In recent years, independent travel has become a popular form of travel, especially for young people who love the freedom to explore and want to control their own schedule.
Independent travel is a form of travel by one or more people, in which participants will schedule, plan, time, and location according to their own interests. This form brings comfort and freedom from feeling constrained, so it is very popular with young people.
If you go with a large group, to make things easier, there will be a leader who will organize and schedule the schedule for the group members.
Independent travel offers freedom and freedom, so it is popular with many people.
When trust is abused
Huynh Chi Vu, a freelancer currently living and working in Binh Phuoc, shared with Travellive about his unpleasant experience when encountering leaders who were unclear about costs during his independent travel trips.
This group leader has been his friend for 4 years and has traveled together on many trips such as: Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Jordan, Israel. After the pandemic, Chi Vu went on a trip to Northern Europe in May, when he returned, this leader continued to invite him to go to Morocco in November 2022.
This leader was always enthusiastic and helped him get a visa, and supported him with anything he needed. Because they were also close friends, he also trusted them. Before the journey began, this leader always made sure to take care of everything.
Huynh Chi Vu checks in at Chefchaouen - the city known as the "green pearl" of Morocco
The leader that Chi Vu mentioned is the author of a book about travel, plus his popularity and influence in the travel world, so he has created trust for many people.
During the trip to Morocco, before leaving, the group leader informed that they would collect money to book a land tour (package tour), but when they arrived in Morocco, they actually only rented a car to drive themselves. The leader gave a vague and non-specific itinerary, only going to the places he chose. Members who asked for the itinerary information were not provided with complete information.
In fact, it is not a land tour, because if it is a land tour, everything must be prepared, there will be a tour guide to introduce each location... With a land tour, members will have 3 main meals, specifically recording what each meal has, will stay at 3 to 5 star hotels, but in fact, when leaving, the group members and Chi Vu will only stay at hostels (cheap motels)... to minimize costs and make it easy for the leader to take advantage.
Initially, the leader required a deposit of 300 euros for the tour in Vietnam, and an additional 1,000 euros for Morocco, for a total of 1,300 euros. The group had 19 members, but the leader said they contributed money in the spirit of friendship, not to go on a tour, but based on the criteria of going wherever they wanted. During the trip, from the first and second days, the group members saw problems and were suspicious. A lot of money was paid, but the living conditions were very bad, most people had to take care of their own food and drink.
From the Northern Europe trip to the Morocco trip, this leader always went out overtime. When the time was “over”, everyone was tired and would eat on their own, not using the group’s money. Then they would spend less and this person could take advantage of the extra money. During the 13-day trip, the group only ate 6 meals together, the rest of the time they ate on their own.
“This leader was quite heartless. When we went, we were divided into 4 or 5 small groups and gradually there were signs of cracks. Everyone realized more clearly that this person was the 'economic leader'. When members asked about the specific expenses and schedule, he answered in a roundabout way, did not provide complete information, and the finances were not transparent, without clear statements,” said Chi Vu.
Afterwards, Chi Vu and his group members still asked this leader to publicly disclose detailed expenses and give a certain amount of time to review the income and expenses.
During that time, everyone in the group made a detailed daily expense table and searched online for costs for some items, only to realize that the group leader had made a huge difference in money. For example, regarding accommodation, the leader reported 80 euros/person/night, but the actual price was only 40 euros for both food and accommodation, which means the difference in food was double. And in fact, these places already had specific prices on the Booking platform.
The total cost that the leader collected from each person from Vietnam to Morocco was 1,300 euros, but the actual cost for each person was only 720 euros, and 580 euros (equivalent to 14.5 million VND) were lost. The group had 19 people in total, so this leader lost money and the total cost difference was more than 275 million VND.
After the recent trips, Chi Vu also learned lessons and experiences when traveling on his own.
After the trip to Morocco, the group that went to Northern Europe with this leader also returned to request clarification of the costs. And then, this group leader had to return 295 million VND to the entire Northern Europe group. The problem that Chi Vu and the group members encountered here was that due to trust, they were not too meticulous and detailed about the costs of the trip. This leader took advantage of every little thing, not ignoring anything such as: a 500,000 VND phone sim card but charged 650,000 VND, insurance of more than 500,000 VND but charged more than 700,000 VND or the difference in airfare of more than 2 million VND per ticket.
When collecting 2 trips to Northern Europe and Morocco, Chi Vu was the one who was refunded the most amount of 47 million VND. After the incident broke out, this group leader avoided responsibility, blocked all social networks and did not face the community, did not have an attitude of admitting mistakes...
Huynh Chi Vu added: “This unfortunate incident happened when the leader was using his popularity and influence in the travel industry to call on people to form travel groups and then profit from it. In the name of going together, but deceiving people in terms of trust, feelings… The members of the group were the victims of the economic leader's 'chicken herding' trick like this.”
After some bad experiences about the difference in costs when traveling independently, Chi Vu also gave some basic notes for tourists. Simple things that you can book yourself should be booked, such as plane tickets, insurance, SIM cards... If traveling together, you should check the leader's previous experience. All costs must be clear from the beginning along with a certain itinerary and made public for the group members to know...
Experience when traveling independently
Harry Bui is currently the CEO of a self-guided travel platform for Vietnamese people, currently developing the Thai tourism market and will expand to other cities in the coming years. According to him, the situation of discrepancies and ambiguity in costs when traveling independently has been going on for a long time and is not a new topic that has appeared recently.
“People often have the idea of going to independent travel groups or searching for 'Finding a travel companion abroad' to find a leader to go with in order to seek safety and security when traveling abroad. But in my opinion, no leader will spend time and brainpower to do it for free, because after all, they are strangers. At the very least, that leader must have a benefit to bring back for them to do it, such as enhancing their personal brand, money... Therefore, to avoid this from happening, when planning a trip together, the whole group must have a detailed cost estimate, then the risk of differences and ambiguity in costs will be somewhat limited,” said Harry Bui.
According to Harry Bui, from his experience as a leader, in addition to the difference and ambiguity in costs, there may be cases where the leader directs the group to follow a schedule decided by them in order to bring the most benefits to that group leader.
Harry Bui (center) and members of his independent travel group in Thailand
He also shared: “To have a smooth self-guided tour, avoiding unnecessary situations, the pre-trip preparation stage is extremely important, group members should share the work together and not depend too much on the leader. From agreeing on the schedule to preparing the necessary bookings, which should be prioritized in advance to save costs such as air tickets, hotels... Or if you don't have much time, you should find an external self-guided support service to do this. If you have these preparation steps, you have reduced 70% of unnecessary situations during the trip."
Harry Bui also said that, to find information and experience for independent travel, in his opinion, information is timely. That is, not all information read online is correct at the time of your trip. For example: There are cafes that were very hot on social networks before, but after the pandemic, they either changed owners or were transferred with a new name.
“Therefore, no source or person will be 100% accurate. But it is best to focus on a place that can continuously update a wide range of multi-dimensional information for reference. Currently, independent travel groups on the internet are doing this well, but only solve half the problem, because the information will not be verified and will only follow one direction of the previous person sharing,” Harry Bui emphasized.
