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Jeanne and David in front of the Eiger (near Wengen)
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Switzerland Tours | England Tours
THE YANKEE TRAVELS ADVANTAGE
603-783-9131
djhkswis@comcast.net
We ARE the lowest priced Premium Tour Company!
PERSONALIZED HIKING
You want your adventure travel vacation to suit your needs; Yankee Travels does that. Each day you may choose to do a challenging hike over lofty peaks or through high passes. On another day you may choose to do a beautiful light hike through gentle valleys or along panoramic ridges reached by cog railway or cable car. Either excursion will be an all day outing featuring scenic picnic lunches or lunch on the terrace of a berg hotel or charming pub. Whichever outing you choose each day will be filled with delightful memories, scenic vistas and good company.
EACH DAY IS DIFFERENT
Your leaders have thoroughly explored each region you will visit, providing both light and rigorous hikers with a variety of scenery. Sometimes your outings visit historic sites, local artisans, glaciers or lakes.
GROUP ATMOSPHERE
Our tours are known for being informal, relaxing and fun. The group takes its gourmet meals together where we share the memories of the day's activity and laugh often as we enjoy making new friends. Our tours attract about an equal number of couples and singles of varying ages and everyone is made to feel welcome.
BEAUTIFUL ACCOMMODATIONS
We pride ourselves on having searched each location for the best hotels in their class. We stay in lovely family owned/operated chalet hotels in Switzerland (3 or 4 stars). Each room is unique and the food superb. Part of the fun is to meet and enjoy the proprietors of each inn who sometimes join us for an outing. In England we stay in the finest manor hotels in the Lake District! These English hotels are in beautiful settings with superb food.
LOCAL TRANSPORT
We make use of the most convenient and scenic means of transport. Trains, cog railways, funiculars, cable cars, lake steamers, and small buses and vans are all used to move us to the most scenic trailheads. In Switzerland unlike most tours that provide 2nd class travel passes we provide each participant with a 1st Class Swiss Pass so that we travel in style while supporting environmentally friendly modes of transport. Once any of our tours begins you never pay for any transportation above the stated cost of the tour.
FREE DAYS
On each tour we provide free time for you to explore on your own. Any regular travel is included as part of your tour cost.
YOUR LEADERS
Yankee Travels' Jeanne Joslin and David Miltenberger lead each tour. Local guides are also sometimes used as well. David and Jeanne have been leading adventure travel tours for twenty-five years. This is our 14th year of guiding tours in Switzerland. David has co-led a national Sierra Club trip and together they have led wilderness canoe trips and walking/hiking tours in England, Switzerland and the Canadian Rockies. They are both sanctioned guides for the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) and have climbed all the 4000 footers in NH during the spring, summer and fall months and most of the mountains during the winter months. The experience we bring is invaluable to your safety and enjoyment during a tour. Many other tour groups hire temporary guides who may or may not have the experience and maturity to guide a successful tour. David and Jeanne are vitally interested in making each client's tour a success since they ARE Yankee Travels. They believe that being excellent leaders includes such qualities as: intelligence, knowledge, being fit, alertness, critical thinking ability, listening skills, communication skills, self-effacement, self-sacrifice, willingness to make decisions, humor, morale building skills and a willingness to accept input from those one is leading. On every tour we aspire to that leadership ideal. We have personally traveled the trails and canoe routes many times so that Yankee Travels offers you only the best.
Also joining us for a second year in Switzerland will be two assistant guides, Justin and Rebekka Joslin. Justin and Rebekka both hold master degrees in environmental engineering and are teaching science at the New Hampton School. They are both very experienced hikers and have done extensive hiking in the Northeast as well as the western part of the USA, New Zealand and Switzerland. Each of our outings will be accompanied by one of the senior guides (David or Jeanne) as well as one of the assistant guides.
IN THE EVENING
The main event each evening on our tours is a delicious and leisurely dinner. In Switzerland we often enjoy concerts, local folk shows and one night (Tour 3) we arrange for you to learn a couple of Swiss folk dances and on another day a tour of the lovely town of Zuoz. Or sometimes it is just nice to stroll around the village after dinner to watch a sunset away from the rest of the group.
