Around the world on a shoe-string budget

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: and use hotels in the suburbs or outside main tourist areas. The company has added three CostSaver family trips to its roster for 2009 — a 15-day tour of Europe from $2,250 a person, a 13-day tour of Italy from $2,175 and a 15-day trip through England, Wales and Scotland from $2,050 a person.

For travellers who want to spend less but still want to be at the centre of things, General Tours World Traveller, an upscale company based in Keene, is offering a collection of Best Buy vacations for the first time this year. These cost less than its other tours because travellers stay in more moderate hotels that are still centrally situated. “Location is something we don’t compromise on,” said Mickey Huang, General Tours’ marketing manager. For example, its new seven-day Kremlin and Hermitage tour stays at cheaper hotels like the Marriott Tverskaya in Moscow near Red Square and the Kremlin and costs $2,899. By comparison, its premium Discover Moscow & St Petersburg tour, which goes to top hotels like the Kempinski in Moscow, costs $3,399.

The modified tours are appealing to travellers like Cathy Maywood, a physician from San Diego. Maywood, her husband, Mike, and her 14-year-old son, Cameron, went to Machu Picchu in Peru with Classic Journeys last spring, and they stayed in a converted 16th-century monastery in Cuzco before taking a train toward the ruins. This year, the family is instead thinking about going camping with Classic Journeys for their summer vacation.

“The main reason is the price,” said Maywood, adding that she was also drawn to the idea of high-end camping, with its plush tents, assistants who carry camping gear and chefs who prepare meals. “If I had to do all those things, I wouldn’t go camping,” she said.

Other tour operators are shortening trips and offering more flexibility. Go Ahead Tours, an escorted tour operator from Cambridge, Massachussets, which normally runs 12 to 18-day trips, is now offering 8 to 10-day trips to places like Italy, Greece and China that are as much as $900 less. It also used to include airfare in its brochure pricing, but as more people have opted to use frequent flier miles to save money, the company decided to exclude it.