Quick Take
Globus runs two separate systems under confusingly similar language. Choice Excursions are already built into your tour price, on close to 80% of its Europe and North America itineraries. Paid optional excursions are sold on top of that price, the same way almost every operator in this segment sells them.
Both can appear on the same tour. Sometimes the same day, the same city, even the same river — we found an example where they genuinely do.
Two systems, one vocabulary.
If a day mentions "Choice"
It's already paid for. Pick between whatever's offered — nothing more comes out of your wallet, no matter which option you choose.
If your Tour Director mentions a price
It's a paid optional, not a Choice. Ask the cost before agreeing, since nothing published in advance will have told you what it runs.
Two Different Systems, One Confusing Vocabulary
Globus sells two entirely different things under overlapping names, and almost nothing on its own site draws a clean line between them.
A Globus Choice Excursion is a day where you pick between two or more activities Globus has already built into your tour price. Nobody pays extra. The "choice" is which included option you want, not whether you pay at all.
A paid optional excursion is the opposite: an extra activity billed on top of what you already paid, the same way Trafalgar, Cosmos, and nearly every operator in this segment sells them.
Same vocabulary. Different transactions.
Globus's own materials describe Choice Touring as appearing on close to 80% of its Europe and North America itineraries — real, first-party language, not something we're inferring. What Globus doesn't do is separate that figure from the paid-optional conversation happening on the very same tour pages.
What Choice Touring genuinely is
A real, price-included mechanism. Globus's own site names it directly: "on nearly 80% of our Europe and North America itineraries, you'll find Globus Choice Excursions."
Typical density runs one or two Choice days per tour, and it doesn't scale up with a longer itinerary — a 24-day Britain & Ireland tour we checked carries exactly one, on day 22.
What it isn't
Globus calls Choice Touring "an industry first at this scale." That claim doesn't survive a look at competitors.
Insight Choice, from Insight Vacations, works almost identically. Collette's version, branded "Choose Your Own Adventure," runs the same included-price idea, and Tauck skips a brand name entirely while still offering choices on most given days — denser than Globus's usual one or two. Nobody in this group publishes a day-by-day count, so "at this scale" is a claim no one, Globus included, can actually verify.
The Clearest Proof: One Day in Prague
If you want one example that settles the whole question, this is it.
Day 12 of Globus's Best of Eastern Europe tour puts you in Prague. The included Choice Excursion that day gives you two options: a Vltava River lunch cruise, or a food walk through the city.
Later the same day, a different transaction shows up on the same river: a paid optional called Vltava River Cruise at Sunset, priced at whatever Globus doesn't publish anywhere.
Book the included lunch cruise at noon, then hand over money that evening for another cruise on the identical water. The word "optional" gives you no hint that's even on the table.
This isn't a quibble over wording. Prague is the evidence that Choice Touring and paid optionals run as two fully separate systems, neither one aware of the other.
Booking the free Choice buys you nothing off the paid cruise's price. Booking the paid cruise doesn't cancel out the Choice you already have.
Two unrelated charges, same river, same afternoon — ask your Tour Director which system a given excursion belongs to before you commit to either.
The Real Disclosure Gap
This is a sharper gap than the one we found on sister brand Cosmos.
What we found for Cosmos
No official Cosmos price list either — but real, traveler-reported numbers filled in some of the picture: one full 17-optional breakdown averaging £45.55 each, and a single $72 Sistine Chapel excursion we could compare against a direct ticket price.
What we found for Globus
Nothing comparable. Not one sourced price for a single Globus paid optional excursion, on any tour, from any source we checked.
Named excursions exist — the Prague sunset cruise, among others. Priced ones, we couldn't find.
globusjourneys.com's own tour pages are a JavaScript-rendered application; day-by-day detail like optional pricing never comes back from a direct fetch, and we confirmed that across multiple tours before ruling it out as a fluke. Its static pages — terms, FAQs, the Choice Touring page itself — carry no rate card either.
We also checked the traveler-forum sources that surfaced real Cosmos numbers. None returned a comparable figure for a Globus paid optional.
That's a real absence, not a research shortcut. State it plainly rather than filling the gap with a guess.
Worth It, or Skip? Two Different Tests
Choice Excursions and paid optionals deserve different questions, because you're deciding different things.
Always worth taking one of the options, since you've already paid for it either way. The only real decision is which included activity fits your interests and energy that day — not whether to spend more.
Apply the same test that applies on Cosmos and Trafalgar: does it solve a real access problem you couldn't easily handle yourself, or is it a straightforward attraction you could book independently for less? Ask the price first — Globus won't have told you in advance.
Expect your Tour Director to promote paid optionals enthusiastically on tour. Optional-excursion sales are part of how tour income is generated across this industry, and that's not a reason to avoid them — it's a reason to judge each one on its own merits.
