Viator Travel Blog

I have to admit it had been years since I visited a zoo, with concerns about animal rights and the moral issues involved in keeping wild animals in captivity the main things that kept me away.

But I had heard good things about Singapore Zoo, and about the changed thinking that was now commonplace amongst zoos in many parts of the world, so I decided to take a closer look. I’m glad I did.

Spend some time talking to regular cruise-goers about shore excursions and a common view becomes clear: generally speaking, the shore excursions offered by cruise lines are cookie-cutter operations, designed to move large groups off the ship, through some points of interest onshore, and back onboard again with a minimum amount of fuss.

At the recent PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Conference a speaker waxed lyrical about their new web site, which would relieve its users of the burden of travel planning, letting them get hours of planning done in a few minutes instead. And they considered that a good thing!

At Viator, we’re realists. We know that the tours we offer, no matter how varied or flexible, may not suit your exact needs every time. Even though we work hard to offer tours “for everyone,” we also understand that sometimes the nature of your group or the specific things you’d like to see and do are not available in one of our standard tour offerings, and for that reason we also offer Private Guides in many destinations around the world.

I’ve been a fan of the Hop-On, Hop-Off tour for ages; the benefits are outstanding and the only downside a lingering worry for some that they might be a little, well, déclassé. Nonsense to that, I say!

So, I was in Sydney last week and took up an invitation from our team there to check out the latest sightseeing innovation – why did it take so long for someone to think of this? – in the form of a harbour-based Hop-On Hop-Off tour. It didn’t hurt that I chose a perfect Sydney winter’s day – the sort that leaves you with an unexpected tan – or that the harbour seemed to be full of activity. On second thought, the harbour is always that way, it’s just that some days seem extra alive.

San Francisco is invariably one of Viator’s Top 10 destinations, and that’s no coincidence. While some destinations need to be seen once and may then be safely crossed off one’s list – I’m not naming names, that would just start arguments – the City by the Bay is a lot deeper than that, and seems to have an attraction that brings people back time after time.

Back in February I wrote about Viator’s new focus on shore excursions for cruise passengers, pointing out the numerous good reasons to look further than your cruise line’s own offerings. Since then we’ve added a range of new excursions around popular European ports that are already proving to be big hits.

Viator offers quite an array of tours that showcase the magnificent castles and chateaux of Europe, and they are consistently amongst our highest rated tours. What is it about a day spent wandering around old buildings that people find so appealing? I decided to investigate; here are my findings…

When our New York City team heard that I would be in town recently, they twisted my arm very, very hard (it took all of three microseconds) to persuade me to check out some of our new food tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn. As more and more people make cuisine one of the key focal points of their leisure travel, food tours have become very popular and I was keen to see what all the fuss was about.

Our correspondent Phillipa Burne wrote a lovely post on Melbourne’s Colonial Tramcar Restaurant back in 2009; I was in Melbourne recently and wondered if anything had changed. The Tramcar Restaurant has become even more popular in the ensuing years, and I was keen to discover if my 2011 experience was any different to Phillipa’s. What I discovered was… well, read on to find out!