I was just reading the thread on Rick Steves and a British poster mentioned that for what Steves charges to tour England, a British company can take you anywhere in the world for the same price.
I was wondering if any North Americans have used British or other English speaking foreign tour companies for their travels and if so what were their experiences re comparable cost, and whether there is a lot of red tape involved in using foreign companies? Any other thoughts on this would be of interest too.

I have had limited experience with two British travel companies, all within the UK.

I took two different tours of 4 days each with Backroads Touring and a long day tour with Evan Evans. The EE tour was so short I don't feel that it is representative even it was satisfactory in terms of the company and its handling of the arrangements.

Backroads was superb. The tour groups are small and the members of the groups had some input as to what we did each day within the parameters of the tour.

We stayed in B and B places or small hotels. The drivers knew the area very, very well and truly took us down the backroads. Even though the tours were a little more expensive because of the small group size, we felt as though we got our money's worth. I have no reservations about the offerings and, after two trips with Backroads, I would like to do another one with the same company.

I (a Canadian) went on a trip to Ethiopia a British group and have lived to tell the tale. On another trip I met an American couple who were with a UK group in Spain that happened to be staying at the same place that we were.

I am from the UK ,but have lived in USAfor20 yrs, all British travel company's have to be registerd with the british touist board , we did a great tour with Trafalgar tours they cater to young & senior groups the prices will depend on currency cost , Cosmos & travelscope are good also.

I've finally succumed to curiosity and looked at the Rick Steves site and I don't think his prices are toooo bad. Depends what the hotel is like, is a cheapie or a good one, there are no details on this. The 7 day London tour ends up at £864 quid, which to include 6 days B&B, three dinners, transport, day trip to Windsor, boat trip and entry into Tower of London and few other places, I don't think is that bad. Like I said, depends on the quality of the hotel really.
I'm sure you can use a British company though if you find a better deal, we are not cannibals here!
and cheapest of all to book independently. Everything on his tour is well established tourist stuff so easy-peasy to arrange yourself. There doesn't seem to be any going off the beaten track, special insights you couldn't just find yourself, or real exploring on offer, just the bog-standard stuff.

Not to be picky, but whilst there is quite strong regulation of British, and indeed EU, tour companies, it's certainly not through the British Tourist Board.

FWIW, I get the impression that the range of tour companies here, especially those offering specialist stuff is far greater than you have in the US or Canada.

Have a look at the Wanderlust web site and see what you see advertised there.

I’ve used Explore worldwide many times and there’s always plenty of Americans on their tours.

However I was speaking to the MD of Explore at a function and he told me that they were seriously considering pulling out of the American market as the insurance premiums were getting ruinously expensive, because Americans are so litigious. Maybe that’s why the ticket prices are so high?

They may have decided to pull out of the American market b/c they had to carry a certain amount of liability insurance. I would be curious to see the difference in litigation rates of the U.S. compared to say England or Scotland.

In the U.S., it's not that most people are especially litigious, it is that there is a certain group of people that file the bulk of the lawsuits. My DH and I are both attorneys in the U.S., and you would be surprised at how many claimants one comes across that have been involved in multiple lawsuits (beyond the usual car accident case). Of course, this is not viewed favorably by most civil juries.

Actually it wasn’t so much the number of potential lawsuits, but the fact that in the USA it’s the jury that sets the damages. As anyone who has any dealings with courts on either side of the Atlantic will tell you – juries are basically day care schemes for unemployables.

This means that the potential payouts were too high. Having said that they’re still selling in America, so it never happened.

I would heartily recommend them too. Much cheaper than Rick Steves!

Befoe giro goes off looking for cut-rate Briish tour companies as if they were Hungarian dentists, can I suggest there are really three different industries here.

First there's the UK inbound tour market: people like Contiki. These tours exist entirely for foreign tourists coming to Britain. I'd be amazed if they were particularly cheap, and they're not all British anyway (isn't Contiki Australian?)