Building Your Own Budget, Since Globus Won't
With no real Globus number to anchor against, the honest move is a tool that makes your own assumption explicit rather than hiding it inside a made-up average.
Treat every number this tool outputs as your own placeholder, not a quote. That's the honest way to plan against a company that hasn't published one.
Our Globus tour cost calculator handles the rest of the trip's math the same way — you set the gratuity and single-supplement assumptions yourself, because Globus doesn't publish fixed rates for either one.
Booking, Timing & the Questions Nobody Will Answer
Globus's own terms require an advance Choice selection without ever naming the actual cutoff date.
Reseller sites fill that gap with a specific number — 35 days before departure, past which Globus picks for you. That figure never shows up on globusjourneys.com itself, so treat it as a reasonable planning target rather than a confirmed first-party policy.
Some sources also cite a roughly 90-day window for booking paid optionals in advance. That figure appears in the same discussions as the Choice prebook rules, and we're not confident the two haven't been conflated by whoever's repeating it. Don't cite either number as settled.
Paid optionals themselves are typically arranged and paid for on tour, through your Tour Director, the same as at most operators in this segment.
Whether you can buy the Choice Excursion you didn't pick as a paid optional later — on tour, after the fact — is a real open question. We found no source that answers it either way, and we're not going to guess.
Ask your Tour Director directly if it matters to your plans, rather than assuming either answer.
The practical move, given all of this: ask specifically, for each day your itinerary flags something extra, whether it's a Choice you've already paid for or a separate charge.
Then price-check anything with a cost attached before you commit, the way you'd check any operator's on-tour optionals.
Globus Optionals vs. Cosmos & Trafalgar
| Operator | What you get |
|---|---|
| Globus | A real included Choice mechanism on close to 80% of Europe/N. America itineraries, plus separate paid optionals with no published price list and no sourced traveler figures we could find. |
| Cosmos | No Choice equivalent, and also no official price list for its paid optionals — but real traveler-reported numbers exist: a full 17-item breakdown averaging £45.55, and a $72 Sistine Chapel example. |
| Trafalgar | No Choice equivalent (its optionals are paid, on-tour, not pre-bookable), but a full published, priced European Traveller optionals list — the clearest transparency advantage in this cluster. |
Globus is the only one of the three with a genuine included-choice system. It's also the one with the least evidence available for the paid side of the equation — a real trade-off, not a simple ranking.
The Seabound Verdict
Choice Excursions cost you nothing beyond the fare, and they're real on most of Globus's Europe and North America tours — that half of this page is a compliment, not a hedge.
The paid optionals sold alongside them are a different matter entirely — unpriced, unlisted, and easy to mistake for the free Choice sitting right next to them on the same itinerary.
Ask which system you're being offered before you say yes to anything with a cost attached. Then price-check it, the way you would with any operator's on-tour optionals.
Judge each excursion on its own, not by the word "optional" alone.
Trust the Choice Excursion without hesitation — it's already paid for. Question the paid optional the same way you'd question one from Cosmos or Trafalgar, since Globus gives you even less to go on.
We're also building dedicated pages on Globus Choice Touring in full depth, single supplements and solo travel, small group tours, the best Globus tours for first-timers, and head-to-heads against Collette, Insight Vacations, and Tauck. Bookmark this cluster and come back as those go live.
Ask Seabound about Globus Optionals
Not sure if a day is a Choice or an upsell?
Tell us the tour and the day you're asking about, and we'll help you figure out which system applies before you commit any money.
Tap a question or the button and an advisor will answer against current pricing before you book.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Globus Choice Excursion?
Globus's own built-in mechanism for letting you pick your activity on a given day, from two or more options it's already covered in your fare — no vote from the rest of the group required. Close to 80% of its Europe and North America itineraries carry one, by the company's own count, and the price never moves no matter which option you take.
What is a Globus paid optional excursion, and how is it different from Choice Touring?
A separate system entirely. Choice Touring lets you pick between excursions already covered by your tour price; a paid optional is an extra activity Globus sells on top of that price, the same way most operators do. The two can run on the same day, in the same city, without ever being the same thing on paper — travelers are the ones who blur the vocabulary.
Can a Choice Excursion and a paid optional excursion happen on the same day?
Yes, and we found a specific example that proves it. On the Best of Eastern Europe tour, day 12 in Prague, the included Choice is a Vltava lunch cruise or a food walk — and Globus separately sells a paid optional called Vltava River Cruise at Sunset, on the same river, the same day. Two different systems, one afternoon.
Does Globus publish a price list for its paid optional excursions?
No, and we could not find one anywhere — not on globusjourneys.com, not in the FAQ, not in the terms. That's a sharper gap than sister brand Cosmos, where at least one real traveler-reported price surfaced in our research. For Globus, we found no sourced price for a single paid optional, on any tour.
