Carol with Juan Pablo, our Kensington Tours private guide in Buenos Aires.

When today’s luxury travelers are considering a journey overseas, there are many great options available.  You can visit from a region’s sea ports on an ocean cruise, you can explore from within on a river cruise, you can experience a land journey with a small group tour; for the do-it-yourselfer, you can explore a new country on your own, or with growing popularity, folks are discovering private customized tours.

Private custom travel is growing in popularity because it allows you to set your own schedule.  With private custom travel you’re not forced to bend to the schedule of a fairly large group of people, and you have the ability to tailor the experience to your specific interests.

In our own travel agency, Carol and I have used the services of Kensington Tours (a private custom tour company) quite often because it has allowed us to craft highly specialized and custom travel experiences for our clients.  And, with overwhelming praise, our clients have returned raving about their experiences.

Until recently, Carol and I had not experienced a private custom tour.  However, when our friends at Kensington Tours learned that we were headed to South America, they asked if they might help us experience our own private customized tour.  As their offer allowed us more authenticity when recommending such an experience to our clients, we enthusiastically said, “yes”.

Carol with Rosario, our private Kensington Tours guide showing us the historic town of Colonia del Sacramento.

We were headed to Montevideo, Uruguay as the result of a photography contest I won at Virtuoso’s Travel Week last year, and with their in-country travel experts they crafted a fabulous experience for us that explored Uruguay, and then across the Rio de la Plata to explore Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Before we left, we had a conference call with our American contact, and their South American in-country expert.  After learning what types of experiences we would most enjoy, Kensington Tours presented us with a beautiful booklet that itemized our daily itinerary, contained important travel tips for South America, and perhaps most comforting of all, local contact numbers should something in our itinerary go awry.

When we arrived in both countries, we were welcomed at the airport by our local, private tour guide who was in charge of our daily itineraries, and who would accompany us for the four days that we were in each of the two countries.  Not only was it comforting to have a local effortlessly moving us about in a new foreign land, but their expertise in sharing the highlights of their home country was not only informative, but we now feel as though we have new friends in Uruguay and Argentina.

Gone was all the worry about getting from here to there as we were whisked about each day in a private car, with a private driver, and our tour guide orchestrating the entire experience.  We’ve experienced this seamless travel before, but never in our own private journey.  It was fabulous, and something we plan to experience again as we explore some of the more exotic countries of the world.  No stress, pure enjoyment, and completely flexible to our personal desires.  How cool is that!

 Top 10 Reasons to Consider Private Customized Tours

1. It’s Personalized – because this is a private experience, the tour is completely tailored to suit your style of travel, and the local destinations and experiences that you wish to enjoy.
2. It’s Flexible – gone are the requirements to bend your travel desires to a group.  If you want to linger longer in a museum, or perhaps enjoy a relaxing side-stop in a street-side cafe, this is all possible.  Because, after all, this is a private tour, and you make the rules!  In Buenos Aires, we were out late for a special dining experience one night.  Dragging back to our room at midnight, we realized that we might enjoy an extra hour of sleep in the morning.  No problem.  Our guide accommodated the change.  You can’t do that with a group tour.
3. It’s Affordable – a private tour is completely tailored to meet your budget.  If you want the very best of the best, or perhaps desire more of a three, or four star experience; it’s all possible with a private customized tour.
4. It’s a Better Experience – you’re not traveling about with a group of twenty people, or God forbid, a group of forty people.  It’s just you, and your private guide.  You’re able to hear everything they have to say, you get to make friends with a local, and they are there to make your every travel desire come true.
5. Create Your Own Small Group – if you’re traveling with friends, or even perhaps a large group of family members exploring your roots in foreign countries, the group can be as small, or as large as you like.
6. You’re Not Alone – your private guide will give you their cell phone number when you’re in country.  Should you need anything, they are only a phone call away.
7. It’s Changeable – with a private guide, you have the ability to change your hotel, any activity; and if you’re feeling really wild and crazy, you can even add days to your itinerary, or even change a destination.  It’s your party, and you can cry if you want to.  Know what I mean?  🙂
8. No Worries – when traveling with a private guide, you need not spend a moment considering how you will get about the town.  You simply meet your guide in the hotel lobby, and they will move you from place to place.  It’s really nice to have all that worry completely removed from the picture.  When we were in Buenos Aires, there was a transportation strike happening in one of the large public squares.  Our guide was aware of this, and kept us completely away from the traffic snarls.
9. No lines – with a private guided tour, you will completely bypass the long lines at popular tourist destinations.  And, many times, you’ll see sights that the do-it-yourself traveler, or large groups of travelers, won’t have the opportunity to see.
10. Buying Power – in the case of Kensington Tours, they have $400 million of buying power.  This gives them unquestioned clout when you desire an experience beyond the norm.

Listen, we absolutely loved our Kensington Tours experience, and we hope to do it again, and again.  It’s a wonderful way to explore a new and exotic region of the world.  And, as I mentioned above, we also have many raving fans in our travel agency who completely concur.

Does this mean we’ll never again take an ocean cruise, a river cruise, or a small group tour?  No.  We’re sharing this with you because we think that a private customized tour should be one of the arrows in your travel quiver.  And when you’re considering visiting a destination, ask yourself, “what’s the best way to see this destination?”  And in our opinion, quite often, a private customized tour just might be the ticket.

By the way, you should also know that we’re not the only ones tooting the Kensington Tours horn.  They’re perennially winning the praise of National Geographic with their “50 Tours of a Lifetime Award”, as well as recognitions from Travel +Leisure.

Further, they’ve made the cut to become one of the Virtuoso Travel Network’s preferred luxury travel suppliers.  In short, you can expect an exceptional experience from a company that understands that they must make raving fans out of each and every traveler.

They made raving fans of us, and we give them two BIG thumbs up!

If you’d like to explore your own private customized Kensington Tours experience give us a call at (480) 550-1235.  We’ll take care of all the details, and set you on our own amazing private custom tour.

So, let’s get started!  What new country can we help you arrange a private customized travel experience?  Maybe Europe, the Far East, South America, New Zealand, Australia, or perhaps even an African safari?  Kensington Tours offers experiences all over the world, and we’re here to help!

Link: www.kensingtontours.com

Disclosure: our private custom tour was provided by the very kind folks at Kensington Tours. Thanks! We had a blast!
 
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