Jeanne and David in front of the Eiger (near Wengen)

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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
per night

 Their Price
 compared to
Yankee Travels

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
(a non-profit org.!)

$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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