EXPERT-LED PETER SOMMER ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL TRAVELS TOURS & GULET CRUISES 2021 PB Peter Sommer Travels Peter Sommer Travels 1 WELCOME WHY TRAVEL WITH US? TO PETER SOMMER TR AVELS Writing this in autumn 2020, it is hard to know quite where to begin. I usually review the season just gone, the new tours that we ran, the preparatory recces we made, the new tours we are unveiling for the next year, the feedback we have received and our exciting plans for the future. However, as you well know, this year has been unlike any other in our collective memory. Our exciting plans for 2020 were thrown into disarray, just like many of yours. We were so disappointed that so many of you were unable to travel with us in 2020. Our greatest pleasure is to share the destinations we have grown to love so deeply with you our wonderful guests. I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking with many of you personally during the 2020 season. I was warmed and touched by your support, your understanding, your patience, and your generosity. All of us here at PST are extremely grateful and heartened by your enthusiasm and eagerness to travel with us when it becomes possible. PST is a small, flexible, and dynamic company. We have weathered countless downturns during the many years we have been operating. Elin, my wife, and I have always reinvested in the business with long term goals and are very used to surviving all manner of curve balls, although COVID-19 is certainly the biggest we have yet faced. The flexibility help and kindness that you, our loyal guests, have shown our company will help to ensure that we’ll be able to hit the ground running when the world of travel opens again. Trogir, Croatia We are optimistic by nature. We have a full season of trips planned for 2021. Many of you postponed your bookings from 2020 to 2021 and I’m delighted to say we have continued to receive new bookings. Some of our 2021 tours are fully booked and a fair number are close to filling. Faced by an unprecedented horizon of uncertainty we have established a new Book with Attention to Detail Value for Money - No Surcharges Confidence Policy, which we hope will give you complete confidence when booking one of our scheduled tours if you aren’t We offer a select mix of escorted tours, all of which have been carefully Our tour prices include almost everything except airfares. Customers already set to travel with us. researched and meticulously planned. tell us they are great value. The old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is especially true when it comes to holidays and adventure travel. We will In 2021 we will be running our Walking Hadrian’s Wall tour for the very first time. Building upon our now classic Exploring The Personal Touch not levy surcharges for fluctuations in exchange rates or fuel prices or Hadrian’s Wall, this trip explores the same stunning scenery but with considerably more walking and hiking allowing you to for any other reason. The price of the trip is the price you pay. see much more of the wall in its most dramatic locations and also explore its development and history both to the south We strive for the very best in personal service and assure you of and right up to the border with Scotland. I first walked Hadrian’s Wall thirty years ago and can’t recommend this tour highly individual care and attention. As a previous traveller told us: R esponsible Tr avel enough for its stunning landscapes, amazing archaeological sites, and museums. “The hospitality was exceptional, we felt like guests rather than We believe our tours are a positive force, holidays with a cultural 2021 will also see the inaugural outing of our Exploring Macedonia tour. Famed as the birthplace of Alexander the Great the customers.” purpose, bringing economic benefits to local people. We try where region is beautiful and diverse, with fabulous food and wine alongside its remarkable ancient sites and museums. We’ve had possible to minimise our impact on the environment. You can read our the pleasure of taking guests around Macedonia many times over the years and it now seems to be an area of Greece that is Expert Guides Responsible Travel policy online. finally becoming more widely known. Our Greece specialists can’t wait to share Macedonia with you. Our tour leaders, archaeologists and historians, are great Experience & Quality I’m delighted to say we won another Tour Operator of the Year award at the start of the year. This means, in the last five communicators, passionate enthusiasts and friendly hosts as well as being extremely knowledgeable. Peter has been organising cultural tours since 1996. We aim to provide years, ever since the awards began, we have received