They also need to know what the capabilities of their customers are likely to be and how far they can be expected to ride each day on their bikes. Here is a bicycle touring company that operates in France and are specialists there: Bicycle Touring Company.

The logistics that bicycle touring companies must deal with are more complicated than meet the eye. Professional bicycle touring companies need to pick out hotels that their customers will like because when people are traveling on vacation, they feel good when they are in a nice hotel. The hotels must be the right distance from each other, because the customers need to be able to ride their bicycles and actually reach the next hotel via bike. And on top of that people want to see and do different things when they are on vacation, so visiting one tourist venue in the morning and one in the afternoon after having stopped for lunch is a good plan. The proper bicycle route needs to be put together to fit in all these needs and desires and routes need to be doable for the customers. Daily routes of from 30 to 50 kilometers or so have been found to be about the proper length by bicycle touring companies for customers who want a challenging but leisurely tour.

There is a relatively new approach to bicycle touring that is becoming more and more popular. You can check out this approach here: Self Guided Bicycle Touring. In this case the company has set up itineraries that the customers follow on their own. That is, they are not part of a group. The cyclists are given instructions about how to get to their first hotel, and there they find their bicycles and associated equipment. They also are given a package that contains their bike routes and maps as well as tourist information. Each day that they move on to a new hotel the bicycle touring companies arrange to have their luggage taken to the next hotel. In this way people can go at a pace of their own choosing without worrying about keeping up with a group. Of course the touring companies will have reserved all the necessary hotels and made all required arrangements well in advance. The biggest advantage to this approach in bicycle touring is that the cost of the tour will typically be about half that of an equivalent group tour with guides.

Bicycle touring companies are always looking for ways to win new customers and make old ones happy enough to return. Self guided bicycle touring and its associated economies are one growing means to accomplish this.