If you are travelling with a guide, you have an advantage over the individuals who choose to go it alone. While everyone prefers different types of travel, it's worthwhile to try escorted tours at least once. Traveling with a guide has a number of benefits that you can't foresee until you give it a shot.

Kiss Lines Good-Bye

One of the major advantages of traveling with a guide is you can often get through lines that would otherwise involve waiting for several hours. This allows you to see more of the city you're in and not spend hours at a time wishing that you'd brought something to do.

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Escorted tours are expensive for a reason: they're way more informational. When you go through a building, such as the Vatican in Vatican City, Italy or the Chateau de Versailles outside of Paris, France, with a guide, you can see rooms that people without a guide can't access. The guides also know about the art, the decorations and the history of the building and everything you're seeing. And they'll be sharing it with you. If you were to go it alone, you might be able to borrow a headset and listen to a rote description of an object, but you'd miss a lot of information that you can glean with someone who knows what they're doing.

Skip the Tourist Traps

When you travel, you quickly learn that there are two types of tourist attractions: Things you should see because they're worth your time, money and energy and those that you skip. When you travel with a guide, you don't need to limit your options to only the most popular attractions. Instead, a guide can lead you through the city expertly, pointing out over-priced shopping centres, attractions that cost more than they're worth, while guiding you to the things that you really shouldn't miss.