Creating memorable, hand-crafted motorcycle tours for over twentyfive years

I’ve booked! What happens now?

Congratulations and thanks for booking your Self Guided Tour with us.

Ready to fly and booked a trip of a lifetime, now what?

 

We’d like to assure you that we feel honoured that you’ve untrusted us with the job of planning your motorcycle vacation. We want most of all the re-assure you that our aim is to provide you with one of the best vacations you’ll ever experience, and one you’ll have pleasant memories of for the rest of your life.

Now what happens?

At a quick guess, you’re probably wondering what happens now that you’ve handed over your deposit and credit card details to a bunch of people 12,000 miles away….. Right? 🙂

Hopefully you’ve learnt a little about us in the pre-purchase build up and an element of trust and familiarity has already began to build. This is an essential element – one that allows us to confidently make plans and decisions on your behalf as we plan your trip. At some stages you may not hear from us for weeks at a time. Please don’t think that this means we’ve forgotten about you or that we’re avoiding contacting you. We are a small but busy family business and at times are forced by workload and deadlines for other clients arriving before you to adopt a “head down – bum up ” position and concentrate on meeting and keeping our promises to a number of clients.

We’ve listed below a Timeline showing the critical points involved in the planning and fulfilment of a Self Guided Tour

Step One: The Booking Phase – generally 3 to 9 months prior to arrival.

  • After reading through your info and discussing your options with either John Fitzwater or Nicola Symonds you submit a Self Guided Tour Booking via the booking and reservation engine on our website.
  • The more information you can give us at this stage about your preferences, likes and dislikes, details of your plans etc, the better. It becomes very much more difficult to accommodate changes or new requirements as we progress toward your arrival.
  • Ideally we would like your arrival flight details at this stage, as this allows us to plan your pickup/dropoff for your arrival and departure days. If your international or domestic flights aren’t booked or confirmed, we’re unable to complete this part. If you are forced to change your arrival dates/times after we’ve completed the planning and writing of your itinerary, there you could incur increased charges for modifications and accommodation changes.
  • Normally we expect to receive your booking 3 to 9 months prior to your arrival. We can deal with late bookings, however you’ll need to make allowances for this and understand that we may be forced to complete existing bookings for clients who booked earlier.

Step Two: The Itinerary Planning & Pre-Preparation Phase – within 2 weeks of our receiving your booking.

  • Based on your preferences we begin planning the route your itinerary will follow, and selecting and booking your accommodations.
  • We email you with the rough outline and ask for your approval. The outline really only contains detail of the route and dates and perhaps more details regarding costing. At this stage, we can’t be too specific about the accommodations that will be used due to room availability being unconfirmed.
  • We also email you our “What To Bring File” and other tips on how to prepare for your trip (for example, practicing your U-turns for those of you who drive on the wrong side of the road 🙂
  • After receiving the rough outline, you email us back with your comments and we amend the details in response to your feedback if necessary, and then we “lock and load”.

Step Three: We begin detailed preparation of your itinerary.

  • Detailed writing of your itinerary begins. Please note that our itineraries are very detailed (70 – 100 colour pages is not uncommon in a typical 12 – 18 day itinerary) and it takes a considerable number of man ( and woman 🙂 ) hours to complete the writing of an itinerary.
  • Please be aware that we are normally working on many itineraries simultaneously so there may be a period of some weeks where you don’t hear from us. Generally, we prepare itineraries on a first-come, first-served basis.
  • If you become concerned, please just drop us an email, but rest assured that we are working on your itinerary and we haven’t forgotten about you. Trust us..we know what we’re doing, and we’re good at our job.. 🙂

Step Four: 3 months prior to your arrival – Tour Fare Balance becomes due and we email you the Itinerary Outline and Tour Fare Balance, and payment instructions.

  • At the 3 months prior stage, or at the point we provide the Final Itinerary Outline (which we call Your Tour At A Glance), final payment becomes due and your tour becomes non-cancellable.
  • We’ll contact you and advise the final balance is due and the details of the amount due, and your payment options.
  • The Final Itinerary Outline, which we call “Your Tour At A Glance” is a detailed outline of the itinerary we have prepared for you. It contains a detailed daily and hourly breakdown of your itinerary, contact information of your accommodations, activities we have you booked on, restaurants we’ve booked you into, plus details of your airport pickup pre-tour and dropoff post tour. Please note this is NOT the full , 60-100 page itinerary. This is provided to you on your arrival and will be waiting for you at your pre-tour accommodation.
  • The Tour At A Glance is normally emailed to you in Adobe Acrobat/PDF format and requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software application to read it. This is a common file type and many computers already have it installed.
    Your Tour At A Glance can be emailed to friends and family to give them details of where you’ll be and how to get hold of you on any given day of your trip.
  • Please note your itinerary has been completed by this stage, and accommodation and activity guarantees are locked in and subject to cancellation fees, so changes required to your itinerary at this stage will likely result in additional charges.

Step Five: The Impatient Champing At The Bit Stage

  • It’s now a matter of you sitting there and counting down the number of sleeps left until we greet you at the airport and start you on your Big New Zealand Motorcycle Adventure. 🙂

A couple of additional but important points to consider

Copyright Issues.

  • The ideals and values of the owners and employees of GoTourNZ are based on fair play and honesty, and we ask clients and friends of client to respect our rights to earn a living from our hard won detailed knowledge of how to get the best from a short time in New Zealand.
  • Accordingly, the itinerary we prepare for a client remains the property of GoTourNZ at all times, and is subject to copyright. An itinerary is prepared for the sole use of the client and is not to be copied, lent, or resold to any other party, group or individual.

Final Checklist

This list represents the steps your part in the Self-Guided Tour process:

 

1. Completed Online Booking and pay Tour Deposit? Self Guided Booking form
2. Online Rental Contract completed? Rental Contract
3. Read/Downloaded our What To Bring List? What to bring
4. Sent us your international and domestic flight details? Normally we'd hope to receive this with your Booking Form
5. Received your itinerary outline and pre-post tour arrangements, pickup info etc.? Normally sent to you 3 months prior to your tour start date at the same time the tour fare balance is due.
6. Made Final Tour Fare Payment? 3 months prior to your Self-Guided Tour start date, or when the Tour At A Glance is sent to you.
7. Practiced your U-turns? If you normally drive on the right ( US, Europe etc) you'll do yourself a favour if you practice right hand U-turns, like we do.
8. Arranged Travel Insurance? Highly recommended. Strongly recommended, Highly Strongly recommended in fact. Ask us for a quote.
9. Left a copy of your Tour At A Glance with a family member or work colleague? Unless you don't want them to be able to get hold of you, of course... 🙂