You should never take a guided coach tour if the success of your vacation depends on culinary delights!

The Premier Inn Stratford-upon-Avon Waterways hotel restaurant.

On England tours & Ireland tours you will never go hungry with Jolly Good Tours. Guided coach tours however, are about broadening your mind NOT your backside. There is, after all, only so much hotels can do with a haddock on tour budgets. In the first instance no matter what nationality you are you cannot go to a foreign country and expect the food to be the same as at home or for that matter customs associated with eating. For example coffee is not served until the end of the meal in Ireland & Great Britain. That is just the way it is! Small things like cappuccinos come with powdered chocolate on automatically in many coffee shops in Ireland & Great Britain. It is inevitable that on a 2 week tour hotel food will get repetitive. Just think how difficult it would be even to spend 14 days at home going out for dinner every night on a budget of $20 without getting repetitive meals.

We INCLUDE dining nights like the 15th century Bunratty Castle banquet in Shannon which cost around $80 extra with some other tour operators.

• Many other tour operators only include dinner in the tour price about 27% to 47% of the nights so at least 50% of the nights you have to pay extra for dinner or for an optional extra trip that includes dinner. Even the so called luxury tours or small group tours costing US$500 per person per touring night rarely include dinner in the tour price every night.
• We INCLUDE dinner EVERY night in the tour price. In order to go some way to alleviating repetitive hotel meals our dinners are a mix of hotel restaurants, ancient pubs, castle banquets, ‘independent dining’ etc. so you get plenty of variety. This even INCLUDES London where it is very rare for tour operators to include dinner in the tour price.
• Included lunches : The occasional included lunch for whatever reason is fine. Generally tour operators that include lots of lunches (normally instead of dinner) are taking away valuable touring time from you because it usually takes ages for 40 people to get served lunch. When we do INCLUDE lunch we also INCLUDE dinner.
  
• What is ‘independent dining’? This generally doesn’t apply so much to Ireland but more to England, Scotland & Wales. Some nights we will give you a voucher for a local dining establishment where you can go in your own time with whoever you like. Obviously other Tour Buddies will be there from time to time but it gives you a chance to do your own thing. In addition if you fancy a treat you can always just pay the difference in cash between the ‘meal coupon’ and the more expensive treat so to speak! For example if the voucher will only get you 7 donuts for dessert and you want 10 then you can just pay a bit extra. Remember also that we carry a maximum of 28 Tour Buddies so even group meals are not so regimented.
• Great news for non-smokers. Smoking is not allowed in restaurants, pubs & most public places in Ireland, Wales, Scotland & England so now when you go to a pub you can actually see the person you are sitting opposite. Scary!
• And there is more! By now you know that we love Premier Inns because we are of the opinion that they are one of the rare companies that regularly under-promises and over-delivers! The restaurants in Premier Inns are run by 4 different ‘franchises’ + Costa Coffee so even a 14 day tour staying in Premier Inns every night would have greater variety in the restaurants.

The restaurant in the Premier Inn, Chester city centre where we stay sometimes.

We acknowledge that the odd night without dinner included does allow people to go off and do their own thing. Nowadays there are so many nights without dinner on many tours that it is no more than an opportunity to sell yet another optional extra excursion by the tour operator. So we think that we have struck the right balance by giving lots of different styles of dining within the tour price. With Jolly Good Tours you know that you don’t have to think about where to have dinner so you can use your brain power on enjoying the history, the architecture and the people of Ireland & Great Britain. After all that is why you are here.

We are confident that you won’t go hungry during our tours!

LOOK!

Virtually unheard of on European guided tours! Just compare below.

The biggest dining drawbacks of European guided coach tours are :

1. Tour groups mostly have to sit down at a set time.
2. Tour members often have to sit at tables of 8 or 10 people – ghastly!
3. Often tour groups are not even allowed to sit in the hotel restaurant but have to go in a separate ‘bland’ meeting room!
4. Generally tour groups in Ireland & Great Britain fare better than on the European continent for menu selection at dinner with usually a choice of 3 starters like : Soup, pate or starter salad. Choice of 3 main courses like : Sole, roast lamb or lasagne. Then a choice of 3 desserts.
5. Drinks to accompany dinner usually incur extra charges.
6. OK some of the above is fair enough because of the discounts that groups get in hotels.

Enter Jolly Good Tours at Premier Inns!

1. At almost every Premier Inn our Tour Buddies can dine individually at the time of their choice subject to the restaurant reservations for the evening of course. This means that it makes it easier for you to do individual things after dinner like going to the theatre.
2. You sit in the regular hotel restaurant at standard tables. This means that you can be more independent choosing your dining partners etc..
3. The restaurants at Premier Inns are run by 4 different ‘franchises’ so there is menu variety & some difference in cooking style from hotel to hotel.
4. On dining nights in Premier Inns an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink is INCLUDED  with dinner.
5. Remember that we carry a max. of 28 Tour Buddies on a tour so this causes less stress on hotel restaurants than tours with 44 to 53 people.
6. Note that the above description is generally the way things work when we stay at Premier Inns but on the odd occasion logistics might dictate an alternative arrangement.

Premier Inn sample menus. Please ignore any menu prices quoted as breakfasts & dinners are INCLUDED in the tour price :

Typical eat as much as you like breakfast for our Tour Buddies at Premier Inn.

Typical dinner menu for our Tour Buddies at Premier Inn. Since 1983 I have never come across a tour menu that includes steak at no extra charge. That is indeed usually one of your choices when Jolly Good Tours stay at a Premier Inn. Note in Great Britain & Ireland chips are French fries!

What about nights when we dine outside of hotels either as a group or for independent dining? Below are examples for guidance which cover both styles of dining. Most items on the menu are INCLUDED in the tour price whether it is an independent dining night or a group dining night. Once again ignore any prices quoted :

Milnes Tavern in Hanover St. Edinburgh.

Turf Tavern, Oxford.

The Gog & Magog Tavern, Barbican, Plymouth.