Group vs Private & Guide Languages

On a group tour you share the vehicle and the guide with other travellers. On a private tour nobody else joins you: the guide, the driver and the vehicle are yours, and the day runs at your pace.

The route and the sites are the same in both. The differences are who you travel with, how flexible the day is and the price. A group place is the cheaper way to see Turkey. A private tour costs more per person for two travellers, and the price difference becomes smaller as more people join your own group.

Both options sit in the booking form on every tour page with the price for each, so you can compare them on your own dates before deciding.

Group departures have a maximum of 15 people. This is a strict maximum, not the number we try to fill on every departure. Keeping the group small helps the day feel more personal than a large coach excursion.

Most departures run smaller. Outside the busiest months a group of six or eight is common, and a quiet date can mean four.

Southeast Turkey tours have the same maximum of 15 people.

English is the default, and the price shown on every tour page is for an English speaking guide.

Spanish and Italian are available as private tours on the routes covering Istanbul, Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Ephesus, Troy, Gallipoli and Antalya. On a private tour the guide is yours, so the language is simply the one you choose.

Spanish group tours exist on a shorter list: the Cappadocia Red and Yellow tours, the Gallipoli and Troy days, and the Ephesus and Pamukkale days. There is no Spanish group tour in Istanbul and none on the Cappadocia Green Tour. Italian runs as a private tour only.

The booking form shows only the combinations we can provide. If it offers a language together with a tour format, that combination is available on your dates. For any other language, write to us and we will tell you honestly whether a licensed guide can be found.

It depends on how you like to travel and how many of you there are.

A private tour earns its price if you want to stay longer at one site and skip another, if you are travelling with small children or someone who tires, if you would rather talk to the guide than listen to a group, or if there are four or more of you, when sharing the cost makes the price per person more affordable.

A group tour is the better buy for one or two people on a budget, or for travellers who enjoy meeting others. The guide is the same licensed professional either way.

There is one case where private is not optional. A wheelchair user at Ephesus needs a private tour, because a group cannot take the longer accessible route.

Within reason, yes. You can spend an hour longer somewhere, cut a stop that does not interest you, add a coffee break, or change the order of the day's visits to avoid a crowd. The guide will tell you what fits.

What cannot move is anything that has a fixed time or a ticket already purchased: a domestic flight, a timed museum entry, a balloon slot. Sites keep their own opening hours too, and a few close one day a week.

Bigger changes, such as adding a city or a whole extra site, are better handled before you travel so we can price them and arrange the tickets. Email us, or build the trip you want in the Turkey trip planner and book that instead.

One person books for everyone and the rest pay them back, or you book separately and ask us to put you together. Both work.

Booking as one reservation is simpler. It keeps the party in one vehicle, in rooms next to each other and on one set of documents, and it means one cancellation deadline instead of several.

If you would rather each pay your own share, book one at a time on the same tour and the same date, then email us the booking references. We will put you on the same departure and in the same hotel where the rooms allow it. Send the references before we assign the hotels, so we can plan the rooms together.

Write to us rather than booking online. For more than twelve people, the way the costs are shared changes: a private tour with its own coach is usually cheaper per person than twelve or more group places, and it gives you a vehicle nobody else is on.

Send the dates, the number of travellers, the ages of any children and the tour you are looking at to info@toliratours.com, and we come back with a price for the group as a whole.

For groups above twenty, we check the rooming list with you before confirming the booking. This list shows who will share each room. That is where large group bookings usually go wrong, and it is much cheaper to fix on paper than at a reception desk.

Yes, and plenty of people do. A group departure is the easiest way to travel alone in Turkey. You get a guide, a seat and a small group of travellers who are seeing the same thing you are.

Being one person on the vehicle costs nothing extra. The extra cost for travelling alone is the hotel room. A room used by one person costs more per person than a room shared by two people.

Nobody is put in a room with a stranger. A single booking gets a single room.