Then there's the Wal-Mart (or rather Asda, since it's run professionally) end of Britain's own holiday industry, which is what David was probably talking about in the Rick Whatsisname thread. No disrespect: I was a huge fan of Asda till Wal-Mart came along and made it lag even further behind the competent retailers. This industry moves huge quantities of Britons around the world at very low costs. It's highly regulated (see http://tinyurl.com/bzlcn for all the consumer protection it offers), but still stays dirt cheap because competition in it is cut-throat and its product managers are brilliant at engineering out unnecessary costs (like suppliers' profit). I've never really understood why the US hasn't developed a similar mass-market industry. BUT its low prices are based on UK airport-UK airport all-in packages. There's no red tape involved in buying them: but I can't imagine many Americans are going to get that excited about 4 am flights from Teeside airport (or whatever bloody stupid name it's given itself this week. It all started with nice old Speke turning itself into Liverpool John Lennon). Thomsons is the brand leader in this industry, and it's jolly handy if you want an all organised week on a ski slope and you're living near a British airport. It isn't really geared to people living outside Britain, and most of its products aren't really suitable for your typical Fodor browser.

Then there's a third bit: highly niched packages for slightly unusual tastes. Voyages Jules Verne would be a typical player. You can usually unpick their packages, just paying for the Urumqi-Samarkand bit of their Silk Road in 15 Days or whatever, and these companies are very used to selling non-Brits appropriate subdivisions of their holidays. There's no red tape (just buy online), and usually British consumer protection rules apply - but then so does English law. So they'll be properly bonded if there's a sudden emergency, but the English jury will award costs against the litigant wanting a gazillion pounds compensation because the Uzbek receptionist only spoke Uzbek. And when civil war breaks out in Kyrghyzstan, there'll be a rescue flight - but it'll land you at an RAF base in Britain.

This third segment offers lots of holidays browsers on this thread would probably go for, and you always find a pretty rich sprinkling of Americans and Australians on them. But cheap they aren't. £1000 a week plus airfare would be a reasonably typical cost at this end, even in a cheap part of the world.

To put this into context. What Rick Steves is charging for a fortnight in Britain would buy me a three-week fully escorted trip to China. The same in South America. Or a trip up Everest.

Explore’s website has details of all these. The Trip Dossiers explain exactly where you go and why. I find the trip dossier for their trip to Iran absolutely hilarious – it’s hard to remember that this is a holiday! The North Korea trip is similarly funny. (Not that Americans would, could or should go to Iran or N Korea).

A direct comparison is perhaps a trip from Britain to america – for the same sort of trip we would pay less and that would include the airfare.

Incidentally Rick Steves has American Hair.

David, I'm not sure what you mean about juries being day care systems for the unemployable on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in Massachusetts it used to be the case many years ago that juries were impanelled for a month and the only people who served on them were retired, unemployed, or those whose employers (such as the telephone company) would give them the time off to serve. But for many years now, there has been a one day/one trial system which requires everyone to serve. No excuses, judges and lawyers included.

I think a lot of americans take tours with ATG-Oxford (alernative Travel Group-Oxford). It's considered a very good walking tour company. I don't think they advertise very much, so their prices aren't inflated by that particular item of overhead. I've met people (on walking outs) who've traveled with other British walking tour companies, but I on't remember the names, other than ATG, which I'd already heard of.

Please pardon me for wandering a little off-topic, but I have come to the conclusion that the way to achieve immortality is to get on the mailing list of certain tour companies. Hardly a day goes by that we do not get a luscious-looking and carefully-worded mailing piece from Grand Circle, Overseas Adventure Travel, Viking, etc., etc. etc.

If we saved each of these expensive mailing catalogs, we would surely have a foot-high stack by the end of each quarter. We wonder if these travel companies are somehow partnered with a printing firm. The mailing costs must be stupendous and thus reflected in their tours' pricing.

