I note that the OP has posted this in the
Camino Frances section of the forum, but I would like to make some comments about using tour companies more generally for the Camino, including on other routes.
I have just returned home from my 2nd Camino, on the Portuguese route this time, which went very well without a glitch. When I first started planning it, I intended to purchase a self-guided package with a tour company. In fact, I have done most of my previous non-Camino hikes on packaged tours, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. The company that I approached to organise my Camino Portugues is very well known and reputable (but
not the one mentioned by OP), and claimed that they could tailor my package according to my requests. However, what they did offer me was not much different from their advertised standard package, which would require me to walk more than, or close to, 30km on many days, including the very first couple of days of the walk, despite my specific request to limit daily distance to 25km. When I requested this again, they told me that if I felt I could not manage the distance on a particular day, I could get a car. Also, upon checking on booking.com, I realised that the accommodation the tour company had included for me was much more luxurious, hence expensive, than the class that I requested.
After some very simple research using the
Brierly guide and booking.com, I was able to redesign my itinerary so that there was only 1 day when I had to do more than 28km (because there is indeed no commercial accommodation on that stretch of this route), and the daily distances were also distributed more evenly (eg 24km, 17km, 18km, instead of 24km, 6km, 29km). I was also able to book accommodation, with my own room and private bathroom, at places that were better value for money and closer to the Camino. The fact that it was so easy for me to come up with a better itinerary myself made me think that the company didn't even try. More importantly, at the time when I actually commenced my walk, there was a heat wave in Portugal with temperature rising to 37C in the afternoon. It would have been very tough, if not dangerous, for me to walk those long daily distances as per the expensive package offered by the company, at such an early stage of my Camino.
The moral of the story is that, while using a tour company may seem to save yourself the trouble of doing all the organising, it still pays to do some research yourself to see if there are other ways that are better, and safer, for you to do what you want to do, rather than assuming that a tour company would put your welfare before their own interest (ie to maximise their profit with the least amount of work). It is also worth noting that, for the more popular Camino routes, it is very easy to organise daily luggage transfer directly with a local company, as I did for the Le Puy route last year, without going through a third party tour company.
