Around the world on a shoe-string budget

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: With cost-conscious guests increasingly unwilling to pay for premium wine-tastings, private eco-hikes and five-star hotels, tour operators are starting to offer cheaper, recession-era versions of popular vacation packages to entice penny-pinching travellers.

Take Classic Journeys, an upscale travel company based in La Jolla, California, that normally puts customers up in luxury hotels like the Jasper Park Lodge, a Fairmont resort in the Canadian Rockies. In 2009, for the first time, the company is introducing camping trips for about $700 less than itineraries that include hotel stays. While the tours are designed to be deluxe family affairs (think Egyptian cotton sheets, stemmed wine glasses and chefs who do the cooking), guests must share bathrooms and sleep on air mattresses. But the savings, said Edward Piegza, president of Classic Journeys, is “likely enough to pay for their airline tickets to the Canadian Rockies from LaGuardia.”

Insight Vacations, which offers trips throughout Europe, North America and the eastern Mediterranean, has added eight 2009 itineraries to its European Essentials tours — which cater to budget-minded travellers — at a saving of 20% or more compared with the company’s premium tours. But travellers must be willing to sacrifice some conveniences for the lower cost.

For example, the Essentials Spanish Fantasy tour visits the same five cities in Spain in 11 days as its premium Highlights of Spain tour, but it costs $1,550 instead of $2,065. The cheaper trip has a half-dozen fewer guided excursions and hotels are typically outside the city like the Abba Garden Hotel, nearly four miles from Barcelona, as opposed to the centrally located Melia on the premium trip.

“As the US economy began to slow, we realised we needed to be more competitive in the US marketplace and offer tours that appealed to travellers willing to go to Europe but didn’t have a lot of money to spend,” said Brittny Anselmo, director of marketing and communications for Insights Vacations.

Besides being cheaper, the more bare-bones tours may appeal to independent travellers who enjoy the ease and security of group travel but also want the freedom to explore destinations without a guide, since travellers can choose to visit additional museums on their own.