Why Independent Travelers Will Love Small Group Travel

Because I realized there maybe weren't a lot of people out there who were doing that.

You know, th- th- there weren't travel agents and travel advisors out there helping people travel that way.

They were more like, "Okay.

Well, I'm gonna put you on this tour," or, you know, "I'm gonna just have this package put together." And I just kinda wanted something a little bit different.

But I always told myself when I started Wander Your Way, way back in, gosh, was kind of the around this time, uh, was towards the, the last few months of, of the year of 2013, which feels like a lifetime ago now.

13 years ago.

So it's been almost just coming up on 13 years that I've been in business.

And, you know, when I started my business, I was like, "You know, I think I'd like to do group tours," small group tours.

Like, I knew I, I didn't want, you know, a bunch of people.

Uh, you know, I always kind of felt like maybe a dozen people at the most would be kind of an ideal number.

And I just always kinda felt like I wanted to be, that to be part of it, despite [laughs] the fact, and this is always kind of that weird thing, that I actually had never really traveled that way.

Like, I never really took a small group tour.

So I don't know what it w- [laughs] why it occurred to me, but I think I was just thinking that I could get people who were more like-minded, that wanted, that kind of felt like that they wanted to travel independently, but maybe they w- they wanted to share those experiences with another person or with other people with a small group.

And I al- also knew that, you know, it's like, you know, I'd be incorporating some of the places that I wanted to go that maybe were different, and of course, doing some of the soft adventure outdoor things.

So I always felt like it was part of my business plan.

But again, I wasn't really sure how I would feel [laughs] about traveling with a group, because I tend to be a really independent person.

In fact, [laughs] I always say that my dad always told me that I was too independent, which is why I'm single.

He would always tell me that.

And I do have that, that thing about me.

I even had an ex-boyfriend say this.

It didn't matter what he said, I was just gonna do what I wanted to do when [laughs] I wanted to do it.

So I always say that that's one of the benefits of traveling on my own when people are like, "Oh, how do you travel solo?" And I'm always s- I'm always like, "Well, you know what? I get to do what I wanna do when I wanna do it and how I wanna do it." So I wasn't sure how I would feel about doing this whole small group travel.

I knew that for my business, for some reason, I wanted to try it.

So when the first one happened in September of 2025 with a wonderful small group to the Dolomites of Northern Italy- I absolutely loved it.

I had so much fun sharing my favorite places and some of the places that I love with other people, and kinda seeing it through their eyes for the first time.