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Corporate Group Tours in Istanbul

One licensed Turkish operator behind the guides, the programme and the logistics your organisation signs off.

Send the Brief
See the Six Shapes

Three Ways In

Whichever of these you are, the first useful answer takes one email.

You are running an event

The programme around it has to fit your session schedule and put people back where they need to be. Timing first, content second.

You are checking that we are real

Licence, legal entity, insurance and terms. Send us your supplier form and procurement gets all of it by email.

You are teaching from it

The itinerary has to survive a departmental read, not fill a day. We build to the learning objective and put the guide’s name on it.

TÜRSAB #7651, contracting as BEFORE TRAVEL
Institutional groups since 2011
145 reviews on Google, scoring 5.0
560 on TripAdvisor, scoring 4.8
56 guides, ten working languages

Six Shapes a Programme Takes

Take the one closest to yours. Each shape has its own logistics, its own guides and its own page.

Congress and accompanying persons

What partners and family do while delegates are in session, timed around your schedule rather than ours.

Study programmes and staff rides

Terrain worked on foot for defence, government and academic groups, where the ground still carries the argument.

University and academic groups

Days shaped by a reading list instead of a highlights route, with the guide named in the paperwork.

CSR team programmes

A working morning inside an Istanbul state school, arranged with teachers we have known for years.

Team days and company offsites

A day with a task in it, facilitated rather than narrated. Arranged on its own, or added to the visit you are already running.

Group dinners and private events

The evening at the end of it: a gala, a long table, or a boat with the city going past the window.

One Supplier, and Where That Stops

The venue, the gala dinner, the licensed guides, the cultural content, the private transport and the school component sit on one contract with one Turkish operator. A visit that runs across several cities is still that contract.

Where a congress itself is being organised, the scientific and delegate side belongs to your PCO and everything wrapped around it belongs to us. The congress programme page draws that line properly, and the trade page does the same for operators buying ground services.

A licensed guide talking a corporate group through a wall of exhibits

Team Days and Company Offsites

A team day in Istanbul fails for one predictable reason. It gets built as a tour, and a tour is something you watch.

What works is a day with a task in it: crossing to the Asian side with something to find, buying the ingredients and cooking together in Kadıköy, or a morning inside a state school. Your guide runs that as a facilitator, which is a different skill from narrating and not every licensed guide has it.

The Guide Is Named Before You Sign

You know who is running your programme, what they studied and what they specialise in, before anything is signed. Not a badge waiting at the airport.

An organisation is not buying a day out. It is putting its name on our arrangements, which is a different sale from the one I started with in 2011. That is why these calls still come to me.

Fethi Karataş, founder

Fethi Karatas, founder of The Other Tour, on a boat on the Bosphorus

Organisations We Have Run Programmes For

Four of the programmes behind the shapes above, as they were delivered.

UK Ministry of Defence

Battlefield study · March 2026

Programme
Conquest of Constantinople
Group
18
Ground
Yedikule Fortress
Also included
Hagia Sophia
Transport
Private van

A battlefield study of the 1453 siege, worked on the ground it happened on. The group took the Theodosian land walls at Yedikule Fortress, the Ottoman siege lines and Hagia Sophia, with the sequence of the assault argued out on site rather than in a room afterwards.

Originally scoped for around thirty five and delivered for eighteen. A smaller group changes the shape of a study day rather than shortening it: eighteen people can stand inside the ditch together and still hear each other.

The ground is still there. That is why this study works in Istanbul and not from a map.

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.

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.

What Procurement Asks First

Tell us the occasion and we will say. A congress with partners travelling is one answer, a faculty trip with a reading list is another, and nine directors who want two quiet days is a third. If it turns out to be two shapes on one visit, that is still one programme and one invoice.

BEFORE TRAVEL, holder of licence #7651 from TÜRSAB, the body that licenses travel agencies in Türkiye. That is the name on the proposal and the name on the invoice.

Yes, and it closes a line on your supplier form without an email to us. TÜRSAB keeps a searchable public registry: the TÜRSAB digital verification system. Insurance certificates and our standard terms follow by email whenever your team asks for them.

Both happen, often, and a written programme is built to absorb it. A walking group that outgrows one guide gains a second rather than losing its back half. A late drop changes nothing that has already been arranged. Tell us as soon as you know.

The proposal states it line by line: guides, transport, entrance tickets, meals and any venue. Anything added afterwards is agreed in writing before it goes onto the programme.

How an Institutional Booking Works

Four steps, and the third is where most of the work happens.

1

Tell us the shape

Organisation, headcount, dates, occasion. What constrains the day helps more than what decorates it.

2

A proposal comes back in writing

Guides named, routing explained, inclusions listed, nothing left to a phone call.

3

You revise it

It will probably change twice before it is right. That is part of the work, not a billed revision.

4

You confirm, and we invoice

Against the written programme you approved, from BEFORE TRAVEL, licence #7651.

Tell Us the Organisation, the Group Size, the Dates and the Occasion

What comes back is something you can put in front of a committee. Email in, email out, no call needed. If the group is mixed, say so: our guides cover ten working languages between them.

A group walking the Bebek waterfront, one guest using a wheelchair

Where to Go From Here

Two of these answer the question you arrived with. The rest answer the one procurement asks next.

For the travel tradeGuides, transport and ground handling in Istanbul under your own brand.Meet the guidesWho they are, what they studied, and the languages they were licensed in.What guests saidGoogle and TripAdvisor, grouped by the question you are asking.The school programmeThe relationship behind the CSR days, running since 2011.Istanbul as an incentive destinationWhy the city works for a reward trip, and what to plan around.Venues for an executive retreatWhere a small senior group can actually think for two days.
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© 2026 THE OTHER TOUR by BEFORE TRAVEL - TÜRSAB NO: 7651.