Private or group, including when the group wins
We sell private journeys and nothing else, which makes this page an odd one to publish. It exists because roughly one reader in five who writes to us would be better served by a scheduled departure, and finding that out after paying a deposit is expensive for everybody.
The two things being compared
A private journey is a car, a driver and a national guide booked for your party alone, on dates you choose, with every hotel named in the quote before you pay anything. Our minimum party is two people and the maximum is however many of you there are. Nobody else joins.
A scheduled small-group departure is the opposite arrangement in every respect that matters commercially. The operator publishes a set of dates a year or more ahead, sells seats on them one or two at a time, and runs the departure once enough seats are gone. The car, the guide and the fixed costs of the day are then shared by everyone who booked. That sharing is the entire discount, and it is a real one.
Neither is the superior product. They are different purchases, and the honest question is not which company is better but which structure fits the fortnight you have.
| What you are comparing | Private, with us | Scheduled small-group departure |
|---|---|---|
| Price per person | USD 190 to 650 per person per day, land only, by country tier | Lower, and the gap widens the smaller your own party is |
| Party size | Two minimum, and only the people you arrived with | However many seats the operator sells; you learn the number at the airport |
| Pace | Set by you on the morning, and changed on the morning | Set by the itinerary and by the slowest person in the group |
| Departure dates | Any date you like, including a Tuesday in the low season | Published dates only, and a departure can be cancelled if it does not fill |
| Who you travel with | Your own family or friends, and a guide | Strangers, which for some travellers is the reason to book it |
| If someone is ill | The day is rebuilt around them; the car waits | The coach leaves at eight, and one of you stays behind with the patient |
| How much of the day is yours | All of it. Guided hours are chosen, not allocated | The scheduled hours are fixed; the rest is free time in the same place as everybody else |
Why the private price is higher — the arithmetic
The difference is not margin and it is not hotel grade. It is that two lines of the daily cost do not divide by the number of travellers.
The car
In India a sedan with driver runs about USD 45 to 60 a day, inclusive of fuel, tolls, parking and the driver’s own allowance, and a larger vehicle about USD 65 to 90. Split a sedan between two people and the car alone is USD 22.50 to 30 a head each day. Put five travellers in the larger vehicle, which is what five people need, and the same line falls to USD 13 to 18 a head. In Jordan a private car and driver is typically 57 to 106 JOD a day, and 92 to 113 JOD on the longer Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba circuit; the figures change and the shape does not.
The guide
A private guide in Tokyo for a full day of six to eight hours is ¥60,000 to ¥80,000 — per group, not per person, and before the guide’s own transport, meals and admissions, which add roughly ¥2,000 to ¥5,000 a head. Divided by two that is ¥30,000 to ¥40,000 each. Divided by five it is ¥12,000 to ¥16,000 each. Nothing about the day has changed except the number of people standing next to the guide.
What that does to a real quote
Take the eleven-day Vietnam journey. Two travellers pay USD 3,600 each in the Comfortable grade; a party of five pays USD 2,650. That is USD 950 a head, about 36 per cent, and across eleven days it works out at roughly USD 86 per person per day — which is very close to what a car and a guide cost per day in a band D country. The gap is not a coincidence, it is the same money seen twice.
Grand Indochina shows the same ratio at a longer length: USD 9,400 for two against USD 6,900 for five. Every journey on this site behaves this way, and it is why the first question we ask a traveller whose budget will not reach is not which hotel to drop but whether anyone else is coming.
A group departure applies the identical arithmetic with a bigger denominator. That, and not scale or buying power or a leaner office, is where the lower price comes from. The full supplier-level breakdown — rooms, guides, entrance fees, boat nights — is on pricing.
When the cheaper option is the right one
Four cases, and we would rather you recognised yourself in one of them here than six weeks into a conversation with us.
You are travelling alone
This is the clearest case. Our minimum is two, and a solo traveller in a private car carries the whole car and the whole guide alone — the two-traveller column is the floor, not a discount from it. A group departure charges a single supplement on a room, which is a fraction of that, because the shared costs are already shared. For one person the arithmetic is not close, and pretending otherwise would be a poor use of your money.
It is a first trip and meeting people is part of the point
Some travellers want fourteen days of company, a table of eight at dinner and somebody else’s opinion about the temple. A private car with your own guide is quiet by design, and quiet is not what everybody has bought a holiday for. If you are going to Asia for the first time and the social part matters as much as the itinerary, book the group. Where to start geographically is on first time in Asia, and that advice holds whoever you travel with.
Your dates are fixed and immovable
A published departure exists on its date whether or not it suits you, and if it happens to fall inside the only fortnight you have, it is already built and already priced. A private journey covering exactly those days costs more for exactly the same calendar. The one thing to check is the operator’s minimum numbers clause and the date by which they decide, because a departure that does not fill can be cancelled, and a cancelled departure on fixed leave is worse than a more expensive trip that runs.
