What a private tour is, and whether it is worth it

A private tour, as Greece Private Tours sells it, is a vehicle and a driver for your group only, for a fixed number of hours, on a printed route that bends to your interests; nobody else boards, nothing is per seat. Whether it is worth it is a question of numbers: for 4 people the 4-hour Athens highlights tour is 100 EUR each, and the sums are below.

What private means here

Three things. The vehicle is yours: a sedan for 1 to 3 guests, a minivan for 4 to 7, a minibus for 8 to 19, a coach for 20 to 55, and nobody outside your party rides in it. The hours are yours: a tour is sold as 4, 5, 8 or more hours from the pickup to the drop-off, and the route printed on its page, with the drive time between the stops and the minutes at each, bends to what you want as long as it stays within them. And the driver is yours for those hours: one of our own drivers, who drives, waits at every stop and gives practical orientation. What the driver is not is a guide: in Greece guiding inside museums and archaeological sites is reserved to state-licensed guides, so a guide is a second person, added on request and quoted separately, as the driver-or-guide guide explains.

Private, semi-private or small group?

We sell only the first. A semi-private or small-group tour fills a vehicle with strangers up to a number and prices each seat; its route and its clock belong to the group. Ours has one party in the vehicle whatever its size; from 8 guests the price is worked out per person, because a minibus replaces the minivan, but the minibus is still yours.

What it costs for a family of four

The 4-hour highlights tour in Athens is 400 EUR for the four of you together, which is 100 EUR each; the 5-hour Santorini tour is 500 EUR, or 125 EUR each; two people pay the same total as four. Set that beside the per-seat price of any shared tour you are offered, which we do not print because it is not ours: the difference buys the vehicle to yourselves, the driver’s waiting at every stop, a route of your own and a clock of your own. Entrance fees, lunch and a guide are extra either way, and the price guide prints the whole rate card with its date.

Is it worth it?

It depends on who you are and what the day is. It pays when you are three or more, because the price is per group; when you come off a cruise ship with an all-aboard time, because the day is planned backwards from it; when a site needs a timed ticket you want to reach at your slot; when someone in the party walks slowly, is small, or needs the car close; and when you want to change your mind at noon. It pays less when you travel alone on a tight budget, when what you want most is a person explaining the ruins for hours, which is a licensed guide’s fee on top of the driver’s, or when a single ride from one address to another is all you need, which is a taxi. We would rather you knew that than booked and wondered.

How booking one works

You send a request from the tour page with the date, your group size and where you start; nothing is paid on the site; the office confirms by email; you pay the driver on the day; and a booking can be cancelled free of charge until 72 hours before the start. The tours are on the Santorini page and the Athens page; a car and driver by the hour is the same thing without a printed route, on the private driver in Greece page, and several days are added up one at a time on the private tours in Greece page.