Personal travel pricing vs agency pricing

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van

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I have just completed booking a 42 day journey through the Rockie Mts of USA. The booking cost for 3 pax of $30 000 included return business airfares, car hire, hotels (mainly Holiday Inn), tourist trains and a helicopter flight. A tour company, by combining a few bus tours, quoted $95 000 for 3 pax without airfares, trains and helicopter. This appears to be a nice profit for the tour company. Any one else had this experience?
 
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It would really depend if you're comparing apples with apples. I imagine there are a lot of differences.
 
The only major differences are: start and end point (Dallas for us, Los Angeles for the tours), days in stops (tour co. spends more time in Las Vegas but equivalent time in start points) and stop overs (we are wiggling north from El Paso to Yellowstone and back through the mid-west, tour co. moves from west to east and back north of Las Vegas). Hotels are equivalent class but tour co. uses a 40+ passenger bus whilst we are using a rental Subaru outback. Tour co. includes most meals which are extra to our costs + fuel (these I estimate to be an extra $15 000). This still bring my booking to half the cost of an organised tour. I found a similar experience with a self-drive/cruise in the Canadian Rockies/Inside Passage years ago.
 
There is almost always a fat margin for these types of trips. The cynic in me believes it's because of who they are actually targeted at - probably those who don't know any better. But then again, if you don't shop around/be independent as you have been, you've got to pay the asking rate...
 
This still bring my booking to half the cost of an organised tour.

That's 50% up from the $30K Vs $90K mentioned in your first post, but the margin of the tour still seems a lot. I can't imagine spending $90K for a 42 day tour!

Won't close the difference much, but I imagine the tour prices in tips at full rates for everyone that breathes close to the tour, etc etc.
 
A few years back I priced an all in package to a ski resort in UTAH via a ski travel company. It was at least 75% more than what I could get booking myself

Same travel dates
Same class of travel
Same accomodation
Better transfers (my booking)
 
A few years back I was researching 3 days/nights in Kanchanaburi for 2 people and 3 games of golf for 1 person. The quote was ~55,000 baht for 2 people.

I did it on my own. The 3 games of golf were ~7,000 baht and the accommodation for 3 nights was ~5,000 baht.

Admittedly the hotel they quoted was probably worth 10,000-15,000 baht that's still a lot of profit.
 
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