What does it usually cost for a Custom vacation tour of Italy per day with a private guide?

I talk with a lot of perspective travelers and lots of people want to know up front, "hey, what's it's going to cost us for a Custom tour vacation of Italy, the custom part sounds expensive"? Well, since your CUSTOM vacation tour of Italy will be different than any of my other guided trips I CANNOT give you a complete answer up front until we start putting your trip together.

What I can tell you is that generally the trips per person/per day are in a range of $400ish a day which many times INCLUDES the airfare and all the costs including me as well.

The only thign I cannot figure is the lunch and dinner costs. This is a general figure if we're not traveling staying in 5 Star hotels but 3 and 4 star hotels. This will include all your tourist activities and travel costs of trains and or rental cars.

Now, when you look around at some of the pre-packaged tours, airfare is RARELY included and sometimes there's a few meals but not all lunches and dinners are included. All tour attractions are in there and the guides are included as well - usually there is ground transfers too. Well, I do all the same things as a pre-packaged tour company does as far as the planning and booking of things but I do it all myself because I'm the Italy expert, only tour guiding in Italy, by myself, WITH YOU!

Whatever you do, I do! This one on one experience is very special because I'm just as invested in the trip as you are. I'm there with you all the time translating, escorting and guiding you so you'll have the time of your life on your own custom vacation trip in Italy.

Often times you have a pre-set idea of how long you can go for and retired folks can generally travel longer often time up to 3 weeks. The biggest problem with the initial talks about where to go and what to see is that most people want to do too much in too short a time frame. I've found that 3 nights minimum stays are the best way to do a custom tour in Italy because usually your arrival to a location is in the afternoon and you really cannot plan a tour attraction that first afternoon or night. So, technically you're staying for 2.5 days there and the next 2 days are when you can get the tourist activiities in. Any moving less then 3 nights just feels like a travel race, a travel competition, a travel marathon.....too exhausting packing up every 3rd morning.

For example, if you only have 7 days in Italy that's flat out too short unless we go to 2 locations and fan out day trips from those two locations. if you have 9 days, that's 3 locations, 12 days that's 4 locations, 15 days that's 3 locations, etc etc.

If this sounds like it's for you, let's talk about crafting your custom tour of Italy anywhere from 3 to 6 months in advance......