Planning

Private or group, and when to save the money

The arithmetic of dividing a vehicle and a guide between two people or twelve, what you actually lose on a group departure, and the cases where a group tour is the better buy.

Plan my trip

What we actually sell

Everything on this site is private. The eight-traveller ceiling is the maximum size of your own party, not a number of strangers we fill a minibus with. There are no fixed departure dates and no joining a group.

That is a choice with a price attached, and this page exists to set out that price fairly enough that some people read it and book a group tour instead.

The arithmetic, plainly

A guide costs USD 45 to 90 a day depending on the country. A vehicle with a driver costs USD 45 to 160. Those numbers do not change with the number of passengers. Everything else — hotels, meals, entrance fees, flights — is per person and does not change either.

Party size	Guide and vehicle, per person per day	Effect on the day rate
1	USD 115 - 250	Solo supplement of 35 - 45 per cent
2	USD 58 - 125	The baseline our prices quote
3 - 4	USD 29 - 63	About 20 per cent below the baseline
5 - 8	USD 15 - 31	About 30 per cent below the baseline
16 on a group departure	USD 7 - 16	Where the low headline prices come from

That is the whole mechanism. A sixteen-person group tour is not cheaper because the operator is more efficient; it is cheaper because sixteen people are dividing one guide and one coach. Everything else follows from that.

What you actually get for the difference

Your own timing. Angkor at 07:30 and off the site at 11:00 is a decision a private trip can make and a coach schedule cannot.
Your own pace. The ability to abandon an afternoon because it is 38 degrees, or to spend two more hours somewhere because it turned out to be interesting.
Vehicles that fit the road. On the Ha Giang loop and the road to Nong Khiaw, a minibus for eight goes places a coach for forty cannot.
A guide who is answering your questions. With sixteen people, the guide answers the loudest three.
Hotels chosen for the trip. Group departures use hotels that can take forty people at once, which in Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw and Kampot rules out almost everything good.
No commission stops. This is the real one. A large part of the gap between a cheap group price and a real one is made up in shopping stops, and a coach of forty is what makes a lacquer showroom viable.

When a group tour is the better buy

We would rather say this here than have you find out afterwards.

You are travelling alone and want company. A solo private trip costs 35 to 45 per cent more per day and you eat dinner alone. A small-group departure solves both problems at once, and that is a good reason.
Your budget is genuinely fixed and below about USD 100 a day. Below that, a private trip means cutting the guide or the hotel to a level we would not recommend, and a good group operator will give you more for the money.
You want the standard route and do not care about the timing. If Bangkok, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City in the usual order is exactly what you want, a group tour delivers it at a lower price.
You like the social side. Some people have a better trip with fifteen strangers than with a guide and a driver. That is a preference, not a compromise.

If two or more of those apply to you, book a group tour. We will not be offended and we would rather not sell you the wrong thing.

The middle option almost nobody mentions

Find four more people. A private trip for six costs roughly 30 per cent less per person than the same trip for two, which puts a properly private itinerary within reach of a budget that would otherwise buy a group departure.

Two couples travelling together, or a family of five or six, is the single most cost-effective way to travel in this region. We run a lot of trips at that size and it is the sweet spot: small enough for one vehicle and one guide, large enough that the fixed costs stop hurting.

The ceiling is eight. Above that we need two vehicles and the trip changes character; above twelve we decline.

What we do not do, whatever the party size

Commission stops. No gem showrooms, no silk factories, no lacquer workshops, no pearl farms, no coffee plantations that are really a shop. Our guides are paid a day rate so they do not need them.
Shared guides across countries. Each country gets its own national guide. One guide accompanying you across four countries sounds like continuity and is a guide working outside their expertise for three of them.
Star ratings instead of hotel names. Every itinerary names the actual hotel.
Fixed departures. If you want one, we are the wrong company.
Groups over twelve. We can staff twelve as two vehicles and it stops being the trip we describe. Above twelve we say no.

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is a private trip twice the price of a group tour?

For two people, it is often 60 to 100 per cent more than a large-group headline price. For five or six people, the gap narrows to 20 or 30 per cent.

Some of that headline gap is not real, because group prices frequently exclude flights and entrance fees that we include. Compare inclusions before you compare numbers.

Can I join another party to share costs?

We do not run a matching service, because a trip where two parties who have never met are dividing decisions tends to satisfy neither.

If you know the other party, we will happily quote you as one group.

What is the solo supplement?

Roughly 35 to 45 per cent on the per-day rate, made up of the whole vehicle and guide plus a single-room supplement at hotels.

We do not add a margin on top of that. It is what it costs.

What if my party size changes after booking?

We re-price. If someone drops out the per-person rate rises, and if someone joins it falls, and either way we show you the arithmetic rather than just a new number.