Tour Operators Editing and Proofreading Services

"Day six: we continue to the lake, stopping en route at the monastery." Behind that line are 260 miles, seven hours on a mountain road, and a single stop of twenty minutes. The traveler reading it is picturing an afternoon drive and a monastery. Fourteen days of a trip are sold on a document like this one, and the same document is what the trip gets measured against once the traveler is on the bus.

The documents we edit for Tour Operators

Day-by-day itineraries and their pacing come to us first, and the inclusion and exclusion lists usually arrive with them. Accommodation descriptions and standards follow, along with transport, transfer, and journey time information, meal arrangements, and optional excursion descriptions and costs. We also edit group size and traveler profile information, fitness and mobility requirements, and single supplement and room-sharing arrangements. Tour leader and local guide information comes to us as well, along with pre-departure documentation, booking conditions and financial protection statements, cancellation and amendment terms, and the feedback and repeat-traveler material sent out after the trip. Our editors work on the itinerary as the document the trip will be measured against.

What the editing involves

Honest pacing is the discipline nobody applies to an itinerary, because destinations are what sells a trip, and driving is what fills it. The travel between places gets compressed into a phrase: "we continue to", "en route we stop at", "arriving in the late afternoon". We put the numbers back. Every day states its actual travel time and the kind of road, because six hours on a mountain road is a different day from six hours on an interstate.

A full visit and a photograph stop are different things, and an itinerary reads better for saying which is which. Four sites in one afternoon means four short stops, and a traveler who knows that beforehand is not the one who complains about it afterward. Free time is worth naming as free time, because many travelers want it, and few itineraries admit to having any. Early starts belong on the day they fall on: a 5:30 a.m. departure on three of the fourteen mornings changes who should book the trip. The demanding part of a day is flagged at the day it belongs to rather than gathered into a paragraph at the back.

We do not decide how long a drive takes or which stop is worth an hour. The operator and its guides know the route, and the times arrive with the copy. Our part is to see that the time given in the day description matches the time given in the summary. We also check that the road named on day 6 is the road named on the map, and that nothing described as included on page 2 is listed as optional on page 9. Operators who write the pacing this way get travelers who chose that pace, and those travelers book again.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including itineraries, supplier arrangements, and commercial terms. We are editors, not travel, legal, or regulatory advisors, and we offer no view on package travel regulation, financial protection requirements, or any operational matter. What we can do is make the itinerary describe the trip the traveler will actually have.