6 ways Globus took away the pain points of travel during a group tour in Europe

Are group tours for me? Until a few weeks ago, I would have said no — at least for trips to most mainstream destinations. I like traveling on my own.

But then I spent seven days exploring Scotland on a Globus motorcoach tour with a few dozen travelers I had never met before.

To my surprise, I had a wonderful time, as you can read in this story about the trip.

In part, this was because I was traveling with a great group of people — newfound friends who made the experience better by their companionship. It also didn't hurt that Scotland has stunning vistas and fascinating historic sites. I suspect it's hard not to have a wonderful experience when touring Scotland.

But my enjoyment of the trip also had a lot to do with how Globus handled every little detail of the journey — from arranging our hotels and transportation to getting us into all the top attractions — in a way that meant I didn't have to worry about a thing. I could sit back, relax and soak it all in.

In short, Globus removed many of the pain points of travel that can greatly detract from the experience.

Here are the six biggest pain points of travel that Globus helped ease on my Scotland trip.

The chore of finding the right lodging

I often spend hours finding the perfect hotel or short-term rental property in any place I visit. That time has a cost, given my busy schedule.

But even when I am willing to put in the hours to find just the right place, I don't always get it right. I'll pick lodging that looks like it'll be cozy and comfortable in online pictures or seems to be in just the right part of town, only to find upon arrival that it's not quite what I expected on either front.

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Globus made this part of my trip easy. Before I even signed up for the trip, the brand had already figured out the best places to stay in each destination on the schedule, saving me hours of time and angst over whether I had picked my lodging wisely.

Upon arrival in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, for instance, we arrived to find our hotel (the Mercure Inverness Hotel) located in as prime a spot as there could be, just next to the River Ness and the main shopping streets. Our hotels in Glasgow and Edinburgh were equally in the perfect places for us to walk right out the front door and to the city's top restaurants, shops and attractions.

The stress of arrival and departure

As a travel writer, I'm used to flying to new places around the world. But even I get disoriented sometimes when arriving in a new city or country, particularly if I haven't done much homework in advance. And for people who don't travel a lot, the moments after arriving in a new place on a plane can be intimidating.

Globus includes airport pickups on air-inclusive trips to remove this potential pain point. A Globus representative will meet tourgoers at baggage claim and lead them to a transfer that whisks them to their hotel for the night — no need to worry about a thing.

I didn't take advantage of the included transport from Glasgow Airport (GLA) at the start of the trip, as I arrived in the country early at a different airport. But I loved that Globus figured out all the logistics to get me from our final hotel in Edinburgh to Edinburgh Airport (EDI) on the last day of the trip — yes, Globus includes airport transfers at the end of trips, too, when you book a trip that includes air.

The stress of figuring out how to get around

What's the best way to get from a hotel in Glasgow to Scotland's famously beautiful Loch Lomond, which is 50 miles to the north, and then from there to iconic Stirling Castle, 40 more miles to the east?

On this trip, I didn't have to figure it out. We visited both sites — two top places to tour around Glasgow — in a single day. But all I had to do was show up in the lobby of our Glasgow hotel after breakfast and leave all the worries of transportation and logistics around reaching the sites to our guide.

We rode in a Globus motorcoach to both sites and stopped at a whisky distillery near Stirling Castle — reached on foot as our motorcoach moved locations — for a tasting. We also did a quick tour around downtown Glasgow to see the highlights.

While I generally enjoy planning my touring schedule when traveling, I will be the first to admit that I could not have figured out how to do all of that in a single day on my own.

The tyranny of the ticket line

One thing that I really loved about this tour: I never spent more than a few moments in a line. As part of arranging every aspect of our touring in advance, Globus had tickets waiting for us at every attraction we visited. As a result, I didn't have to wait in line to buy a ticket at any site — a big advantage at popular attractions such as Stirling Castle, where there can be long lines for tickets.

When it came time to enter a site, our guide would be waiting by the entrance with our tickets. And sometimes, we didn't even have to go through the main entrance. We would be ushered into the site quickly through another entrance as part of a special group tour access that Globus calls VIP access.

At Scone Palace near Perth, where Scottish kings were crowned for centuries, our guide led us past the main entrance to a special side door where we walked right into the site without waiting. We stopped first for an exclusive breakfast of coffee, tea and biscuits in one of the palace's kitchen rooms before being led through the site by a private guide.

The tension over time management

Speeding us through the arrival process at popular sites was just one way Globus saved me time on the tour. On a broader level, the incredibly detailed planning that went into the hour-by-hour flow of each day's itinerary, with the list of sites we would visit, the travel times between them, breaks for lunch and even bathroom stops all carefully thought out in advance, meant that I ended up seeing more and doing more on this trip than I ever could have done on my own.

As mentioned above, one of the days included an excursion from Glasgow to the famously beautiful Loch Lomond for a boat ride (an outing that involved traveling 50 miles north) and several hours exploring Scotland's iconic Stirling Castle (another 40 miles to the east) and a whisky tasting at a nearby distillery before a 30-mile drive back to Glasgow.

The second day of the trip packed in even more sites as we headed north into the mountainous splendor that is the Scottish Highlands, home of the impossibly scenic Glen Coe valley (which famously served as the setting for James Bond's estate in the movie "Skyfall"), the celebrated Isle of Skye and the fairy-tale-like Eilean Donan Castle, to name a few highlights.

There's no way I could have done all of that in two days of touring on my own.

The fear of missing out

As it turns out, this wasn't my first visit to Scotland. While I hadn't seen much of the country before the trip, I had visited Edinburgh, the capital, twice over the years during cruise ship calls (as regular readers know, I mostly write about cruise travel).

During both of those visits, I did something I often do when visiting a city for a day during a cruise: I explored on my own. On my first visit, I went to the city's most famous site, Edinburgh Castle, for a tour and walked around the old parts of town. On my second visit, I had a wonderful lunch at a Michelin-starred pub I read about on foodie review sites and spent more time walking around.

But here's what I realized after visiting Edinburgh on this Globus tour: I had missed a lot.

For instance, as we toured the "new town" of Edinburgh ("new" being relative, as it was built in the 1700s and 1800s), our guide pointed out a grand neoclassical home on Charlotte Square that is the official residence of the first minister of Scotland. In other words, it's Scotland's equivalent of the White House in the U.S. or 10 Downing St. in England.

I had walked right by this building not once but twice on my last visit to Edinburgh without any idea what it was. I never even stopped to gaze up at it. Nor did I know that another grand house just a couple of doors down had been the home of Joseph Lister, a pioneer in antiseptic medicine (think: Listerine), or that telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell had lived just across the way.

As a history lover, I was interested in these sites and their backstories. However, I had totally missed them on previous trips.

If you have a fear of missing out while traveling, a tour can be a great choice.