European Motorcycle Tours
Luxury Resort Based Biker Holidays, A New Tour Proposition
An alternative to the typical motorcycling holiday
So what's new and what makes McTours a different motorcycle holiday proposition? McTours Ltd is the brainchild of Brian Watson, a seasoned Scottish entrepreneurial businessman and motorbike enthusiast.
This business was inspired as a natural extension of Brian's motorcycling hobby, through his connection with friends living in the Dordogne and operating in the rural France property business and his own business association with the local motorcycle dealers.
Brian operates in strong partnership with motorcycle dealerships and other motorcycle rental companies. He has a core staff of six motorcyclists who are all Senior Observers with groups affiliated to the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), any two of which will lead and tail a typical tour.
A need for change
To truly explain why our holidays are different we must first highlight what we perceived as obstacles in the current offerings. We hate to start on a negative note but we need to explore the potential difficulties with current biking tours to identify what needs to change to address a different market and offer an alternative product.
The first challenge we wanted to address was time. What happens when you only have a limited amount of time to take a bike tour? Most biking holidays involve a long travel before reaching the area to be explored. As such to assign a week to tour an area can often mean a fortnight's holiday; half a week to get there, a week on the planned tour and half a week to return. This is all fair and well if you intend to spend two weeks on your bike but often that cannot be achieved especially when the needs of other family members are taken into consideration.
The next challenge was addressing the pre-planned route. A typical motorcycling holiday tends to hop and skip across the country with a different destination each night. If adverse weather is imminent along that route the rider's trip can become a washout and what should have been a pleasurable journey can soon become a misery and of course much stress is often associated with riding along congested roads knowing you must reach a destination at a fixed time. So, rather than enjoying the route the focus is to get to the next stop, dry out and get a hot bath.
Then we considered how to address the needs of couples where only half the party enjoys biking. You may be a biker but your other half may never straddle a saddle. How can you go on holiday together and each do what you enjoy?
Considering these dilemmas brought McTours to co-ordinate an alternative package which we hope you will agree addresses all of these potential difficulties. So, we are pleased to now come to something positive.
Our Alternative Motorcycling Holiday Solution
We offer three holiday variants plus a bespoke offering. Option one provides an upmarket alternative to the traditional motorbike tour and best suits those wishing to cover miles and explore a country and who have time to do so fully and the other two work from fixed bases.
With option one we set each stop a short geographical distance apart. This does not mean we take short journeys, quite the contrary, we meander along various back roads snaking our way across the country getting from A to B. However, as there are many roads in between we can quickly deviate course to avoid potential problems that might arise such as road works. As such we can overcome much of the misery outlined above in reaching the next stop.
Let's look more closely at options two and three. Here the rider travels to the area to be explored by means other than a motorbike. They can fly, take a train or whatever. On arrival a rental machine awaits or a rider can ship their own bike to the destination. The bottom line is that they can reach the area to be explored rapidly and thus eliminate much of the travel time otherwise needed. We prefer our guests to enjoy a meal and a good night sleep before being introduced to their machine. So, the bike awaits the rider at the destination fully prepped and ready to go first thing in the morning after arrival.
With tour offerings type two and three rather than stop in a different location each night we will carefully select a central point for accommodation. This will be a luxury hotel with full leisure facilities. From this central point we plan a range of routes to explore the surrounding area. These trips can head north, south, east or west of that location and can be altered on the day of travel to catch the best weather and we can extend or reduce the journey as per the needs of the riders in the group. This allows the area to be explored in far greater detail than would otherwise have been possible.
Choosing a core location means that the bike rider explores the most interesting roads that the region has to offer whilst the non biking partner can spend the day in the hotel enjoying the facilities or take trips of their own to visit interesting places nearby. The couple meet up again at the end of the day tour to enjoy dinner and an evening together.
For those who want to improve their riding our guides, being observers with the groups affiliated to the IAM, will be happy to offer guidance as to how you can improve and explain more about the IAM such that our UK guests can perhaps join a local group and continue to develop their skills when they return home.
So, to summarise what we offer that is different:
- Experience: All Tours have two guides who lead and tail the group. These guides are all Qualified Senior Observers from theInstitute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) and highly skilled riders and trainers.
- Quality: We use only the best hotels from brands such as Hilton, Doubletree by Hilton, Best Western and privately owned establishments such as Chateau des Vigires.
- Variety: We provide a broad range of motorcycles. These motorbikes are in pristine condition using mainly the latest machines.
- Size: We limit the size of each group to a maximum of eight riders accompanied by two guides. (6 riders plus 2 guides is most typical)
- Location: On many tours we select fixed locations and return to base each day so you have no baggage to carry or tour to a range of interesting locations and take your baggage in our support vehicle.
- Couples: We offer a biking holiday that allows your non biking partner to join in without ever needing to ride a bike.
We hope you agree that such a holiday addresses the problem areas earlier stated and provides a viable alternative to the typical biking holiday and one that ever non bikers can enjoy.