By: Lucia Bučková
When someone at the market in Cadca tells me we have a lovely job because we travel all the time, I nod. It is about fifteen percent true. The rest is spreadsheets, phone calls with receptionists who cannot understand why we want to see the bathroom too, and deciding whether to wire a deposit for a hotel we may not manage to fill.
I have been producing tours at LionsTravel for seven years. In that time I have learned that roughly nine months pass between an idea and the first client climbing into the minibus in Turzovka. Here is the timeline we ended up with, including the parts that went wrong.
September to November: the idea and the paperwork
A new tour starts either with a client's question or because one of us cannot let something go. Our northern Albania trip exists because Tomas said the same thing three years running: that Theth beats most of what gets sold as the Alps. The first version of a route always looks brilliant on a map. Then I add the kilometres and the transfer times and discover that two points are four and a half hours of switchbacks apart, not ninety minutes.
This is also when I build the rough costing. It looks dull and it decides everything: accommodation per person per night, transport (a minibus with a driver cost us around 1.10 euro per kilometre in 2025), entrance fees, the guide, insurance, the guarantee fund levy, margin. If the number comes out 40 percent above a competitor running the same route with big groups, I have two options: explain it, or change the route. Usually we explain, because that price is the reason there are sixteen of us in the vehicle and not forty-two.
Winter: the scouting trip that costs real money
We do not sell a new destination unless one of us has been there with a notebook. In February 2024 I spent nine days across Albania and Montenegro and slept in eleven hotels. We rejected eight of them. The reasons were boring and specific:
- Breakfast starting at eight when we leave at seven. The receptionist smiled and said it would be fine. It was not — I checked a month later by phone, when he no longer knew who I was.
- Rooms facing a ventilation shaft, listed in the brochure as "standard".
- Minibus parking 600 metres away, uphill. With suitcases that is not a detail.
- Wi-Fi only in the lobby. We do not mind. Clients calling their grandchildren do.
A scouting trip costs us between 900 and 1,400 euro depending on the destination. It is the one line item I refuse to cut, because it is the cheapest of all the mistakes we could otherwise make.
Spring: deposits, or the part that hurts
Here is what people outside the business never see. To have rooms in August, we must block them in February or March. Hotels in Greece and Italy now routinely ask for 20 to 30 percent up front, non-refundable. Across three departures of sixteen people that is several thousand euro, wired at a point when we have sold maybe five seats.
A tour operator is essentially betting that in six months people will want to go exactly where you have already paid.
Which is why you negotiate. I learned to ask for three things at once: a smaller deposit, a later cancellation deadline, and breakfast moved an hour earlier. If the first is refused, I often get the second and third. And once you have stayed three seasons without leaving a mark on the walls, the terms improve on their own. A family hotel in Parga dropped our deposit to ten percent after the second year, because they knew we would show up.
Why we sometimes cancel a departure
No spin here. We cancel a date when, six weeks out, fewer than eight people have booked. Below that we would either have to raise the price for those already signed up or absorb a loss we cannot carry. Last year we cancelled two departures out of twenty-three. I phone every single person myself; I never do it by e-mail. We offer another date, another destination, or a refund within seven days — and we honour those seven days even though hotels sometimes take a month to send our money back.
Things still break. In June 2023 a hotel in Kotor cancelled our booking three days before arrival because the building had been sold. I spent an afternoon with a phone against each ear and by evening found a guesthouse four kilometres away, 22 euro per person more expensive. We paid the difference. The group only learned about it on site, when Tomas explained over dinner where they were staying and why. Nobody complained. It cost us 350 euro and one night of sleep.
What to take from this when you pick a tour
I am not asking for trust for free, so here are questions worth putting to any operator, us included:
- Has one of you stayed in that hotel in person? When?
- What is the maximum group size, and what happens if too few people book?
- How many days until I get my money back if you cancel?
- Is the guide an employee or hired per departure?
Four concrete questions should get four concrete answers. If you get four paragraphs about lifelong memories instead, ask again.
Our spring 2026 dates are already blocked and the deposits are paid, and yes, this year too there are two hotels in my drawer that I crossed out myself. If you want to know which destinations we checked this season, write to us in Turzovka — I will tell you straight, including the places I would not go to myself.
