I received an email today from Eloise, who just returned from a hiking tour in Mt. Blanc with her husband and daughter. I met the three of them when I was helping guide a Fit Health Into Life trip in Tucson for the company run by my girlfriend Devon.

I was in New York last week, unfortunately for a funeral, and met a very outgoing and enthusiastic gentleman, Mark, who was catering the post-funeral event for his company, Mark of Excellence. Mark mentioned he wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and when I told him I had just been, asked my advice.

Just a few days ago, we purchased the Inca Trail Pass for Liz Miller, one of our long-time US-based guides. Liz will be guiding our Peru Trek in October.

How do these three events relate? They all have to do with you, if you are planning to book an active tour.

Eloise, who booked her trip to Mt. Blanc in France with a US-based company on a private trip with just the three of them, had a terrible guide and thus a terrible time. In their words, the guide “never asked us any questions about our fitness or hiking ability, in fact he did not ask me what I do for a living till the 5th day of the trip. He never seemed to really want to engage with us. At dinner he was always very quiet, rarely adding anything to the conversation, and never providing information on the next days hike, unless we asked. For that matter, never asking what we thought of the current days hike, what we liked, didn’t like, challenges, was it what we expected.”

The guide was local and was an excellent trail guide, he just wasn’t an excellent trip leader. In New York, I told Mark he could travel to Tanzania and I would put him in touch with a couple of local guides he could use to climb the mountain safely and cheaply. I also told him we would be running a trip up Kilimanjaro in late January and he jumped at that idea.

And in Peru (or soon to be there), our October group that will hike on a practically unused alternative Inca Trail is a small group of only seven travelers. Our local guide, Santiago, is incredible and we discussed having him lead the group alone but ultimately decided to send Liz along.

The moral of these three stories? Know what you are getting when you book a foreign trip. Eloise’s guide in France is probably a nice guy with his friends and a solid trail guide. The problem is, he did not get along with or know how to take care of his American customers. And he clearly wasn’t trained to be a trip leader. Many American companies simply subcontract their work to local companies, without even sending a US guide along.

Mark, from New York, could spend less money and hire a local Tanzanian guide but might run into the same problem. He quickly made the judgment to go with a company like Zephyr Adventures to ensure his vacation is excellent. And our seven travelers in Peru will have the benefit of both Santiago, our local expert, and Liz, our American guide who is trained to make sure their needs are met, their questions are answered, and they have someone from our company to communicate with.

Make sure you make your vacation an excellent one.