On Explore tours the places we stay are every bit as important as the sights we visit and the things we do. Think small, local and family-run rather than huge, global-branded and impersonal. It's always nice to sit down with your hosts over a drink or a meal and to be made welcome like an old friend!

What's the accommodation like on tour?

For some people comfortable accommodation is a must, for others discarding day-to-day creature comforts is very much part of the adventure.

All our tours are comfort rated, from “roughing it” through to “in style”, so you can choose from 5 different levels of comfort.

For more accommodation details go to the relevant tour dossier and you’ll see each night-stop is rated. Hotels, lodges, guesthouses etc are rated H, H+ or H++, depending on facilities and service levels. Camping is rated C, C+ or C++, again depending on service levels. Each dossier holds a key with much more detail.

Our In Style tour dossiers name and describe the accommodation used at each night-stop. We also name and describe the accommodation on our centre-based tours, where accommodation is very much integral to the whole holiday experience, and we usually include pictures in the relevant tours’ image galleries.

To dispel a couple of popular myths…

• You don’t need to rough it to do adventure travel, not with Explore anyway!

• We only rarely use multi-share accommodation (eg. hostels) and this is usually only because no more comfortable alternatives are available.

So how do we decide where to stay?

• Most of our tours are comfort rated 4 (the category we call “comfortable”). You can expect to stay in en-suite, air-conditioned rooms in good quality, comfortable family run hotels, with possibly a night or two somewhere more basic to allow the itinerary to get off the beaten tourist track.
• Quality of service and standards of cleanliness and safety are more important to us than the hotel facilities; to us a friendly welcome and comfortable bed matter more than TVs and mini-bars.
• We prefer smaller, family run hotels, as they usually offer a warmer welcome and the money we spend gets re-invested in the local economy.
• We normally choose hotels that don’t insist on half-board or full-board packages: this gives you the flexibility to eat where you want and doesn’t tie you to the (often rather bland) hotel restaurant.
• Accommodation choices are based on what’s available in the places we want to stay: if that mean’s a simple guesthouse, so be it - we choose the accommodation to suit the itinerary, not the other way round.

Shared or solo?

On virtually all our tours there's no surcharge for solo travellers, as you’ll generally share a twin room with another person of the same sex. If you cherish your own space, however, on most tours you pay extra to book a Single Room Option.
Solo travellers FAQs

Variety is the spice of life!

With Explore you’ll get more variety of accommodation than on conventional tours. Our small group sizes make this possible. And on many tours the accommodation gives a great insight into the destination itself, for example…

• A traditional Tuscan villa with gardens and pool
• Converted monastery cave hotel in Cappadocia, Turkey
• Swiss mountain hut in the shadow of the Matterhorn
• Bedouin-style camp in the heart of Wadi Rum, Jordan
• A Moroccan Kasbah, in the heart of the Atlas Mountains
• Aboard a traditional Egyptian Felucca, or an elegant Dahabiya
• Welcoming village guesthouses in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains
• Authentic ryokans in Japan and haciendas in Cuba
• Raft houses in Thailand; stilt houses in Vietnam
• Classic sleeper trains the world over: the Trans-Siberian or awesome ‘railroad to Lhasa’
• A converted shepherd’s hut in France’s Cathar region
• And perhaps the most unusual of all: Sweden’s super-cool Icehotel!

Our accommodation, summed up

Going in style

Classic Explore adventures with that little bit of extra comfort, our ‘In Style’ tours may be just the ticket if you’re looking to combine an original and off-beat tour with a selection of upgraded overnight hotels.

In developing these tours we’ve kept the Explore ethos – small groups, travelling off the beaten track, escorted by an expert leader – but each evening we check into more comfortable hotels and lodges, normally four-star standard or above. The perfect wind-down after an active day on the road!

Where possible and practical we try to stay at more interesting or authentic hotels, for example at a converted Maharajah’s palace in India, a cool Riad in Morocco or a top-end game lodge in Africa, and as always we favour the personal touch of smaller, family-run places over more impersonal hotel chains. However where no ‘interesting’ alternatives exist we do sometimes use standard four-star hotels.

Occasionally our In Style tours may forego the upgraded hotels to stay a night or two in simpler accommodation, just to allow the itinerary to get off the beaten track. You can check the relevant tour dossiers, where each overnight stop is described in some detail.

Comfort Ratings