Guided Tours

On our tours the vehicle is yours alone. We collect you from the hotel and return you there; nobody else gets in along the way. The trade-off is plain: per person a private tour costs more, but with families of more than three the gap closes, because the price is per car.

What changes in practice is flexibility. On a group tour you get twenty minutes at a stop and the coach leaves. On a private tour you can stay forty, or leave after ten if you have had enough. Travelling with a small child or an elderly relative, that difference becomes the holiday itself.

Let us say it plainly: we are not the right address for a traveller looking for the cheapest. We do not cut the price by merging groups, and we write that here rather than disappoint you later.

The departure time is yours. A family that breakfasts late can leave at ten; someone who wants to be out before the heat leaves at eight. A group tour offers no such choice.

Breaks are taken at prayer times and the driver knows the nearest mosque. You choose where to stop for lunch; if there is any doubt about halal, the driver asks, so you do not have to.

With children we apply the rule of two main stops a day. A third fits on paper, but the child tires and the evening goes with it. If you want to return to the hotel mid-day and rest for two hours, that is possible too — the car is yours and so is the plan.

If you have a pushchair, a wheelchair or an older relative who finds walking hard, the stops are chosen around that: the cobbled lanes of the historic peninsula are not the same as the seafront.

Included: the private car and driver, hotel pick-up and drop-off, fuel, parking and tolls, water in the vehicle, and an Arabic-speaking guide on city tours.

Not included: museum and archaeological site entry tickets, lunch, boat-trip tickets and tips. We keep museum tickets out of the price because the fees change and because not everyone visits the same museums — we would rather the choice stayed yours.

Tipping is not obligatory and nobody will ask. It is a common habit in Türkiye but not an expectation; you tip if you were pleased.

If you want to add a stop to the programme the driver relays it; if there is a difference we say so at the time, and it is not added to the bill afterwards.

On city tours an Arabic-speaking guide accompanies you and explains the history of what you visit. In Türkiye, commentary inside museums and archaeological sites belongs to the licensed tourist-guiding profession; a driver may not legally do it.

On some nature and shopping routes the Arabic-speaking driver takes on the guiding instead. There is no museum to interpret on the shore of Lake Sapanca or in the Grand Bazaar; what helps there is someone who knows the way and speaks your language.

We tell you which applies to your programme before you book. You do not need to ask — it is written into the quote.