The only way to really find the right tour operator is to meet them outside of their professional life. You see, there are just too many things that can go wrong if you are taking a tour vacation with someone you do not know. I have heard bad stories from friends who have taken trips to foreign lands, trusting in their tour guides to show them the sites. One of my best friend hooked up with some tour operators in Nepal and was robbed blind. After that, they disappeared into the woodwork, leaving him broke and stranded thousands of miles from home.

Fortunately, I have met plenty of tour operators through my foreign language classes. If you study a foreign language for long enough, you will eventually have a teacher who leads a tour to the country where it is natively spoken. My first tour vacation package was actually in Paris. I had always wanted to go, and my teacher was able to hook us up with a really cheap trip. She had been working with tour operators over there for years, and had finally started to lead vacations herself.