There are so many companies offering custom tours of Italy that choosing can become a daunting task. Here are some things you may consider when choosing:

Experience With The Personal Touch

When you want to organize a custom tour, you usually find huge tour operators that are dealing with thousdands of bookings at a given time, or smaller operators that act more like an agent that contracts your tour out to various service providers. Not us. While we are headquartered in Florida (DiscoverSoriano.com, LLC), the Italian side of our operation is handled directly by DiscoverSoriano.com, SRL in Italy. This is not an agent. It is the Italian arm of our company that handles all of the logistics. The tour leaders are employees of DiscoverSoriano, and all contracts are with DiscoverSoriano. What this means is that we have direct control over everything, allowing us to offer more personal service and resolve any issues that may arise quickly and directly.

02.

We Know Italy!

If a customer was to ask us to organize a tour in Brazil for them, we would be able to do it with no problem. There are many resources available to tour operators that allow them to organize tours all over the world. However, those resources are limited to providers that advertise to tour operators internationally. We don't even look at them. We have more than 300 years of collective first-hand experience throughout Italy. We won't visit the winery we saw advertised in a trade magazine. We'll go to that other one that is run by a local family with centuries of tradition. We won't go to that ceramics factory that mass-produces for international export. We'll go to the small one where we can interact with the artisans. We won't go to those restaurants that have menus primarily printed in English. We'll go to that special hidden gem that the locals rave about. It's a different experience when you have intimate knowledge of and love for a place your are going.

An infusion of Real Italian Culture

This statement is the core of who we are and what we are about. It is why we do what we do. We talk to people all the time that tell us about their big bus tours to Italy. While they tell us what they saw, it is always about visions, and rarely about experiences. They saw St Mark's Square. They saw the Tower of Pisa. Along the way they learned some history, took a bunch of pictures, but while they saw Italy, they never actually experienced what makes Italy so amazing. They were sheltered from the culture. The big tour companies do this for a reason: The more you shelter the tourists and keep them in their comfort zone, the less chance there is that they will complain about the things they miss from home. So they wake up and find the bacon and eggs breakfast waiting for them in the morning, and they are only brought to places that speak English and follow a guideline for what is normal in our culture. That it not Italy, and while that may make sense in some parts of the world, Italy is a modern culture with amazing insights to offer us. So our goal when we design your itinerary is still to have you see what you wish to see, but along the way, we expose you to the culture in a way the others don't.

04.

Tour Guides that are always there for you

Most tour guides are pretty much just there for the times you are touring, and leave you to fend for yourself most of the time. Our tour guides are there to help you in every way, from the moment you begin your time with us, until the moment you leave us. 24 hours a day. They are knowledgable, They speak english, and they are there to help you with everything from interpreting on your behalf, to just about any minor or major personal needs you may have.

You are family

This can't be stressed enough. A tour with us just doesn't feel like a tour at all. We have a very casual attitude toward it... this is fun for us, and we love sharing this wonderful place with others. Perhaps it is because we get to know you well before you arrive and we can't wait to finally meet, or perhaps it is our little slice of the Tuscan Sun that does it. :-). Either way, you will go home having had the most amazing vacation of your life, having made amazing new friends, having seen remarkable things few tourists have seen, and having felt an uncanny sense belonging in a place so far away. Long before you get home, you will have started planning your return.