Accommodation on your adventure holiday

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 old friends.

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, so you can choose from five different comfort levels.

For more detail you can go to the relevant trip notes and check the rating for each night's accommodation. Hotels, lodges and guesthouses are rated H, H+ or H++, depending on facilities and service levels, while camping is rated C, C+ or C++.

On our In Style trips and on our 'centre-based' tours we also name and describe the accommodation used.

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 options are available.

So how do we decide where to stay?

• On most of our tours you can expect to stay in en-suite, air-conditioned rooms in good quality, comfortable family run hotels. Occasionally, when we want to get off the beaten tourist trail, we may stay in more basic accommodation.
• 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 is 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.

No Single Supplements

With Explore there are no compulsory surcharges for solo travellers. You can choose to share a twin room (we'll match you with another solo traveller of the same sex) or if you cherish your own space, on most tours you have the option to pay extra for a single room (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
• 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, including the Trans-Siberian Railway
• 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. Read more about In-Style holidays.

Comfort Ratings