Every Pedalists tour is bespoke. That word gets used a lot in travel marketing, often loosely, so it’s worth being specific about what we mean.
When you enquire with us, here’s what happens between that email and your tour starting.
Week 1: the conversation
We email you back within 24 hours, usually faster. The first email is usually from me (Rob) and it’s not a sales email. It’s a few questions: how many riders, how fit, how much time, what kind of trip you’re imagining, what kind of food you want, whether you want hotels or guesthouses, whether anyone in your group has any reason we should adjust the riding (a recent injury, a slower partner, a preference for shorter days).
Most enquiry threads are 3 to 5 emails before we know enough to start designing.
Week 2: the route draft
A guide builds a draft route in RidewithGPS. We have a library of segments we’ve ridden — the climb up to Sun Moon Lake, the rest-day loop in Kenting, the tea-country diversion outside Ruisui — and the guide assembles a draft from those, adjusting for your group’s brief.
For straightforward tours (a 7-day East Coast run with experienced cyclists, say) this draft is close to final.
For more unusual briefs (a 14-day tour with a non-cycling spouse, or a route that includes a specific climb you’ve heard about, or accommodating a dietary requirement that changes which villages we can stop in), the draft goes through 2 or 3 revisions.
Week 3: the route check
If we’re running a route we’ve run before, we don’t re-scope it. If we’re adding new segments — a new restaurant, a new hotel, a new climb we haven’t ridden in a while — a guide goes and rides those segments and sleeps in those hotels. We do this in the same season we’d run your tour.
This is the bit that costs us money and takes time. It’s also the bit you mostly never see, because by the time you arrive on Day 1, the entire tour has been ridden by someone on our team.
The week of: the final pass
The week before your tour, the lead guide reviews everything. Hotels are reconfirmed. The van driver checks the spare tube count. The mechanic checks every bike. The chef at the Day 4 restaurant gets a phone call to confirm the dietary brief.
The lead guide also rides at least one of the harder days, the day before, to make sure the road conditions are what we left them. Sometimes typhoons happen in autumn and a road we use is closed. Once a year, on average, we redirect a stage on the morning of, because of weather or a road condition.
What this costs
Our pricing is custom-quoted because the cost varies materially with how much customisation a brief requires. A standard tour with experienced cyclists is the cheapest end. A bespoke 14-day tour with three different rider abilities and a non-cycling spouse who needs separate logistics is the most expensive.
A typical Pedal Taiwan tour, in NTD, runs in the range you’d expect for a small-group bespoke tour from a UK or Australian operator. We’ll quote you when we have the brief.
What this doesn’t include
Surprise. We don’t believe in surprise. By the time you arrive, you’ve seen the route, you’ve seen the hotels, you’ve seen photos of the meals, and you know everyone’s name. The point of the tour is the riding itself, the company, and the food. The logistics should feel inevitable.
Why we explain this publicly
Because the alternative — describing yourself as “bespoke” without saying what that means — is the standard pitch in this industry, and we’d rather just tell you what’s actually happening.
