England tours & Ireland tours : Customized for your group.

Our Ireland tours and England tours can be customized any which way you like! We can tailor a guided tour for just 1 person or 100! So if you have a group, club or gathering that would like to tour/visit Ireland, Great Britain or the British Isles [A geographical term meaning Ireland and Great Britain.] we can arrange it. We can also add in the Eurostar to/from Paris.

Group organizers click here.

Types of tours :

• Literary with movie & TV (Click on ‘Literary’ for sample tour.) :  Sir Walter Scott, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Austen, Robbie Burns, ‘Downton Abbey’, Sense & Sensibility, French Lieutenant’s Woman, James Joyce, Morse, Midsomer Murders, Father Ted, Ballykissangel etc. etc. etc..
• Theatrical : Sure London is obvious but what about Dublin, Edinburgh & provincial England. There are brilliant theatres 100 – 200 years old all over Great Britain & Ireland with fabulous programs.
• Ladies only, spa, general history etc. we can provide a great value tour at great prices and your group will be looked after from the moment you arrive in Ireland or Great Britain to the moment you leave.
• Tours that include the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, specialty hotel, sports tours and especially golf tours are the only types of tour that attract a premium prices on account of golfers frequently ending up in bunkers and holding up the bus.
• Obviously if you have a totally off-the-wall tour we would have to check it out.
• Usually we can come and do a presentation for your group unless you live in Antarctica beforehand and then a pre-tour meet-up nearer to departure if necessary.
• By the way we love to do ‘mystery tours’ where you get to go ‘where no tourist has gone before’! Of course that really just means that we include a load of stuff that is off the beaten track that coach tours and general tourists don’t usually do.
• How about a hub tour where you spend 3 or 4 nights in one place and really get to know the locals. Get to village events, church hall events, fayres.
• Basically short of arranging dinner with Her Majesty the Queen we can do virtually anything.

We can usually come up with a quote within about 24 hours unless your request is really weird or a sports tour. See below for a few examples of guideline prices.

So why use Jolly Good Tours for your group tour? Firstly, as the owners & directors Pamela & Gregg White have over 50 years experience in the travel industry between them having guided around 460 tours of the British Isles since 1983 & having worked in US travel agencies.

You will notice the difference immediately you arrive at the arrival airport in Ireland or Great Britain. Jolly Good Tours mobile ground crew is in attendance on arrival and departure days with around 4 crew members just for your tour group. Normally tour operators provide just a driver and a tour guide. That is fine if every single group member arrives on the same flight. Our experience is that very often that is not the case. With just a coach driver and a tour guide it usually means that whoever arrives first has to wait around at the airport for the other flight[s] to arrive. That doesn’t happen with Jolly Good Tours. If you elect to start your tour in London [Not recommended usually.] we can even handle people arriving at Gatwick & Heathrow airports on the same day after all some people may get cheaper flights into Gatwick or v.v..

Suppose one of your group wants to arrive a day early or leave a day or two later. If you let us know we can usually have someone at the airport to meet them personally and get them to the hotel. This is still included as part of the tour price. Likewise we do not like our Tour Buddies to pay for something they don’t use. So if one of your group doesn’t leave on departure day but stays an extra day we can get them to the airport assisted and included in the tour price. If they stay longer then we can either give the airport transfer ticket as part of the tour price or just rebate them most of the cost of the transfer. The point is just ask.

We are not tied to any particular coach operator so we can shop around for the best deal and be flexible with the touring coaches. We are not contracted to particular hotels so unlike many tour operators we make the hotels fit the itinerary NOT the itinerary fit the hotels. Our style can easily be gleaned just by looking at the tours on our website.

For our advertised tours we don’t do small groups in mini-buses but for customized tours where everybody knows everybody we are happy to accommodate you. In fact we will do a guided tour for just one person!