How much do Globus's paid optional excursions typically cost?
We don't know, and we're not going to invent a number just to fill the space. Globus doesn't publish rates, and our research turned up no verified traveler-reported price for a Globus paid optional the way it did for Cosmos. Ask your Tour Director for specifics on tour, and price-check anything before saying yes.
Is Globus Choice Touring really an “industry first”?
Not on its own. Globus brands the feature “an industry first at this scale,” yet Insight Vacations offers a near-identical mechanism called Insight Choice, Collette runs the same idea as “Choose Your Own Adventure,” and Tauck offers choices on most given days — denser than Globus's usual one or two per tour. Nobody in this group, Globus included, publishes a day-by-day count, so “at this scale” is a phrase no one can actually verify.
How many Choice Touring days does a typical Globus tour actually have?
Usually one or two, regardless of the tour's length. Britain & Ireland in Depth runs 24 days and carries exactly one Choice day, on day 22. Presence is all the 80% figure tracks — it says nothing about how many choice days any single itinerary actually hands you.
Is there a list of which Globus tours include Choice Touring?
Not one we could find. No filter, tag, or badge marks a Choice tour anywhere on Globus's Europe search page. Open the specific tour page instead and look for language naming an included choice in a given city — that's the only method that's actually worked for us.
Do I need to prebook a Globus Choice Excursion?
Selections must be made in advance, per Globus's own terms — but the terms don't say exactly when. Reseller sites commonly cite 35 days before departure as the deadline, though that number appears nowhere on globusjourneys.com, so treat it as a planning target rather than a confirmed rule.
What happens if I don't select a Choice Excursion preference in time?
Reseller sources say Globus will pick one on your behalf if you haven't chosen by a set deadline, commonly cited as 35 days before departure. Globus's own site never states that rule, so have your booking agent confirm the real cutoff for your exact departure instead of trusting a number secondhand.
Can I buy the Choice Excursion I didn't pick as a paid optional instead?
We couldn't find an answer anywhere, and we're not going to fabricate one. This is a real gap in our research, not a guess we're avoiding out of caution. Ask directly before assuming you can add it back in later.
Are Globus's paid optionals bookable in advance, or only on tour?
Some sources put a roughly 90-day pre-departure booking window on paid optionals, but that figure shows up in the same discussions as the Choice Touring prebook rules, and we're not confident the two haven't been conflated by whoever's reporting it. Treat any specific advance-booking window as unconfirmed until your Tour Director or documents say otherwise.
Does Globus pressure travelers to book paid optional excursions?
We found no documented, formal pressure policy from Globus, but Tour Directors across this industry, whose income is often tied to optional-excursion sales, commonly promote them enthusiastically on tour. Treat every pitch on its own merits and don't feel obligated to book anything that doesn't genuinely interest you.
Is “Globus Choice Excursions” the same thing as the older “Choice Touring by Globus”?
Not quite, and it's worth untangling before you compare reviews. An earlier, apparently discontinued “Choice Touring by Globus” line used dedicated itineraries and “YourChoice Excursions.” The current mainstream feature, live across most of the catalog today, is branded “Globus Choice Excursions.” Don't assume an older review describing one is describing the other.
Is Choice Touring available on every Globus tour?
No. Globus states it appears on close to 80% of its Europe and North America itineraries — not all of them, and not confirmed outside those two regions. Check the specific tour page for language naming an included choice before assuming your itinerary has one.
How can I tell whether a specific day's “optional” is a Choice Excursion or a paid upsell?
Ask directly, since the vocabulary genuinely blurs on tour. A Choice Excursion is already covered by your fare, and simply asks you to pick between two or more included options; a paid optional is billed separately, on top of what you already paid. If your Tour Director mentions a cost, it's a paid optional, not a Choice.
Should I budget separately for optional excursions on a Globus tour?
Yes, and generously, since Globus gives you no published number to plan against. Choice Excursions cost nothing extra by definition, but the paid optionals sold alongside them are real out-of-pocket spending, with no price list anywhere to check before you go.
Are Globus's paid optional excursions worth booking?
It depends entirely on what's offered, and we can't generalize with prices we don't have. Ask what a specific optional costs before saying yes, and weigh whether it solves a real access problem — a destination you couldn't easily reach on your own — against something you could book independently for less.
Does Cosmos, Globus's sister brand, have an equivalent to Choice Touring?
No. Cosmos carries nothing resembling it, in anything we've reviewed — Choice Touring stays a Globus-only feature within the family, absent from both Cosmos and Avalon Waterways.
What's the single most useful thing to ask before booking a Globus optional excursion?
Whether it's a Choice Excursion you've already paid for or a separate charge, and if it's a paid optional, exactly what it costs. Globus won't answer either question in its published marketing — your Tour Director, or your booking documents, will.