the Tour Operator of the Year Gold Award twice and the Silver Award the very finest expert-led archaeological tours and gulet cruises. We three times. It would appear we must be doing something right! We are incredibly thankful that so many of you trust us to Beautiful Boats want you to travel with us again and again – as a great many of our make your holidays special. It is especially gratifying to be able to welcome many of you back year after year. customers do. We use hand-crafted traditional Turkish gulets of the highest standard: We eagerly anticipate better times. PST will be there when the pandemic subsides, when travel restrictions lift, and our stylish and characterful, with modern conveniences and friendly and glorious destinations put out the welcome mat for visitors once again. experienced crews. Alongside our scheduled trips, we offer expert-led gulet charters for private groups, large or small. We are happy to assist A huge thank you to all our loyal guests and all our new guests for making your journey with us. We look forward to seeing with any logistics you might require. you in 2021 and beyond. Small Groups “Fascinating, informative, amusing and memorable. We take only small groups of like-minded people – typically between An overall outstanding holiday” 10 and 14 on our gulet tours (max 18 on our 11 cabin Cruising the Peter Sommer Cyclades/Dodecanese trips) and between 10 and 18 on our land tours Tony Graves, AUS – travelling in an easy-going informal style. 2 Peter Sommer Travels Peter Sommer Travels 3 ABOUT PETER SOMMER TR AVELS Gümüşlük, Turkey “Peter Sommer takes great pride in the tours he organizes and it comes through in every aspect of the trip. His tours are well organized and stress free. The gulets are beautiful and the crews are amazing. He has a quality operation that he can take great pride in. I highly recommend TOUR OPER ATOR OF THE YEAR Peter Sommer Travels to anyone looking for an amazing and unsurpassed experience. Thank You Peter for the BEST FAMILY VACATION EVER!” AITO (The Association of Independent Tour Oper ators) Sandy Duncan, USA In March 2020, we won the AITO Tour Operator of the Year Silver Award, which follows our receiving the Silver Award in 2019, the Gold Award in 2018, the Silver award in 2017 and the Gold award in 2016. These awards are based on the highest scoring independent client reviews on the website of AITO, an association which represents more than 120 of Britain’s best independent tour operators. We are delighted that so many of you enjoy our tours and that almost all of you consider our tours to be “excellent”. We continue to strive to improve our offerings and always take customer feedback into account when planning our tours. Read 500 independent reviews of our tours at https://www.aito.com/peter-sommer-travels/reviews TOUR OPERATOR TOUR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR 2019 OF THE YEAR 2018 Peter Sommer Elin Sommer Michael Metcalfe Julie Sibley TOUR OPERATOR TOUR OPERATOR TOUR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR 2017 OF THE YEAR 2016 OF THE YEAR 2015 Our Local Partners The success of any tour depends on logistics. These basic, behind the scenes, practical arrangements are the very necessary nuts and bolts of making a trip a success – from making sure a vehicle arrives at the right location, to the crucial matter of timing. Meticulous planning is all very well, but actually making it happen is key. We depend on our local partners to ensure our escorted trips run smoothly. Heinrich Hall Joshua Maunder Paul Beston Liga Hince In Turkey we work with Travel Atelier, a travel agency run by Murat Özgüç and his wife Pinar. We have worked with them for many years and rate them very highly. Murat organises hotels, transfers, and all other travel arrangements for our guests. He helps us both with our scheduled tours and our custom created tours. Cem Yücesoy is our logistics co-ordinator and tour manager extraordinaire. He has organised all our Turkey tours to We are an award-winning UK-based tour operator specialising in cultural tours, gulet cruises and private trips in Croatia, Greece, Ireland, date, from choosing minibus drivers to booking local guides. Italy, Turkey and the UK. Our expertise stems from an intimate knowledge of these areas – their geography, history, people and much more. In Greece we work with Dolphin Hellas, a travel agency of long standing offering a complete range of travel ser- vices. Our point person there, Aliki Hamosfakidou, assists us in shaping and then coordinating perfect itineraries All of our trips, by land or sea, are led by expert guides, archaeologists and historians, noted for their knowledge and communication for our cultural tours throughout Greece.