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Accompanying Persons Programmes in Istanbul

The parallel programme for the partners and family who travel with your delegates.

A licensed guide, private transport and a route that returns the group in time for the evening social programme. We supply that component as a licensed Turkish operator, under your contract.

Send My Congress Dates
See the Three Shapes
A group in formal dress outside a building in Istanbul with their guide
Registered with TÜRSAB, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies, licence number 7651.
Congress and corporate groups since 2011
145 guest reviews on Google, averaging 5.0
560 TripAdvisor reviews, averaging 4.8

Send Three Things, and the Programme Comes Back Written

No call needed. Send them by email and the answer arrives the same way.

The congress dates

Including the day your delegates are free, so the companions can be folded in with them instead of running a separate morning.

How many companions

A number you are allowed to revise. Groups grow and shrink between the bid and the badge, and the programme is built to take it.

Your session schedule

Start and finish times, the plenary nobody may miss, and the evening the group has to be dressed for.

What comes back is written: the routing explained and built backwards from your return time, the guides named so the programme can be printed, and a wet weather alternative on every day of it.

What Is Inside the Programme

Six things you are quoted for. Nothing on the list is an extra.

Licensed guides, named in advance

Professional licensed guides, named to you before the congress rather than assigned on the morning, so your organiser can plan around a person.

Private transport sized to the group

Vans or coaches to fit the number, with the pickup at the congress hotel rather than a meeting point somewhere across town.

A route built backwards from the return

The day is designed from the hour the group has to be back, not forwards from a list of highlights that happens to end late.

Entrance arrangements made in advance

Tickets and timed entries held before you arrive, so nobody spends their one free morning standing in the queue at Hagia Sophia.

A named coordinator during the congress

One person on our side who answers while your congress is running, instead of a general inbox and a ticket number.

Languages, mobility and diet

Ten languages besides Turkish across the licensed network, step free routing as a standing service, and dietary requirements taken at the enquiry.

Three Shapes, and One of Them Fits Your Congress

Say which one matches your session schedule and you get a written programme built to it.

When it runsWhat it holds
Half dayAlongside the session block, back before the afternoon plenary ends.One area properly rather than four badly: Sultanahmet on foot, Balat and the Golden Horn, or the Asian side for a group that has seen the obvious.
Full dayA day with no evening obligation sitting on the end of it.Enough time for a Bosphorus leg or a crossing to the Princes’ Islands, which a half day cannot hold.
Multi dayThree or four consecutive days across the congress.Days that escalate rather than repeat, because a group walked through two old quarters back to back will notice.

How Far Ahead to Ask

There is a version of the programme that fits whenever you are reading this. Tell us the dates and you get told what is still possible.

1

Twelve to six months out

Bid and budget stage. Dates are held while your bid is open, and you get costed shapes to put inside the proposal.

2

Six months to one month out

Your programme is published. Guides and transport lock to your printed schedule and work backwards from your return times.

3

The final week

Short notice is ordinary in this work. You get a straight answer the same day on what is still available and what is not.

4

After the last session

Post congress days for delegates who stay on, with Cappadocia and Ephesus as full day extensions.

The Guides Who Run These Programmes

Named to you before the congress, so the programme can be printed with a real person on it.

Deniz Karagozoglu, licensed guide, wearing a guiding lanyard

Deniz Karagözoğlu

London born and bilingual, with the polished English a mixed international group expects.

Read the profile
Damla Arslan at the World Neolithic Congress in Sanliurfa

Damla Arslan

Excavated at Zeugma, reads Ancient Greek and Latin, and still guides the groups of the professors who led those digs.

Read the profile
Hatice Kelek, licensed guide, at an archaeological site

Hatice Kelek

Trilingual, and the guide for the Ephesus extension when a congress adds one.

Read the profile

A companion group is the hardest brief I get and the most enjoyable. These are people who have been to more cities than I have and did not choose this one. So I stop selling the monument and show them the street it sits on. The coffee stop is not filler. It is usually where the day turns.

Deniz Karagözoğlu, licensed guide

There are 55 licensed guides on the team and a large companion group is split across as many of them as it takes. Tell us if somebody needs a step free day or a wheelchair, and it shapes the route rather than surfacing on the morning. All of them are on the guide network.

Programmes We Have Run in Istanbul

Five groups, and the thing each one actually needed. Delivery figures come from our own booking records.

Bain & Company

Corporate group · 14 September 2024

Group
19 participants
On the water
Private boat
On foot
Sultanahmet, 3 hrs
Opened privately
A cistern

A private boat cruise paired with a three hour guided walk through Sultanahmet: the Hippodrome, a cistern opened for the group alone, the Blue Mosque and the Arasta Bazaar beside it.

Booked for twenty and run for nineteen after a late drop, which is the ordinary reality of a corporate group and one of the things a written programme is built to take.

A private boat and three hours on foot, run as one programme rather than two bookings.

