This week's MAC Chat features our interview with Fiona Prosser, Owner/President of Celtic Dream Tours. 

For more information: http://www.celticdreamtours.com

What will clients experience on our tours?
Firstly Celtic Dream Tours Inc. is a small niche tour operator, licensed and insured in the state of Florida and has been around for 11 years. We specialize in tour to Scotland and have just added Ireland this year. Our tours are unique and give our clients a very fun and friendly time, like travelling with family and friends, however not having to drive themselves and miss all the great scenery. I organize, book and direct all our tours myself, so they are very personal to me. I make sure that everyone is
having a good time and happy with everything along the way. We take our clients in small groups of no more than 14 people to the backroads and off the beaten track of Scotland and Ireland. Yes, we include some of the major tourist attractions in each
location, but we also take them to places that larger groups don’t go or can’t go too. We also stay in historical properties, castles,mansions and Boutique city hotels so they get the feeling of the country, not just big American Style hotels.


What makes you unique from other tour companies?
I think because we are small and specialize in only 2 countries, we create very unique trips for our clients, we make it very clear what is included and what isn’t, and we don’t have add on’s so the client knows exactly what they are paying for and what they still need to pay for while enroute. Plus our groups are smaller than most other companies, so it’s much more like travelling with friends and family. It doesn’t take ages to get everyone off the coach at each stop, and we don’t depart until 9.30 each morning, so no one is rushed around. Clients have time to enjoy their breakfast, go on a walk, explore the grounds of the hotel etc. And we nearly always get to our hotels by about 5.30 pm.. Our thoughts are that even though you are on a tour, you are still on vacation and are there to enjoy yourselves and have a fun time. Our Unique Distinctive journeys inc. Heritage, adventure, History and Discovery, and to be honest they are not suited to people who cannot walk around quite a bit and get around easily.

What is included in your tours? 
If you go to our website www.celticdreamtours.com you can see all tours listed with full itinerary and at the bottom of each page it tells you exactly what is included, but basically it includes, Full breakfast daily, services of a luxury coach and professional driver, local guides and services of Tour Director., Approx. half the dinners, entry into all sites (unless listed it’s not, which is only on our Free days in Glasgow or Edinburgh) and all taxes, porterage, and gratuities on inc. meals. Also we stop and go into all sites, we don’t just drive by or stop And take photos… We also don’t offer optional extra price things to do, it’s all included!

What destinations do you go to? 
I used to live in Scotland so that is what got me started in this industry. We’ve been doing small group luxury tours to Scotland since 1999, this year we added in Ireland also. In 2011 we have trips to Ireland that also includes Northern Ireland.  We do soft adventure trips, they all have a theme, and we have added back in our Hogmanay Trip to Scotland (New Year’s Eve) where we attend a 3 night house Party, and we have also just created a Christmas Shopping trip to Ireland and Scotland and we also have a trip again xext year to Ireland for St Patrick’s Day! 

Do you have any FAMs? 
Not FAMS as such, but we offer 40% FAM discount on all of our tours, 2 spaces per tour, for an agent to share with another agent, or a family member, spouse, etc. This way they are travelling along on our regular tours and to be honest none of the other clients know they got a discount and they are not treated any different… We have quite a few FAM spaces booked already this summer, this is the first year of this program also. And the good thing is, when the agent has finished the tour, they then qualify for 15% commission instead of our normal 10% on all further bookings. 

Are you currently offering any specials? 
Not sure if you can call this a special but we have just come up with a new concept in the industry that I don’t think anyone else is doing. We have called it our Pick Your Package Program. Similar to the way cruise ships operate, some people in inside cabins, some in Balconies, some suites, we realize that people want smaller groups but don’t always want the Posh Hotels that we use. Our Pick Your Package Program has two levels, Platinum which is our normal Posh 4 and 5 star hotels, and Bronze is an option to do the same tour but stay in 3 star hotels and save a significant amount of money. Only other difference is not quite as many dinners inc. But we find that most of our clients don’t want a big 3 or 4 course dinner every night, plus they want to go off on their own, which is why we don’t include dinners every night anyway. I think it’s a great opportunity for clients who want our product, but not to pay as much, they will now have an option on all our tours. 

Thank you Fiona for that great interview!