Day after day, week after week, we receive all sorts of mailing pieces to places we have already visited, couldn't imagine ourselves visiting, or have only the slightest interest in seeing. Now in our late 70s, we have difficulty visualizing a visit to Tibet or Slovenia. How do we call off these dogs?

Nikki - I think what David was getting at is that Brits perceive that it is relatively easy for employed Americans to get out of jury service whereas this isn't the case on our side of the Atlantic. As a result our perception is that a relatively lower calibre of juror is more likely to find in favour of a defendant's sob story and award them a king's ransom (or I suppose a president's ransom would be more appropriate)

The level of awards though are a matter of fact. I work in the insurance industry and it is a rule of thumb that American awards are 10 times that of the UK or European Union. Partly due to the concept of punitive damages.

Actually, many state legislatures are preventing punitive damages except in a couple of instances. For example, here in Louisiana a plaintiff can only be awarded punitive damages when def. was found to caused injury due to drunk driving, or sexual assault/molestation of minor.

This is not unusual, and many states are going to this due to the effective insurance lobby.

Additionally, in my experiences the caliber and composition of a jury varies widely throughout different city and district courts. Generally the higher income area results in having more educated and professional jury. While it used to be unheard of to find lawyers on juries, that is no longer the case.

As for the idea that the jury awards in the U.S. are astronomical, in the example of med-mal cases (something goes wrong in surgery), many states already have severely restrictive caps on damages. We have a $500k cap in louisiana, which includes lost wages.

Like most things, the anecdotal stories like the old woman getting the multi-million dollar judgment from McDonald's for the burning coffee are not really representative of the whole.

American juries:

OJ Simpson

Micheal Jackson.

'nuff said.

i'll have to admit that, as an american, the oj simpson & wacko jacko juries are definitely not a shining example of our justice system in action.

You can add robert blakely to that list as well.

These acquitals have more to do with American culture's obsession with celebrity than anything else. In the case of OJ, the racial climate in LA relatively shortly after the Rodney King incident was a major factor in the not guilty verdict. That, combined with the fact that the jury didn't believe in medical science (DNA) due to their low education levels and ineptitude of Marcia Clark & Christopher Darden.

Actually the acquittals have more to do with the sad state of many American police departments and prosecuting offices than with celebrity.

Many police departments and prosecutors continue to hide evidence, limit investigations, and even destroy and manufacture evidence because they "know" who the guilty party is--this often results in cases being overturned or evidence thrown out or jury members not trusting the authorities.

Though being a celebrity doesn't hurt in any culture.

I really think the idea that "many police departments and prosecutors continue to hide evidence" is exaggerating it a lot. There are always bad apples in any bunch.

The acquitals in question, Simpson, Blakely, and Jackson, are not really the direct product of any of the unfortunate problems you refer to. Yes, in the case of Simpson there was the issue of the inadequate chain of custody over the evidence (leading to the inference that Mark Furman, who had said the "N" word on tape, had somehow planted evidence). But in all of the other cases the not guilty verdict had nothing to do with incompetence.

There are some major differences in the American criminal justice system compared to civilian systems. In the U.S., we have an adversarial system of justice which means that they, being the detective and prosecutor, are trying to arrest someone and ultimately convict them. Compare that to most civilian systems (France, Spain, etc.), where the process is much slower and less sensationalized, aiming more at uncovering the events involved in the crime than nabbing a suspect.

I took a Comparative Criminal Law course in law school, and although I still believe that the U.S. criminal justice system is superior (in my biased view), one feature of the Civilian system that I preferred was how the prosecuting attorney was more like a detective involved with the investigation of the crime. The prosecuting attorney would compile a dossier, which as I recall was then given to the judge who had a great deal of latitude in dealing with the suspect. Having the prosecutor, who presumbably knows the law, more involved in the investigatory process in the U.S. would prevent Miranda violations that leads to evidence being thrown out (my major pet peeve in the U.S. criminal justice system is how Joe Public gets up in arms when "technicalities" (something like telling a suspect that they have the right to an attorney during police interrogation) cause a criminal def. to be released.