tend to go early. Where a supplement does apply, it is printed on the tour page rather than appearing later on.
Beyond the room, solo travel on an escorted tour is straightforward. You are met, driven, guided and fed alongside everybody else, and at dinner there is usually somebody glad of the conversation.
The shape of a day on tour
Days are planned but not crammed. A guided visit in the morning, lunch somewhere sensible, an afternoon that might be a second excursion or time of your own. The Andalucían tour sets it out plainly: guided mornings in Seville and Granada, with free hours in between.
Entrance fees are settled before you leave home. The Alhambra, the Vatican Museums, Topkapi Palace, Tresco Abbey Garden — you walk in with the group instead of queueing with a card in your hand. Several tours include headsets, which makes a real difference when a guide is talking in a busy gallery.
Evening meals are taken together on most tours, at the hotel or a local restaurant, and nobody minds if you would rather have a quiet night. The pace suits people who want to look at things properly and would rather not be back on the coach in twenty minutes.
What is included
Most open tours are priced to cover the travelling, the beds, the guiding and the things you have come to see. In practice that means return travel from the UK — flights with luggage, Eurostar, ferry or private coach — plus the transport needed for the itinerary once you arrive.
Hotels are typically three or four star, with breakfast each morning and a set number of evening meals. Listed excursions and entrance fees are paid for in advance: guided walking tours, museum and palace admissions, boat trips, and on some tours a concert or festival ticket. Guiding varies, from an experienced driver to a local tour manager or site guides.
Inclusions differ from one tour to the next, so treat the individual tour page as the definitive list.
Tours built around a fixed date
Some of these holidays exist because of one week in the calendar. Girona's Temps de Flors fills the courtyards and stone stairways of the old town with flowers each May, and private doorways that are shut for the rest of the year are opened to visitors. Brussels lays its begonia carpet across the Grand-Place only every other August.
Others turn on a performance: La Traviata in the Roman arena at Verona, a Strauss and Mozart programme at the Wiener Konzerthaus, Kynren's open-air retelling of British history in County Durham. Istanbul's tulips come out in April, which is the whole point of that tour, and northern Sweden in high summer means a sun that never quite sets.
Dates like these do not move for anybody, so departures are limited and they fill. If you have your eye on one, come to us early.
Open departures or a private group
The difference is simply who fills the coach. On an open tour you buy a place and we assemble the group. On a private tour, one organiser books the whole holiday for their own party — a garden club, a U3A branch, a church group, an extended family — and picks dates that suit them.
Neither is better. A gardening society whose members already know one another is usually happier with its own tour and its own timetable. A couple who fancy Puglia in the autumn, or someone travelling alone who would rather not organise a thing, are better served by a scheduled departure.
If you belong to a group and are weighing up the two, tell us roughly how many you are and what you would like to see. We will say honestly which route makes more sense for you.
