94. Cruising vs Touring: Which Luxury Travel Experience Is Right For You?

You know where you want to take your next vacation...but how do you want to see those places? Is a cruise or a land tour right for you? In today's episode, I'm breaking down the pros and cons of each travel option, so that you can decide which luxury travel experience is the best fit for your upcoming adventure. 

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Transcript

Hello, jetsetters. Welcome back to another episode of Jetsetting with Me. We are up to episode 94, and today is cruising versus a land based tour. What is the right mode for you? But before we do, I mentioned this is episode 94, which means in just six more weeks, I'm having a celebration, and there are gifts for you. That is to celebrate my hundredth episode, a milestone I'm not really sure I ever thought I would have fortitude to get to. So if you want to be eligible to win any of my prizes, there are going to be several, Amazon gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, and lots of travel stuff. But one lucky winner can win up to $300 in travel perks. For example, if you plan a cruise, I will turn that into onboard credit for you.

If you are going on a land based tour and you need transfer service from the airport, consider that done. So future vacations, $300. You have to be in it to win it. So sign up now at the link in the show description. And I can tell you, based on the amount of sign ups that I have right now, your chances, if you are listening to this, are very, very high that you could win something, so be sure and sign up. So I said today was about cruising versus touring and what's right for you. I am in the middle of planning an Ireland, Scotland Eightieth birthday trip for a group of 10 women who are all in their 75 and older range. Actually, most of them are a little over 80.

And they wanna do basically, like, a ten to two week tour. They wanna see both Ireland and Scotland, and they want an intimate touring experience. So I started off thinking land based tour, it's two countries. They wanna really see all of both countries, but that does mean packing and unpacking a lot. So after going back and forth, I actually ended up landing on a cruise. And so I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about why. So definitions. I always start with the basic definitions.

Cruise, floating hotel, beautiful appointed suites, usually has a spa, always has a gym, lots of theater and activities, and always known for the food and the many options of eating twenty four hours a day. Once heard a comic on a cruise ship who talked about the only reason people go on the cruise ship is for the buffet. Land tours typically evoke a picture of a 50 passenger bus. There are small group adventures that are between 24 or a max of 24, but most land tours that we're talking about, just for sake of definition, really have about 48 people. You rotate seating on the bus. You stay in different hotels, but you get a very, very thorough journey from perhaps one side of the country to the other, as I just did in the Laplands, which you heard about recently. And then we have the river cruise, which I'm gonna make its own separate category and talk about at the very end of this podcast. So the first thing to consider if you wanna do a cruise or a land tour is do you want convenience versus comfort? An ocean cruise, you only unpack once.

Let me say that again for those of you in the cheap seats. You only unpack once. You set up in your beautifully appointed suite. It's a floating hotel. Luxury ocean cruises have unmatched convenience comfort. You can basically eat twenty four hours a day. You can watch sunrise, sunset, party, and then I be awake in the morning. There's pools.

I used to think when I would go on an ocean cruise that I always wanted to be in a city, but I have grown to like, I won't go on a cruise now unless there's at least one sea day because I love the actual, like, ship that I'm on. And there have been cruises that I have taken where I haven't even gotten off the ship. So that ease is a significant advantage for those who prefer a more relaxed pace. The journey itself is as pleasurable as all of the places you are going. Now a land based tour, and there are very luxury land based tours. They offer exquisite stays in premium hotels or villas, or in the case of Ireland and Scotland, you can go and stay in a castle. But you are gonna have to pack and unpack multiple times as you move from one location to another. It requires more effort, and it requires more time in that mode of transportation, which I said usually evokes passenger bus, but it could be a smaller motor car for 10.

It just might not appeal to you if you want a more leisurely travel experience. Next, an all inclusive experience. So ocean cruises are all inclusive. They incorporate your gourmet meals, your entertainment. Many of them include excursions. Sometimes you can get onboard credit that, you know, you can use in the spa. It simplifies your budgeting, and it also allows you to fully indulge and immerse yourself without reaching for your wallet or feeling like you're nickel and dime'd. Land based tours, again, there are very luxury tours like Abercrombie in Kent or Talc.

Even some of the ones that I work with, like CIE, Globus, and Trafalgar, they do offer high end touring, smaller intimate groups, or customized tours, but they don't always include every meal. And usually, the meals that are included are not, quote, unquote, restaurant slash fine dining. Often, they have preselected the meals for you. Usually, it doesn't include any adult beverages, even soda. On my most recent land tour, it was water only. So you will encounter additional expenses for activities and meals that are not included in the package, that are considered extra for that. For example, taking this Ireland and Scotland trip to do a land based tour, like, the Scottish evening dinner with dancing was not included in the price. You have to add that in to get a full budget picture, whereas on an ocean cruise, that would be included.

Okay. There's a variety of entertainment and enrichment. So cruises cater to guests with their vast array of onboard entertainment. You can get live shows. Some of them, like Oceania, have a cooking school where you can do cooking classes. Most of them have art galleries. They bring on speaker series. They have theme nights, like virgin voyages and their scarlet night.

There's enriching workshops. There's classes that you can do on the sea days, and you can engage in diverse activities tailored to your interests without stepping off the ship, like trivia, for example. On a land based tour, you're going to be so busy during the day that you don't get any of that trivia or enrichment type lectures, but they do focus heavily on those destination specific experiences, so you're going to get more access to local culture, exclusive sites that they have access to that you might not get access to otherwise. Entertainment may be planned within the destination, as I said, like the Scotland trip. You can go for a dinner show experience, but it generally requires some more active participation and travel within the locale. Now, finally, river cruising can be the perfect middle ground. You get the intimate and immersive experience because they provide a more intimate setting. There's fewer passengers on a river cruise than an ocean cruise.

Obviously, the ships are much smaller. It's more like a land based tour in terms of the number of people, and the smaller vessels allow for jockeying right in the heart of cities and towns, so you get that fabulous cultural immersion. You feel like you are part of the city. It does have the convenience of unpacking only once, just like an ocean cruise. So you unpack over only once, and you get settled into your stateroom or suite, And you can therefore relax in that comfort throughout your journey as opposed to packing and unpacking and moving location hotels while you're on your journey. River cruises excel in curating exclusive excursions. Tauck is one of the best at that. It lets travelers explore destinations very deeply, very authentically.

You can enjoy personalized and more focused tours. If you have a group of of 10, you can get your own tour. It reflects the structured itineraries of a more high end land tour. But it is important to remember that river cruising comes with a higher price tag. The intimate setting, the premium service, those niche experiences, they are all an elevated cost. So if you want the ease of an ocean cruise and the cultural immersion of a land based tour and your budget can fit into that, river cruising is an excellent, excellent option for you. Hopefully, these distinctions between an ocean, a land tour, and a river cruise can help you choose one, two, or three. Some of us can do all and enjoy them all for what they offer.

Really comes down to your personal preference for convenience, inclusivity, and the type of the cultural experience or cultural immersion that you want to have. So I look forward to helping you choose and getting you booked on your vacation for sometime this year or even into next year. Believe it or not, river cruise Christmas markets for 2025 are already sold out, so you already have to be looking at 2026 for that. Stay tuned for more travel tips and luxury travel hacks. And until next week, travel safe.