Travel Groupies : No City in the World Is Remote Enough to Escape the Impact of the Guided Tour

THE TOUR GROUP is a strange modern social institution that began in the 1960s when the commercial jet airplane became common. (Actually, the Boeing 707 made its first commercial flight with Pan American Airways on Dec. 20, 1957.)

As a reporter, I was supposed to have been on the first Pan Am flight to Rome and Paris, but the local plane connecting us with the overseas plane had engine trouble and missed the New York takeoff. I went with a group of local correspondents on the next plane.

It was obvious, from that first flight, that the world had changed. Air travel was going to become more available, and the leisurely ocean cruise to Europe would soon become a thing of the past. But no one foresaw, I suspect, that the jet would carry swarming millions to almost every remote quarter of the earth.

Most of these hordes travel in tour groups. That is, they sign up for a guided tour, travel with their group by airplane to the first destination, then transfer to a bus that takes them to whatever cities and countries they have set out to visit.

So ubiquitous is the guided tour that no city is too remote to feel its impact. Nowhere in the world does a well-known monument exist that hundreds of tourists are not disgorged at its base every hour.

Any of us who have taken guided tours know the dismay we feel when we drive up to some famous square or museum and see dozens of other buses parked there ahead of us. Every famous church and palace is crowded. Everywhere we go, we see little groups clustered around their tour guide, listening to his or her incessant chatter.

Not long ago, I sat on a stone in front of the Temple of Luxor, in Egypt, and heard five tour guides explaining the sight to five tour groups in five languages. Perhaps Americans are the most prodigious travelers, but the Germans and the Japanese are not far behind.

One thing all guided tour groups share with one another: Unless they have been extremely well-planned, with lots of time allowed for getting from one place to another and lots of time for rest or going out on one’s own, the common denominator of the guided tour is fatigue.

The schedules imposed on some groups are little short of cruel. One of the big advantages of tour groups is that one does not have to carry one’s bags into the hotel; they are left outside one’s door by a bellman. This advantage vanishes, however, when one is obliged to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning in time to have one’s bags out in the hall for the next day’s journey.

The worst thing that can happen is that one gets sick and has to be left behind. That has never happened to me, but the feeling must be utter despair. The next worst thing is that one is thrown in with a pickup group of incompatible people. Once, on a tour of Germany, we were all annoyed by three boors who sat in the back of the bus, drank beer, belched and made crude remarks. But that is rare. Mostly, one’s companions are pleasant, patient and stoic. What they will be cheerful about in the way of truly abominable exigencies is just unbelievable. Everyone accepts unpleasantness with good cheer.

People you know slightly exhibit unimagined qualities under guided-tour conditions. On our tour of Egypt, a demure young woman who had been in my high school graduating class turned out to be a belly dancer of truly spellbinding skill. She astonished us all.

Several years ago, my wife and I went on a guided tour to Moscow and Leningrad with a group from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We still treasure some of the friendships we made on that trip. I am sure we also made lasting friendships on our recent tour of Egypt and Israel with a Music Center group.

To say the best for the guided tour, it is a way to travel for people who otherwise couldn’t afford it, couldn’t do it on their own and might be lonely.

But one does have the feeling of being in a herd of sheep, led this way and that by one’s tour guide. Tour guides are of several types: Some talk too little, some talk too much, and some of them make things up. I once had a guide who told us the most amazing facts that turned out, we learned later, not to be true.

When guided tours first became popular, I swore that I would never take one. I have now taken guided tours of the Danube country, Bavaria, Morocco, New England, Egypt, Israel and the pyramids of Mexico.

What is my conclusion?

Next time, take the train.