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My wife and I would like to spend a minimum of 4 days at the Shanghai Expo in 2010, but would like to get the benefit of the buying power of a tour operator for the airfare and hotels. We would be happy to sacrifice the day tours in Shanghai to attend the expo and go with a budget operator such as Smartours, Friendly Planet, China Focus, Gate 1, etc., but their std tours allow only 2 days that would be free in Shanghai. And Smartours doesn't have dates for Summer 2010 and won't have them for a long time, they say.
What other budget tour operators should we consider? What other strategies should we try? We don't mind traveling in a large group, esp since several days will be at the expo on our own (with a few million others!) We don't mind spending 3-7 days visiting other cities. We'd do those things in order to be able to get the group discounts. Apparently it's difficult to get "delayed return" privileges for China trips.
Thanks.
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Shanghai Expo 2010 budget tour package
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You need to look into this much more carefully. On the package tours the cheapness is only apparent, but not real. There are hidden charges in terms of ridiculous and enforced tipping of large sums (in a country where tipping does not exist), kick-backs on shopping, poor food (because restaurants are chosen on the basis of the biggest kick-back), often poor hotel choices (ditto), and far too many shopping 'opportunies' designed to separate you from as much money as possible.
However cheap a tour may appear, you can actually do things cheaper yourself. The one element the tour gets more cheaply is the international air fare. Low hotel rates (if any are available at all during the period of the Expo) you can get for yourself. Consider booking a tour that arrives in Shanghai and departs from there but simply abandoning the entire ground portion, or just going it alone. The usual pattern with hotels for these things is that the whole idea that you must book in advance at a high price in order to avoid an even higher price later on is whipped up by the organisers and the press (in China the same thing), but rooms are available for a song to those who just show up. There are no guarantees, but don't expect anything to be quite as it seems.
The key message here is that 'group discounts' are largely a myth in China, and some of the tour operators you've listed are very corrupt.
Peter N-H