Package tour vs self-service tour
Picture by Zhu Lijun
Collected by Jack Li

自助游还是团队游?相信每一个出游者都有自己的考虑与选择.二者,究竟孰是孰优,很难有明晰的判断.4月16日举办的双语周刊时代英语沙龙,热心读者也为此争论不休.

Ready for the coming May holiday tour? There is no denial that traveling enjoys growing popularity. Some people choose to go on a package tour with a travel agency, while others prefer a self-service trip. Both ways of traveling have their advantages and disadvantages. Which way would you choose to travel?

I choose, I like

Wen Lei, an English major in XMU. She was born in Shandong while being brought up in Canton, which enables her to get along with people from both the North and the South. Which is better, self-service tour or package tour?

In my eyes, the self-service tour has more benefits than package tour.

In the first place, it is obvious that travelers on a self-service trip have more freedom. Before the trip, they have the freedom to decide on which route to take (of course a good decision requires the collection of detailed information about the place to visit). When they have arrived at the target place, they are free to make changes in their plan about which scenic spots to see, spending a longer time on those to their liking and skipping those not worth visiting. In contrast, if one takes a package trip, all that is not possible, for he is at the mercy of the travel agency or the tour guide: confined to the route prearranged and having no say on what sights to see and how long a time to spend at a certain scenic spot; as a result fully enjoying himself is out of the question.

In the second place, frauds are more often than not associated with package tours. Once, I went to the Wuyi Mountain on a package tour with more than seventy travelers. The local guide took us to a jade shop, where one of the staff, learning that we were from Canton, said that he would ask his boss to receive us, for he was Cantonese. Then came the boss, who announced, in Cantonese of course, that we would enjoy a 90% discount off every jade article we bought. Greatly delighted by the chance of luck, many of my fellow travelers could not wait to get their good bargains, abundantly. Upon leaving, outside the shop, some of us showed off our trophies to travelers with another tourist group, only to find that everything was a fraud: every tourist group was received by the boss who spoke their native dialect and enjoyed the same discount. Of course the "boss" is just an ordinary salesperson employed by the real boss to lure the travelers into buying jade products which were not at all worth the money. When you travel on your own, on the other hand, there is much less possibility of getting involved in such a fraud.

Admittedly, a self-service trip can be inconvenient and perhaps more costly. In spite of that, due to the obvious disadvantages of the package tour, I will probably refrain from it and go on a self-service tour.

My top choice for tours

Annie, a girl who likes reading, music, traveling and making friends, hopes one day to be your friend through sharing ideas in Common Talk.

It is true that group tours indeed meet some people's needs for traveling. However, personally speaking, the self-service tour is always my top choice for travel. I think it is especially conducive for youth to try a self-service tour, for while we enjoy the tour we also learn and grow from this valuable experience.

When I was a sophomore, I had a self-service tour to Hunan and Guizhou with 3 best friends of mine during the summer vacation. When I recall that experience, one word always jumps into my mind. It is the word "freedom", the freedom of enjoying the trip out of our own will. For instance, in order to avoid the crowd and traffic jam, we decided to start out at 5 o'clock in the morning. No need to rush here and there according to the inflexible itinerary given by a tourist agent, allowed us to enjoy our trip with great ease. It was at that moment I vividly knew how beautiful my country is and what magnificent nature we have in the world. Nobody counted the minutes of our stay and nobody confined our activity area while we discovered the beauty of nature with surprise. Self-service tour gives us the freedom to touch real nature, not just have a glance at it; to appreciate the greatness of our historical relics, and not just know what they are.

As youth, we also learn and grow from the experience of a self-service tour. The freedom we had for the self -service tour was based on the meticulous tour plan we made in advance. The best itinerary to our destination was figured out after detailed investigation, which really helped us save money and avoid the peak hours of transportation. We also collected and studied the materials of scenic spots, which were internalized to our own knowledge after traveling. Moreover, we took into consideration the dangerous situations we might have had to face on the way and well equipped ourselves with various precautionary measures. Most importantly, we learned and practiced to be good team players on our self-service tour. Each of us had different responsibilities for our trip. That self-service tour didn't last long, only being a ten-day tour, but we all found that we learned so much after the tour; we had become more mature than before.

This year I have planned another self-service tour for the coming holiday. So if you share the same ideas with me and want to learn from fun, why not join me? Let's start our self-service tour. Just do it.

Travel in pairs

Su Wei, born in Hunan Province, is now a first year graduate in College of Foreign Languages and Culture of Xiamen University, majoring in interpreting. He has a wide range of interests like travel, writing, sports and singing.

The idea of traveling in pairs may sound dispensable or even ridiculous to you. Anyway, the amount of pleasure derived from sightseeing has nothing to do with your company. What's the difference between traveling alone and in pairs? In fact, a good partner does count in a number of ways.

To begin with, with a companion you can share your feelings, exchange ideas and views of the scenery. The sight of the attraction, be it historical heritage or natural landscape, will always arouse your interest, afford you fresh experience, and activate your thoughts. Once a congenial companion is there, his or her similar feeling can often strike sound resonance in you.

Besides, traveling in pairs will enhance mutual understanding, and bring the two closer. It is common knowledge that the more a pair are together, the better they will know each other and travel can offer such an ideal opportunity.

Last but not least, traveling in pairs brings you a sense of safety, and obliterates possible loneliness. Fortunate indeed are those tourists who can take care of each other and remind each other of necessary details. Sometimes just the knowledge of being cared about by someone can bring you profound joy. Imagine such a scenario: Sunshine, breeze, palm groves in the idyllic stretches of sand along the Island Ring Road. Lovers, friends or families stroll happily on the picturesque beach, while you are out there alone, wanting someone with whom you can have your bag watched by while you are in washroom. What's the item other tourists have and enjoy while you haven't? A travel partner!

Pros 正方
Organized tourism vastly increases income to a particular area or country, not only via direct spending but also through taxation and the buying of luxury goods which creates a larger market than would be possible with purely local spending. In many less developed countries, tourism acts as an alternative to cash crops, improving terms of trade and creating a more diversified economic base. Hence it will introduce more opportunities for jobs.
-Jack, a talk show host

The number of tourists will continue to rise due to cheaper travel and greater access to previously closed countries anyway-so it is better to try to provide facilities for them than to allow unlimited access.
-Sherry

Tour guides will always have interesting stories to tell about the site you visit and greatly expand your knowledge of the place, hence making the tour more enjoyable and informative.
-Marry


Cons 反方
People should travel by themselves in order to get in touch with the real nature. Organized tourism groups only help people to rush from one place to another, hence a great waste of our time. What's more, more often than not, tour guides will arrange a long time for the group in shops for souvenir purchasing or even some fake products for their personal profit.
-Solomon

One can learn to survive in nature by traveling around by themselves. The ability of survival has been long neglected in modern society, and travel should be a great chance for them to pick it up again, but not just a comfortable walk around.
-Alex, Software Engineer

One can be proactive and learn a lot from books like Lonely Planet and World Guide about the place before or during a trip. Self learning about a place will make for a much more interesting tour.
-Mike, an English professor