Costs for day-trip tours.
 

I recently started guiding part-time for a local bike-hike-kayak touring company. I am curious about the rest of you out there have paid or been asked to pay for day trips.

We paid for the roads with our taxes; why would we want to pay someone to tell me where/when/how to go??

I am a member of one of the local cycletouring clubs. I believe the membership was $29 and it allows me to ride with the the club on any of their events.

Their day-trip events don't cost anything more than the membership fee (unless I want to buy a bottle of water and donut at the halfway point). And I could conceivably ride day trips every weekend between April and September. So $29 for ... say ... 16 rides comes to a total of $1.81 per ride.

Their multi-day trips cost a nominal fee which covers things like camping, a BBQ, and perhaps minimal SAG support.

I am also a member of the Alberta Randonneurs and they charge $50 for their membership, which includes insurance and a General Licence with the ABA. Again, there are rides just about every weekend at no additional charge over and above the membership fee.

I did a 1/2 day guided MTB tour in Cairns, inc bike/helmet/etc, for about $80 in 2006.

Bike hire alone in Cairns (crappy bikes) was $15 per day. A reasonable MTB in Alice Springs was about double that for a day.

Tandem hire in Melbourne (various bikes from just-OK to heavy but good) $44 for a day, solo bike about half that :)

Bike hire in Vietnam was 10,000-15,000 Đ ($1 US at the time, almost double that now!) for a day. Guided tours were available through foreign companies, not sure about the cost. The local bikes were pretty bad, at least the ones available for hire.

Well, to use my example:
I was in Cairns on a work trip and hadn't brought my bike; I did a day trip on one of the local crappy hire bikes; I wanted to explore the MTB trails (famous area for MTB competition) but didn't have access to a suitable bike, didn't know the area and am not a very experienced off-road rider; so, the guided tour made sense to me. It was basically 4 hours of riding and (for me) skills training, one guide for two riders on that occasion, on mid-range Norco hardtails. In that setting paying 10% of the cost of the bike made sense for me.

Mmmm, not what I was expecting. The clients of ********* do not have their own bikes, often have not ridden in years, want someone else to take care of everything, even putting the chain back on when they mess up the click shifting. And to have a van following them around so they can get sagged out after 5 or 6 miles when it is not fun any more. Not BF types. A 7 mile ride with stops at two wineries, catered lunch and a kayak float back to the start runs over $150.

Probably not. Particularly the touring subforum!

Are you complaining? More importantly, are they complaining? I would never sign up for such a trip, but my brother would. If you are enjoying leading the trips then don't worry about it.

Speedo

I think the OP had a typo in his last post. I could have sworn he said the ride was 7 miles, surely he meant 70?:eek:

If folks are actually signing up, I kind of wish I had thought of it first. With that distance, entry level Hybrids would suffice, and maintenance would be minimal with that mileage. Heck, a set of tires could last an eternity.

Again, he did say "7" miles? Wow.

Costs for day-trip tours
 

I think you posted in the wrong section, even the wrong forum.

If you provide all the equipment, catered lunch guiding and sag wagon, $150 sounds fair to me. Have you run the numbers? (don't forget liability insurance)