World Resources Institute

Research institute · March 2025

Programme
Evening cruise
On the water
2 hours
Route
Kadıköy ferry leg
Back at hotel
c. 20:30

A private evening cruise closing a working visit, built around where the group was actually staying rather than where the boat happened to be. Taking the public ferry from the Asian side to meet the boat on the European shore saved an hour of repositioning, and the group was back at the hotel by about half past eight.

The closing evening of a working visit, spent on the water.

FlixBus

Corporate group · Istanbul

Group
15 → 17 → 20
Programme
Private walking tour
Guides
Two licensed
Kit
Whisper audio

A tailor made walking tour that changed size twice before it ran. Two licensed guides rather than one, because a walking group past about fifteen loses its back half, and a whisper audio system so the guide could be heard without raising a voice in a working street.

The group grew after it was booked, and the programme absorbed it.

MicroConf

Conference excursions · Istanbul · September 2025

Bosphorus cruise
Chartered, to ~90
Fishing
2 boats, ~24 per wave
Coffee workshop
20 places
Hammam
Cağaloğlu, 2 sittings

A conference does not move as one group. Delegates chose between four things happening at once on the same afternoon: a chartered Bosphorus cruise, fishing boats, a Turkish coffee workshop and a session at the Cağaloğlu hammam, with coaches timed to put everyone back where they needed to be.

The cruise filled, which is the useful part. When it did, the fishing option absorbed the overflow rather than anybody being turned away, and the coffee workshop was resized from thirty places to twenty so the spare capacity went where the demand actually was. Six separate dietary requirements were handled across the group, two of them coeliac.

Four excursions, one afternoon, and everybody back in time for the evening.

Pied à Terre Reizen

Trade partner · Netherlands · May 2026

Relationship
Trade, ongoing
Topkapı
15
Eyüp & Chora
14
Extended to
Ephesus

A Dutch operator's own clients, handled as a trade relationship rather than a direct booking: Topkapı Palace for fifteen, Eyüp and the Chora Church with Pierre Loti for fourteen, and an Ephesus tour on the same programme.

Guided by Tolga Bensan, named in the paperwork because the operator asked for him by name.

Guided by Tolga Bensan

Another operator's own clients, handled end to end on their behalf.

Working With Your PCO

We are a licensed DMC and not a PCO. On congress work we expect to be a supplier rather than the lead: the guided and cultural programme and the logistics around it, licensed guides, private transport, entrance arrangements, and the gala dinner and the venue, which we bid for. We work under your contract, invoice you, and appear in your programme under your branding.

We do not run registration, delegate management, abstracts, the scientific programme, accreditation, or sponsorship and exhibition sales.

Timings come from your delegate services team. If a supplier has ever quietly widened its own scope on you, you will know why the boundary is written down.

A group seated and listening to their guide with the Blue Mosque behind them

What Organisers Ask

It is the parallel schedule organised for partners, spouses and family who travel to a congress with a delegate but do not attend the sessions. In Istanbul it runs during session hours with a licensed guide and private transport, and returns the group in time for the evening social programme. It is also called a companion programme, a partner programme or a spouse programme.

From a handful of companions up to large groups split across several licensed guides. Tell us the numbers you are working with and you get told how many guides that takes. A walking group past about fifteen loses its back half, so it goes to two guides and a whisper audio system rather than one guide raising a voice.

Ten besides Turkish across the licensed network: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Urdu. Depth varies by language and by date, so tell us what the group needs and you get told who is free. The guide and the language are confirmed before your programme is printed.

Yes, and it is a standing service. Companion groups often include guests who cannot manage cobbles or gradients at pace, so step free routing and wheelchair assisted guided tours with private transport are planned in from the enquiry rather than improvised on the day.

Every congress programme we quote carries a wet weather alternative, because a companion group cannot simply be sent back to the hotel. Istanbul has enough covered ground, from the archaeological museums to the Grand Bazaar and the Basilica Cistern, that the day survives.

Your paperwork names BEFORE TRAVEL, the licensed Turkish operator trading as The Other Tour, TÜRSAB licence 7651. Procurement gets the licence documentation on request, and can confirm it independently through the TÜRSAB digital verification system.

Send the Congress Dates, the Number of Companions and Your Session Schedule

Three lines by email is enough to start it. If your congress is next week, say so and ask anyway.

A guided group on a Karakoy street, one guest posing on a stairway for the others

Where Congress Organisers Go Next

The corporate programmeEvery shape the group work takes, and who to send what to.Staff rides and battlefield studiesLed on the ground, for defence and academic groups.The evening half of the weekGala dinners, receptions, and a boat once the group is large enough.Reviews, sorted by questionEvery rating we hold on Google and on TripAdvisor, grouped by what buyers ask.
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© 2026 THE OTHER TOUR by BEFORE TRAVEL - TÜRSAB NO: 7651.