We have already seen how group travel can prove to be funand thrilling experience. There are lots of benefits during the tour itself, like meeting new people, making new friends, watching out for each other, doing fun group activities, sharing anecdotes and tips and tricks with each other. Mostly group travel provides a sense of safety as well. You know that there is always someone around to rely on. However, the best part of the group travel is often in the long-term benefits that you gain out of it. Here we take a look at a few such good side-effects.
Finding like-minded company
When you travel in a group and spend a lot of time together, it is but natural that you would start opening up and talking about yourself, your family, your interests, etc. It is quite possible that you find one or two more people in the group with similar interests. If you are from the same city, this means that you can also form a friendship and a gang of sorts to pursue these activities. For example, if you are interested in candle making and did not know, what or how to go about it, perhaps another person into it can help you out. You can get together and do things as a group.
You could also look at taking classes together or doing workshops together. In short, during group travel, it is entirely possible that you get to tie up with people, with whom you can form lifelong bonds. This can be widened to many activities like watching movies together, going for picnics, taking part in some social volunteering activities, etc. In fact, you can exchange books, recipes and have potluck lunches or dinners, etc. and ensure that overall life takes a better turn with more social interactions.
Being in touch
With the advent of smartphones and apps like WhatsApp or Facebook, staying in touch is not a difficult any longer. During the tour itself, you can start a WhatsApp group to communicate with each other. This can help a lot as if someone is stuck somewhere in the unknown city, you can easily figure out using location sending option and help out. This group can more or less be maintained even after the tour is over. Perhaps just to be in touch, perhaps to plan other group activities, or plan more tours. There is a lot of information that is being shared through WhatsApp groups nowadays. While the government keeps issuing advisories about fake messages, many a time, as it happened during the Chennai and Kashmir floods the social media has played a major role in helping people out.
Support
You could also use the friends made during a group tour as a support group. You may learn to support each other in times of a need or crisis as well. For example, if someone needs help of any kind, falls sick, etc., the rest of the group members can rally to help the person in need. Also, if someone in the group is doing any activity like tuitions or catering, or cooking classes or such things, as a group you can help spread the message to your other groups and help them out. It is quite possible, that one or two may be using these activities to sustain themselves financially, and your spreading the message, can mean a lot to them. Also, humans are social by nature, and there are always times when they need company for one thing or the other and who better to turn to, than friends, especially if the family is not around.
Overall, the benefits of group travel may usually last well beyond the tour itself and even last a lifetime. All it takes is a little friendly, chatter during the group to get things started for a positive effect.
