Gay escorted holidays in Greece, or a trip built round your own group

This is the question underneath most of the enquiries we get from people travelling without a partner, or with one other person, or with a group that has not quite formed yet. Do you join something, or do you build something. Both are real answers and we sell both, which puts us in the unusual position of having no reason to talk you into either one.

What an escorted tour actually is

A fixed departure with a fixed route and a fixed group. You book a seat rather than a trip. Ours run to ten and eleven places, which is small enough that everybody knows each other by day three, and the pace is deliberately low. The Authentic Greece tour spends ten days on Folegandros, Sifnos, Serifos and Milos, which are islands most visitors to Greece never see. The Over 50s & Fabulous tour runs eight days through Athens, Santorini, Naxos and Paros, and Theo leads it himself.

The thing nobody tells you about escorted travel

The route is not the point. You could copy either itinerary onto a spreadsheet and do it yourself. What you are actually buying is that nothing is your problem: no ferry to rebook when the wind turns, no restaurant to find in a town you have never been to, nobody to eat dinner alone in front of. For a lot of gay travellers going without a partner, that last one is the whole decision, and it is worth saying out loud rather than dressing it up as logistics.

What you give up

Dates, mostly. A fixed departure runs when it runs, so if the two weeks you can take off do not line up, that is the end of the conversation. You also give up the ability to stay somewhere an extra night because you like it, or leave somewhere early because you do not. And you get the group you get. Ten people chosen by a booking form is usually a delight and occasionally is not.

The other version: your own group

The alternative is not travelling alone. It is bringing your own people. Four friends, two couples, a birthday, a group who met on holiday years ago and have been threatening to do this ever since. We plan the whole thing round the group you already have, on the dates that suit you, at the pace you actually want, and we are on WhatsApp the entire time you are here. It is private from end to end. There is no coach, no fixed departure and nobody you did not choose.

How to tell which one you are

If the appeal is meeting people, take the escorted tour. If the appeal is the trip and you already have the people, build your own. If you are going genuinely solo and the idea of arriving somewhere with nobody expecting you is the part that puts you off, take the escorted tour, and take it knowing that is a completely ordinary reason to book one. Nobody on either of ours is there because they could not organise a holiday.

The honest test is what you picture when you imagine the evenings. If there are faces in it you have not met yet, join something. If the faces are ones you already know, we will build the trip round them. Tell us which it is and we can start from there.