Writing for an Academic Discussion A travel agency with a guided tour or to plan your own trip and explore without a guide?

Question: Which method do you think is better for experiencing new places, to go on trips organized by a travel agency with a guided tour or to plan your own trip and explore without a guide? Consider benefits and possible downsides of both approached in your answer.

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.        Compare the benefits and possible downsides of the two choices in the question.

2.        Tell the others about your choice and the reason for it.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

To go on trips organized by a travel agency with a guided tour

1.     Inexpensive: It costs much less than a solo trip.

2.     Safer: The tourist agency protests tourists from potential dangers.

3.     Efficient: The travel agency does the arrangements and booking and the guide knows everything necessary for entertainment and learning.

 

To plan your own trip and explore without a guide

1.     Free and flexible: Planning is at the discretion of the traveler and decisions can be impromptu.

2.     More interaction with the locals: Absence of a guide and other fellow travelers makes more intimate interaction with the people in the destination possible.

3.     Free from commercialism: You can contact places and things that are not set aside exclusively for tourists, such as a local market place or a gathering of the residents.

 

 

☆Essay for Ideas and Expressions

The traveler in one of Dave Mason’s beautiful songs, Mystic Traveler, would not join a guided group tour because the lyrics goes “He is an unraveler”, which connotes to anti-establishment. The song is said to be about Jesus Christ probably because of the title and such phrase as “when he takes your heart, you are not alone”, but it also seems to me to hint that there is some deep experience that we expect in traveling. Whether this traveler is Jesus or Jack in the street, he is not a consumer but the stranger and outsider, and the interaction with him reveals the secret of life and merges the souls of those involved with him in love and eternity, which few in guided group tours would experience. A guided tour may well be a best, but may not be the best.

 

Traveling is an action driven by various reasons. People have traveled for various reasons since ancient times. We may travel to find something new: a new land, a new friend, or a new self. We may travel to see the world, to visit the places of our ancestors, or to challenge ourselves. We might also travel for fun. The word travel seems to me to connote an action driven by a dire need for something essential in our inner life. Depending on the need, we choose the best form of traveling that fits the need. For example, a man who wants to see the world may want to travel alone so that he can directly have a feel of the place he is visiting, and a woman who feels that she is losing herself will visit her hometown without a company to listen to the voices in her memory she recalls at the sites she visits and people she meets there. Friends who want to make their bond stronger may try not to join in group tours, and a group of insect collectors may be disappointed if they are taken to a famous café in downtown Paris instead of the forest nearby, where there are indigenous bugs. Traveling means much more than merely taking a sightseeing tour. When I hear the word traveler, I think of an explorer of reality, seeking meaningful interactions with people or nature outside the person’s daily life. For this matter, traveling alone seems to be the most natural because a group tour with a tour guide is an extension of daily life.

 

A guided group tour is a commercial attraction which is a win-win product between the tour industry and busy workers in the developed world. Tourists who want to enjoy themselves away from home and work, experience something exotic, and make some good memories choose a guided tour for convenience and safety, and they usually go in a group because of the spirit of the saying, “The more, the merrier.” The tourism follows the rule of the economy of scale. Booking for transportation, accommodation, and attractions such as local theaters and restaurants in large numbers lowers the costs. The tour guide entertains the tourists and safely takes them back home. It is probably the most popular style of travel as a leisure activity, although it is not certain that people think it the best way to travel because it usually does not provides more than it promises like other mass products.

 

Perhaps I might be too romantic, believing that people want more than a package tour out of traveling, believing that they want some special experience on their own. However, solo travel is in fact very popular. My home country Japan is not an exception. Excerpts from a classic travelogue written in the medieval Japan, “Oku no Hosomichi,  Back Roads to Far Towns, are in textbooks in junior high schools. About half a century ago, Makoto Oda, a Japanese student from the University of Tokyo, who was then at Harvard, traveled around the world alone with only a return air ticket and 200 dollars. After the journey, he wrote a travelogue, Nandemo Miteyaro, I’ll Go and See Everything, which became the bestseller in Japan. Now, many people around the world travel without a guide. Travel agencies have started providing various kinds of tours to meet various demands of both experienced travelers who are fed up with package tours and people who are from the beginning interested in specific destinations which happen to be out of the tourism network. For many people, a guided group tour is not the best choice.

 

The word travel encompasses a broad range of activities related, either directly or indirectly, to our existence, while a guided group tour is a relatively new activity for fun. The best way to travel efficiently for sport can be in a group led by a tour guide. However, the best way to travel varies depending on what the traveler is in search of, and I believe we all want to be a mystic traveler deep in our heart when we say, “I’ve got to hit the road.”

 

 

☆Sample Responses

Sample 1

【Thesis】I think that a group led by a tour guide is better than solo traveling because a group tour is inexpensive and it ensures safety and satisfaction.

【Supporting Details】It allows us to visit popular sightseeing spots with group-discount rates that at least 20% off for a score of tourists. The guide’s recommendation and lecture helps the tourists to make the most out of what they paid for the tour. A comparison between a school trip and an individual family trip would clearly show how much more effective and efficient a guided group tour is.

【Counterargument-treatment】An obvious downside is that it allows little freedom, but it helps avoid a disaster. A visit to an unfamiliar place tends to cause disorientation, loss of belongings, and involvement in crimes. To avoid such disasters, an organized tour is offered by the industry. Also, a group tour allows for freedom by providing options not to join guided tours.

【Conclusion】Considering risks and disadvantages associated with traveling alone without a guide, I do not have much problem in saying that the guided group tour is a better way to travel. (182 words)

 

Sample 2

【Thesis】Joining a group tour with a guide may not be the better than traveling on your own depending on the goal of the trip.

【What is Traveling?】Traveling is an action driven by various reasons from curiosity to new places and peoples to testing oneself to a way of soul-searching.

【Group Tour with Guide】A guided group tour is an attraction which is a win-win product between the tour industry and the majority in the developed world, busy workers. Safe, organized tours offered with reasonable charges based on economy of scale meets the demand of novice travelers who want to make the best of what they can pay for their leisure time in their tight schedules.

【Solo Tour】However, taking a solo trip has been in fact very popular since ancient times. The popularity seems to be related to our primal urge to go beyond our comfort zone and find the truth of our existence.

【Conclusion】Thus fulfillment a solo travel can offer is better in quality than what a guided group tour can.  (146 words)

 

 

Your Sample Response Structure

A

【Introduction】

【Supporting Details】

【Counterargument-treatment】

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】

 

B

【Introduction】

【A Guided Group Tour】

【A Solo Trip】

【Conclusion】

 

Write your response in 10 minutes. Show each other your responses. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s response.

 

                                                   DRAFT