Want to do a rail tour? The problem with rail tours is you end up hauling your luggage to stations etc.. We arrange for your suitcases to be transported by van most of the time so you are free and easy with just your carry-ons.

If you would like a more precise quote then use the contact us form giving us the following information :

1. Nature of group’s interest or type of group.
2. Group size.
3. When you would like to tour. We do not recommend mid-July through end of August although can be done depending on itinerary. For larger groups we don’t recommend first 2 weeks September in Ireland. Public holidays should be avoided if possible or at least the days of the public holidays should be spent in areas less affected by the public holiday.
4. Duration of the tour. This means the number hotel touring nights. Remember that if your group originates in North America it is usually an overnight flight so that night is not included in our calculations.
5. Do you want to tour both Ireland & Great Britain? Or just one or the other. Note for large groups wanting to tour both countries we strongly suggest flying into Ireland first as you get over jet-lag quicker. In addition with large groups we use the Irish Sea Fast Ferries not a flight usually. For a value experience we do not recommend tours of less than 15 days for Ireland & Great Britain.
6. If London is included. Please specify 2 nights or 3.

Personal note : For American groups that have never been to the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England we think it should be compulsory to go there! To stand on the quay where the Pilgrim Fathers boarded the Mayflower in 1620 is awesome!

We have standards!There are certain things we won’t do like visiting Windsor Castle as part of a regular touring day. Access to Windsor Castle is like going through airport security at Dulles or JFK. We would suggest allocating an extra day in London and doing Windsor as a day out – you need at least 2/3 of a day. If you have traveled half way round the world remember you cannot do Windsor Castle & Windsor ‘town’ in less that 2/3 of a day without getting indigestion. Some tour operators include Windsor Castle as a 2 hour visit – good luck! In our opinion to enjoy Windsor Castle & Windsor the best option is by train from London Waterloo to Windsor and Eton Riverside (Not Central Station.) in under 1 hour. Every Tour Buddy can then spend the time they want and return any time back to central London at the time they choose. We can take you as a group and our ground crew would be at Waterloo Station back in central London later to get you back to the hotel at the time of your choosing.

The approximate guideline quotes below apply to most types of tours but exclude sports tours. They are applicable to dates in 2013 outside of mid-July to end of August.

The guideline quotes include :

• Airport transfers from airport to hotel on arrival day.
• Transfers to the airport on departure day.
• No matter what type of tour you want the quotes include a substantial budget for included visits & highlights like rail travel, stately homes, castles, cathedrals or any type of visit that is suitable for your group.
• Dinner is included every night.
• Breakfast is included every day.
• No optional extra excursions are sold on our tours.
• Apart from smaller groups the services of a Tour Driver and a Tour Director (Posh word for a guide.) are included. A Lady Hostess will be included on some tours as well.
• Our focus is always centrally located hotels that are better 3* or 4* hotels. In Great Britain we use lots of Premier Inns – we love them!

In short the guideline quotes below include most things apart from personal spending money, airfare, travelers insurance etc..

QUOTES ARE ONLY ROUGH GUIDELINES FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE CALCULATIONS.

All guide prices are per person sharing a twin or double room per hotel per touring night and are based on current exchange rates. For example if you have 32 people in your group the guide price for a 10 night tour is 10 x US$303 = US$3,030 for each person sharing a twin or double for the whole tour.

Single accommodation generally works out around 30% more.

Due to the overall poor quality & confined space of triple rooms and the inability of many hotels to count beyond 2 when putting beds in a room we regret that we cannot arrange triple rooms.

We call people on our tours ‘Tour Buddies’.

18-24 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$321 per person.#

25-29 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$311 per person.

30-34 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$303 per person.

35-39 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$299 per person.

40-44 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$293 per person.

45-49 Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$286 per person.

50+ Tour Buddies nightly tour cost around US$278 per person.#

#With small and extra large groups there are a variety of ways to operate a tour depending on size of the coach and number of coaches used.

CONTACT US.

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