{"id":879859,"date":"2024-09-24T16:43:49","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T15:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/making-friends-on-tour\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T14:47:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T13:47:32","slug":"making-friends-on-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/making-friends-on-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel Director Fiona reveals the recipe to making friends on tour \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We talk a lot about the magic of making friends on tour, but we don\u2019t blame you if you\u2019re nervous about the whole thing. Meeting a group of strangers to spend your vacation with is an exciting prospect, but it doesn\u2019t come without its anxieties. Luckily we have Trafalgar Travel Director Fiona on hand to reveal the recipe to making friends on tour, so you can be ready to make the most of the time you have \u2013\u00a0and the people you’ll meet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over a decade of experience as a Travel Director and hundreds of tours under her belt, Fiona is the perfect person to let us in on the secrets to making friends on tour. Fiona has led tours across the world from Asia to Scotland, first working for our sister brand Contiki for seven years and working with Trafalgar for the last two. When we spoke with her, she was on the final few days of the Highland Trail inspired by Outlander<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Trafalgar
Travel Director Fiona has conducted hundreds of tours. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy favorite part about being a Travel Director is meeting new people and seeing the looks on their faces when I take them to see something that makes their trip for them,\u201d she says. \u201cJust this morning I stopped at the Kelpies, and I had a guest tell me that this is her fourth time in Scotland and she’s never made it to the Kelpies, and stopping here today made her trip. We had a hug, and it was a really nice moment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Fiona everything there is to know about making friends on tour with Trafalgar, from her tricks of the trade to knowledgable advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might also like: Just booked your first tour with us? Here’s what happens next (and how we can help)<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long does it take guests to break the ice? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“They really start bonding in the first day or two. We don’t start a tour first thing in the morning getting on the coach. We start with a welcome reception in the evening so they have the chance to mingle with people in the group. We do a little toast together, they mingle with a few people, and then we have dinner. It’s easier when you break it into smaller groups, so they’re just saying hello to the other couple that are sitting at their table.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it easy to socialize on the coach? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI put guests’ names above their seats, which is a different way of doing name tags, because a lot of people don’t like walking around with their name on their chest. They’ve got a little bit of a cheat sheet that can look across the aisle and see who’s across from them. They make friends gradually, before they know it, they’re friends with everybody. You don’t need to know everybody’s names, because everybody’s in the same boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I tend to do a mix of things on the coach that involves me talking, playing music or videos, or handing out local treats. But in the time that I just let them rest and relax, I quite often hear them all chatting to each other, and you’ll hear inside jokes that they’ve made throughout their trip jokingly being shouted back and forth across the coach. They’re all having one giant conversation.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related reading: This is the reality of being a Trafalgar coach driver in Europe<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does each Travel Director have their own tricks? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, 100% \u2013 everybody’s got their own little ways of doing things. I always I like to call my group Clan Trafalgar when we’re running Scotland tours. I tell them we’re not tourists. we’re a clan rediscovering our homeland, traveling as one family. Every morning I say it’s a perfect chance to lean across the aisle, say good morning and introduce yourself to your fellow clan members, and they all kind of lean across and they get to know who’s across from them for a second.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If there are any celebrations like anniversaries, birthdays, honeymoons, I always announce on the coach. If it\u2019s a birthday I say, give us a wave so we can see where you are, and then everybody sings happy birthday to them together. Then throughout the day, they’ve got different members of the group coming up and saying happy birthday to them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"guests<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Which experiences bring people together on tour? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the meals are very good because it breaks the group down into smaller groups, so it’s less intimidating. It’s a good chance to sit with somebody you’ve maybe not met yet, which I think is a really nice experience. And simple things like asking someone if they can take a photo, then you swap over \u2013 that’s the start of an interaction for people.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are tours usually full of groups? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn my current trip, I have a family of three and a group of four women traveling together. I’ve had larger groups than that, but we also get a lot of solo travelers as well. This is the last day of this tour, and I have had people saying to me this morning, they can’t believe the friendships they’ve made and how close they feel after only two weeks.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"guests<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do people really make friends? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou come on these tours and you make such close bonds because you’re traveling together, you’re eating together, you’re seeing all these exciting things, and you’re having such a good time together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I still keep in touch with a few of my past guests \u2013 there\u2019s one man who’s been on 14 Trafalgar tours! I had a few guests who met on previous Trafalgar tours and enjoyed each other’s company so much they’ve come back to travel together on another tour.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might also like: The perks of being a Trafalgar past guest<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s one piece of advice you\u2019d give for making friends on tour? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy advice would be to join in. Sign up to the optional experiences, sit with new people at dinner, offer to take someone\u2019s photo \u2013 that first little interaction makes it so much easier to start a conversation. And don\u2019t panic about trying to meet the whole group at once, get to know one or two people and go from there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks Fiona! If you have any specific advice or experience about making friends on tour, let us know in the comments section below – we’d love to hear it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talk a lot about the magic of making friends on tour, but we don\u2019t blame you if you\u2019re nervous about the whole thing. Meeting a group of strangers to spend your vacation with is an exciting prospect, but it doesn\u2019t come without its anxieties. Luckily we have Trafalgar Travel Director Fiona on hand to 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While my years of writing experience in the whisky industry took me far beyond Scotland, I now have the chance to write about more places for The Real Word (adding ever more to my bucket list). A highlight trip has to be backpacking around Vietnam with my sister, though my trips to Yosemite National Park, Madrid, and the Greek islands are up there too, captured haphazardly on my very unprofessional film camera.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jess-williamson-39b096176\/"],"honorificPrefix":"Miss","gender":"female","knowsAbout":["Writing"],"knowsLanguage":["English"],"jobTitle":"Campaign copywriter","worksFor":"TTC","url":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/author\/jesswilliamson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trafalgar.com\/real-word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}