tour packages

All inclusive packaged tours make travelling very easy. They should be providing you with flights, transfers, meals, accommodation, transport and entry into sites. It takes away all the organisation required when backpacking around yourself.

However there are advantages and disadvantages of travelling on tours.

Advantages

• sizeable discounts for booking and paying for your tour early (however that may require bookings 12 months in advance!)
• fuel costs can be quite expensive if you are driving around yourself. Splitting costs 4 ways in a car is more expensive than splitting it between 40 on a diesel tour bus.
• you can just sit back, relax and enjoy.

Disadvantages

• Loss of autonomy. You are restricted to the tour packages' schedule and must stick by it. This is especially bad when they set unreasonable timeframes for you to check out a site. I was on a tour package with my parents in Shanghai. We only had 1.5 hours to check out the Shanghai museum. I could have spent an entire day there.
• Same people all the time. Over the entire tour, you are stuck with the same people. Just by the nature of a tour, you aren't given as much freedom to meet new people as you would be backpacking independently.
• not all expenses are included in a packaged tour price. Most likely, you will have to pay for some meals and any extra activities you want to do.
• there may be some activities which you do not want to do but you have paid for.

You should weigh up whether you prefer everything to be done for you or whether you like to do things as you please and organise it yourself. It may be an option to do short 2-3 day tours in the midst of your backpacking trip. This will be a nice change compared to finding out how to do everything yourself.