Your ceiling is around USD 200 a day
Our lowest tier is band D — Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India, Nepal, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan — at USD 190 to 300 per person per day, land only, and the bottom of that band assumes a party of four sharing the fixed costs. If there are two of you with a ceiling near USD 200 a day, we cannot build it honestly, and the ways of appearing to build it are all bad: fewer guided days, hotels described by star rating rather than by name, a shared minibus written up as a transfer. A group departure reaches that number properly. We will say so in the first reply rather than the fourth.
Ask both operators the same three questions: name every hotel, count the days that actually have a guide attached, and confirm whether each road transfer is a private vehicle. Then ask the group operator for the maximum party size in writing and the minimum-numbers deadline. Five questions, two emails, and the answers tell you more than either price does.
What we do not do
- We do not run group departures. There is no published date anywhere on this site and none planned. Every price you see assumes your party and nobody else’s.
- We do not put strangers together. Two parties asking for the same route in the same week are quoted separately and travel separately. We are not going to improve a margin by introducing you to people you did not choose.
- We do not sell a shared vehicle as a private transfer. The phrase “transfer to Hoi An” covers both a car for you and a seat on a nine-stop minibus loop. In our itineraries it always means the car.
- We do not claim private is better. A well-run group operator with named hotels, a real maximum party size and guides on the payroll beats a mediocre private operator on every measure that matters, at a lower price. If that is the choice in front of you, take the group.
What we will not do is match a group price by quietly removing what makes the private version worth having. A private journey priced like a shared one is a shared one with a better cover page.
Five steps to decide
- Count your party. One person: book a group departure, almost without exception. Two: read the arithmetic above and decide whether the gap buys you something you want. Four or more: the private price per head has already fallen close to the group one, and the decision usually makes itself.
- Fix your dates, or admit they are flexible. Immovable dates push you towards whatever already exists on that date. Flexible dates are worth real money in a private quote, because they let us move you out of a peak week; when to go sets out which weeks those are.
- Set a ceiling per person per day, land only, and say it out loud. Compare it against the tier your countries sit in. Under about USD 200 a day for two people, the group is the answer in every country we sell.
- Decide how much of the day you want to own. If being able to stay two more hours at Angkor, or leave after twenty minutes, is worth USD 80 a day to you, that is precisely what you are buying. If it is not, do not pay for it.
- Ask both operators the same five questions. Hotels by name, guided days counted, transfers confirmed as private, maximum party size in writing, minimum-numbers deadline. Whoever answers all five inside a working day is the one to trust, whatever they are selling.
If the answers point to a private journey, the next question is length rather than style: how many days each country actually holds is on how many days, and what we will and will not redraw is on tailor-made. If they point to a group departure, we have nothing further to sell you and this page has done its job.
Tell us the party size and the ceiling
Send the number of travellers, the month and a budget per person per day if you have one. If a private journey is the wrong purchase for what you have described, we will say so in the first reply instead of quoting you anyway.
Questions travellers ask most
Should I just book it myself?
For some of Asia, yes, and we would rather say it than pretend otherwise. Japan and South Korea are signposted in English, safe, and covered by rail networks that make an operator largely unnecessary; Japan gives a 90-day visa waiver and Korea has waived the K-ETA for 67 countries through 31 December 2026. A confident traveller with time to plan will do well there alone.
Elsewhere the arrangement is doing more work than it looks. Bhutan carries a Sustainable Development Fee of USD 100 per adult per night and cannot be travelled unaccompanied. Nepal has required a licensed guide for trekking since September 2023, with tighter checkpoint enforcement in 2026. The Thailand to Cambodia land border has been shut since mid-2025, so the overland day sold in older guidebooks does not exist. And Siem Reap’s airport is now 50 km from town. None of that is impossible to handle alone; it is simply a second job for several evenings a week.
Do you ever combine two parties to bring the price down?
No. Not on a quiet week, not when two enquiries match, not as a favour. The price you are quoted assumes your party alone, and the only way it falls is if more of your own people come.
If sharing with strangers is acceptable to you, that is a group departure, and a good group operator will do it better and cheaper than we could improvise it.
We are two but friends might join. Does that change the quote much?
Substantially. Our price tables run in three bands — two travellers, three to four, and five to eight — and moving from the first to the third takes about 36 per cent off the per-person figure, because the car and the guide are unchanged.
On the eleven-day Vietnam journey that is USD 3,600 a head against USD 2,650. Tell us the possibility exists and we will quote both, so the decision is made with the numbers in front of everyone rather than after a deposit.
A group operator has quoted me half your price. Are they cutting corners?
Probably not. A shared car and a shared guide across a full coach genuinely halves those lines, and the arithmetic on this page explains most of the gap without anyone behaving badly.
What is worth checking is whether the comparison is like for like: the number of days with a guide attached, hotels named rather than described as "four-star or similar", and the maximum party size in writing. Those three answers tell you whether you are looking at a different structure or a thinner trip. How a cheaper private quote is built is set out on pricing.
Read next
Tell us about the journey you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.