It is common practice that when you book a “private” tour directly with an travel agency or through OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like TripAdvisor, Viator, GetYourGuide, ToursByLocals, TourRadar, etc., you are presented with many tours labeled as “private” that are not. They mean “small group” but not “priavte”! Some of them can be private, but most of them are not.
Let’s start with this:
When selecting the number of travelers from any booking system, you can see the Maximum number of travelers this tour allows.
If this “Maximum” number is more than 8 (12, 16, 32, 60, etc), you are definitely not booking a “private” tour! More people will fill the gaps! Not only that, but when the time/date of the tour approaches, the agency will most likely cancel your tour if they don’t have enough passengers to justify their vehicle’s expenses and much-needed profit.
If the “Maximum” number is 8, then you have a chance of booking a private tour, even though you are, let’s say, 2 people! However, if, let’s say, your group is just 2 or 3 people, you will probably have unknown passengers next to you. Thus… a non-private tour! So, before you book, ask (in writing) if there will be other people with you during the trip.
Unfortunately, most of the online booking systems and OTAs allow us (tour agencies) to label a tour as private because they don’t have the means or the time to check if a tour is really private.
On the other hand, we -the tour providers/agencies- we like to … mislead customers by labeling a tour as “private” when we actually mean that it is a “small group” tour. So, you will be traveling with some unknown passengers which is nice if this was your intention to start with.
Not honest? Misleading? Still, it happens!
You don’t have to discover on the day of the tour that your private tour is not! You will be picking up different people from different places. To avoid this issue, just do the obvious checks mentioned above and also explicitly ask your potential supplier of the tour if you will be the ONLY passengers on the tour!
Checking and comparing prices will also give you a good indication that a tour is not private. The non-private or small group ones will be from cheaper to a lot cheaper than the real private ones! We—the tour suppliers—all have very similar expenses to cover and a decent profit to make, so if the price difference is too extreme, consider it a caution signal.
A private tour is a totally different experience from a non-private one. It’s more expensive, but surely VFM if you choose the right supplier.
Do your homework, do your research! Have fun!