OUR LOW PRICES
Our tours are much less than other tours of comparable quality. We
often have conversations with prospective clients who are amazed and skeptical
about how we can offer such quality at these prices. It is also ironic
that after enjoying one of our tours many clients have said, "You should
raise your prices." They've said this because our prices are so much lower
than other tour companies that it made them doubt that we could deliver a high
quality trip at such a low price. In Switzerland we even provide 1st class travel passes
and meet you at the Zurich airport to start the tour which tours costing
much more than ours don't do. After joining us for a tour they all become
Yankee Travels converts ( We always have a large
percentage of repeat clientele and we
now only do tours in Switzerland and England! And-we have been selling out all
our tours for over 8 years!) but they still wonder how we can run tours of this
quality at these prices. We can do this because this is our second career and we
simply do not need to maintain a large profit margin. We also have extremely low
overhead compared to other adventure travel businesses as we manage our business
from our home office, do not produce expensive glossy brochures or do loads of
print advertising. Yankee Travels is
owned and operated and the tours guided by us, David and Jeanne. We are
dedicated to providing you with the highest quality adventure travel vacation.
So, we love sharing top quality out of doors adventures with other people and
truly enjoy making these adventures available at amazing prices. We are
passionate about what we do and bring a level of professionalism to this that we
know you will appreciate. Below we have made a cost comparison
between our tours and the "going rate" of most of our competitors. Some of the
savings are amazing.
General Comparison
Yankee Travels Tours Compared to Other tours
| Important Details | Yankee Travels | Other Tours |
| Guides | Owner/guides with 25 years of experience; know each area thoroughly and custom design each tour based on the group's desires; have special "local knowledge" | Often hired "young guides" with little experience or long term commitment to the organization; know only a few trails or worse yet follow a set of printed directions |
| Guide/Client Ratio | Two guides on each hike (Switzerland) | Usually one guide per hike regardless of the size of the group |
| Daily Offerings | Two levels of outings offered each day (see Tour Descriptions): a variety of hiking ambitions can be met | Usually one outing each day: clients either exhausted or left wanting to do more |
| Cost | A Bargain! (See "cost
comparisons" section below) Our prices are GUARANTEED |
Much higher than Yankee Travels (See Below) Price will go up if US $ weakens |
| Hotels | The best 3 or 4 star family owned/run hotels in each town: we pride ourselves on finding and providing a special accommodations experience for our clients | Large 3 or 4 star hotels which much less charm or intimacy: stay in hotels which offer the largest discount to the tour operator |
| Travel Pass
(and Other Travel Costs) |
1st Class Passes (Switzerland) and other travel completely covered on all tours while on the tour's itinerary | Usually 2nd class passes (or no pass at all-important to read their information carefully) and other travel not always covered |
| Special Services | We meet you at the airport and
make a "day of it" on your first day in Switzerland (see Tour
Descriptions);
special tours and activities (Switzerland) |
Anxious first day of travel to begin your tour (you waste your first day of your vacation); no special tours |
Tour Descriptions: Switzerland Tours | England Tours
Specific Cost Comparison
Tours of Switzerland in 2009
|
Tour Group |
Cost of Tour |
Number of Nights |
Price per Night |
Difference |
Their Price |
|
YANKEE TRAVELS |
$2075 |
7 |
$296 |
- |
Their Price/$296 |
|
Backroads |
$4398 |
5 |
$880 |
$584 |
297% |
|
Sobek Mt. Travel |
$5995 |
9 |
$666 |
$370 |
225% |
|
Ryder Walker |
$3080 |
7 |
$440 |
$144 |
149% |
|
Sierra Club |
$3875 |
9 |
$455 |
$159 |
154%
|
Tours of England in 2009
| Tour Group | Cost of Tour |
Number of Nights |
Price per Night |
Difference per night |
How much
higher cost compared to Yankee Travels
|
| YANKEE TRAVELS | $2495 | 7 | $356 | - | Their Price/$356 |
| Backroads (2008 prices) |
$3698 | 5 | $740 | $384 | 209% |
| Ramblers | $2750 | 6 | $458 | $102 | 129% |
| Country Walkers | $3798 | 6 | $633 | $277 | 178% |
AND-Yankee Travels guarantees its price
other tours make their
clients assume the risk of currency fluctuations and adjust the tour price
upwards shortly before the departure date.
AND if you are traveling alone our single supplement is less than one half that of other companies!
There are travel bargains in this world and Yankee Travels is one of them!
So call us and we will provide as many references as you want to verify the tremendous value we represent. You should call Jeanne and David at 603-783-9131 or email them at djhkswis@comcast.net . Call for references or to discuss the details of any tour. For answers to frequently asked questions, go to the end of the description for each trip. As we always say, there are travel bargains in this world and Yankee Travels is one of them!
Sincerely,
David Miltenberger and Jeanne Joslin
Your Guides
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