Travel Tips – Why “Guaranteed Departures” Are Important For Your Next Vacation

Many travelers worry about cancelled trips, especially when they sign up for something like a cruise or guided group trip that is going to go on with or without them. But the concern is usually something like, “What if I get sick, what if I get COVID, what if there’s a family emergency?” That’s one reason why trip insurance has become such a hot topic since the pandemic. But not as many travelers consider what would happen if the trip itself gets cancelled.

A few years ago, my husband and I booked a guided cycling trip with a well-known active travel outfitter to Sardinia, which is supposed to be beautiful. It probably is, but I don’t know firsthand, because shortly before our departure it got cancelled. Apparently not enough people had signed up for the tour operator’s profit margin, so they didn’t run the trip. In my opinion, it was unfairly close to the departure date, and while I had taken vacation from work and booked a kennel for our dogs, it was too late to book an alternative trip the same dates. In addition, flights to Sardinia are not cheap, and while we could not get refunds, at least we were able to get credit for future tickets.

Lesson learned. Part of that lesson was finding out what guaranteed departures are, and why they can be so important. This is especially true in active travel, which typically involves guided group trips, with companies adding new, exotic destinations every year. Sometime these expansions are spot on, but sometimes they don’t resonate with consumers and not many people sign up. If you do, and no one else does, you will be glad if you chose a company with guaranteed departures.

The concept is as simple as it sounds. A trip is offered for certain dates, and if you sign up, they guarantee that departure will go, even if you are the only one. Again, I think this is vitally important in active travel, my area of specialty, because these trips – especially ones that require hard to get permits like trekking with gorillas in Rwanda or are tied to annual events such as a trip coinciding with the Tour de France or Canadian polar bear viewing season, which runs just six weeks – often require planning a year or more in advance. If that trip gets cancelled, you are bitterly disappointed, and they’ve have wasted your valuable vacation and travel time.

Active travel also attracts a lot of solo travelers, and in my experience more of them are women. If you are the only person who books up for a trip that is guaranteed, suddenly the worst-case scenario, no one else signing on, might, for some people, be the ultimate luxury. Instead of canceling, like most tour operators would do, those with guaranteed departures now give you a private trip for the much lower price of a group one. Alternatively, they might pay you to change your schedule and make it very worthwhile. In sharp contrast, some tour companies without guaranteed departures include a surcharge in their contract that you will have to pay on top of what you originally agreed to if not enough people sign up.

I met two women who signed up for one of the scheduled catalog departures with Micato Safaris, all of which are guaranteed, No one else booked it. As it got closer, they said Micato contacted them and offered them a substantial discount or rebate to switch to another date, saving thousands of dollars. This makes sense because for the tour operator, they still lose less money giving a big discount than they will operating a trip with all its overhead for just two paying customers. But the two friends said no, they’d rather stick to the plan, and Micato honored their end of the deal with a private trip at much lower group trip prices. They had a great time.

“We want every traveler to experience a Micato safari exactly as planned, on the selected dates, with never a cancellation or an unexpected rate increase,” said Dennis Pinto, the company’s managing director . “The anticipation of the trip is an important aspect of the experience. Imagine a guest being excited about their dream trip, only to be told at the last minute that the safari operator wasn’t able to get enough participants and the trip is cancelled. That would be an awful experience. It is for this reason that Micato has never canceled a trip ever since we opened six decades ago. We’ll operate even if only one person signs up.”

To be fair, companies will likely lose money doing this, and they hope to do it rarely, but as a result, guaranteed departures tend to be an extra offered by the more expensive, luxurious tour operators. In the cycling and hiking world, Butterfield & Robinson is generally considered the most luxurious of the companies offering scheduled group trips, and they are one of the few with guaranteed departures. However, not every scheduled trip in their vast catalog is guaranteed, though most are and it is clearly indicated when you select a date.

While many companies do not formally offer guaranteed departures, there are some workarounds to give you peace of mind. One question to ask any tour operator not guaranteeing departures is, “what is the minimum group size?” For many better companies it is just three, and that usually means two parties: a couple and a single, or two couples. However, if you have three in your group and that’s the policy, you can essentially guarantee your own departure. Similarly, some tour operators show the status of trip dates on their websites, and you can select one that is already well beyond the minimum threshold.

There are many tour operators outside the core active travel space that are advertising guaranteed departures, including some big companies like Intrepid Travel, which does offer some active trips such as cycling, walking/trekking, wildlife and women-only expeditions, in addition to cruises, festivals and other more mainstream travel. There are a handful of itineraries that state a required minimum group size to run, but all others are “guaranteed to depart once they have one fully paid customer.” Similarly, Tap Into Travel says “When you make a reservation on any of our hundreds of departures marked as Guaranteed, you can be assured the trip will happen.” High-end luxury tour operator Cox & Kings lets you sort their group trips by those with guaranteed departures which “means no minimum number of guests is required for your trip to run. So, whether it’s seeking out sloths in Costa Rica, roaming ancient ruins in Crete or discovering the Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan…clients can book ahead with the assurance that their adventure is guaranteed to go ahead as planned.”

It appears that guaranteed departures in the active travel realm are more common with European-based companies targeting European audiences, companies with which I am not as familiar. Unfortunately, most of the major North American players do not guarantee departures, though some come close. Trek Travel has a policy that “With one person booked on a date, the trip becomes guaranteed,” but adds an asterisk. If you are the only person booked, they ask an extra $1,000 to ensure you get your original date (now as a private, which is probably still a good deal) or $500 each for two people. Three or more goes normally.

DuVine, one of the more luxury-oriented companies in the cycling and hiking space, currently ranked as World’s Number One Tour Operator 2022 by Travel + Leisure Magazine, says that, “Most of our trips are guaranteed to run when between 2–4 people (depending on the tour) are booked. An additional supplement may be required to run the tour if the minimum number of guests is not met.”

Backroads says it aims to guarantee scheduled trips no later than 125 days prior to departure – usually enough time to seek alternatives and far more notice than I got from the other company. However, they also say trips are usually guaranteed even further in advance, and I currently have a future booking with them and was notified it reached “guaranteed” status more than six months out. Like Trek Travel, if only one or two people book, which they say is highly unusual, Backroads will ask you to pay a $500 per person upcharge (for one or two) to keep it as is (but now private). Alternatively, they will let you transfer to another trip and throw in a $200 credit for your troubles.

Keep in mind that guaranteed departures refer to the number of people booked, but no company can control natural disasters, acts of war, pandemics, or political upheaval such as revolutions, and any travel can be cancelled by unforeseen outside forces. Also, almost all of these companies have fine print and some exceptions, with occasional different policies for things like trips with chartered boats or to countries with convoluted tourism rules. Micato’s policy, as good as it gets in the industry, reads, “Micato guarantees departure of all group programs once a deposit is paid excepting only cases of force majeure. This includes any event that adversely affects international travel patterns such as epidemics, acts of God or government, terrorism as well as any other circumstance beyond Micato’s control.”

The point is, when booking any guided or group trip, you should consider what will happen if they cancel on you, and find this out in advance. I still travel with companies that do not have guaranteed departures, but now I check on the flexibility, the minimum number of required participants, the advance warning I will get if there is a change, and additional financial exposure (or benefit) I might face. Finally, if a trip is not going to be guaranteed until a certain number of people sign up and you know that, it may well be better to wait to buy plane tickets.