The best in personalised, luxury, small group tours to incredible international destinations.
Why choose Boutique Tours & Travel?
For more than 15 years, Boutique Tours & Travel has been carefully curating and leading unforgettable experiences across the globe. I understand that it may feel intimidating to embark upon an adventure as a solo traveller, and invite you to share in the pure enjoyment of travel in a small group.
I personally arrange each tour and escort nearly every small group tour group to ensure our personalised service and care is with you each step if the way.
My tours offer the opportunity to explore unique places, cultures and have some amazing experiences at your own pace in small and intimate groups that leave as friends. I always offer something extra in each tour, partnering with local guides, wonderful artisans and master craftspeople to offer you exclusive experiences that you will look back on for the rest of your life.
Choose from my international, luxury, escorted small group tours to Bhutan, Croatia, Egypt, France, India, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. We also offer Foodie Tours to France and Italy as well as textile and handicraft tours to India and Uzbekistan. Your adventure awaits.
Meet your friendly small group tour Host
I’m Glenda Fagan, owner and founder of Boutique Tours & Travel. I have spent my life caring for others as both a qualified ICU-Coronary Care Nurse and an international tour guide. I grew up in a small country town and now live in Melbourne with my family, I’ve travelled extensively over the years; the USA, Canada, and Europe, as well as India, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and China. I love exploring the richness of each country’s culture and meeting people and creating connections with local experts, and I enjoy nothing more sharing my wealth of knowledge to enhance and enrich your travel experiences.
I have personally curated all our itineraries inconjunction with our amazing travel consultants in each of the countries we tour. Our tours allow for individual reflection and flexible free-time, so you can make the most of your journey.
Nothing is too much trouble, and I look forward to meeting you and journeying together.
How does a small group tour work?
If you have never experienced curated small group travel, you are in for a treat. It is the perfect way to see the world in a safe and intimate way, while making friends and experiencing the beautiful cultures and experiences of another country.
Book your tour. The hardest part is deciding where to go first! I love that so many of my travellers come back for repeat tours with me.
Receive your personalised country travel information book. I create each book to prepare you for your journey—complete with country history, contact information, itinerary, and some extras to get you excited.
Book your flights and land in your country of choice at the arranged time. You will be personally greeted at the airport and safely whisked away on your adventure.
Enjoy the travel experience of a lifetime!
Get safely dropped at your airport at the right time for your onward or homebound journey—with memories to last forever.
My Story of Boutique Tours and Travel: Glenda Fagan
As a toddler, my parents told me not to touch the beautiful vase on my mother’s dressing table as it came from China. It was very precious and could not be replaced. I am sure this early experience planted the seed in my mind that China was an exotic and fascinating place; I was intrigued even from that early age, and it was a place that I knew I wanted to visit when I grew up.
This early interest in Asia meant that I chose to study Asian history in senior school. I found Chinese History particularly interesting, especially the stories and characters of Mao and the Long March, the warlords, the Emperors and Dynasties, Genghis Khan, and the history of the Great Wall. I learned all about the Opium Wars of the 1840s and the Concession areas of Shanghai. Growing up on a farm in a country town, China was about as far away and as exotic as it got.
Many years, a husband and three children later, the school our children attended decided that all Year 9 students could go on a cultural and educational journey to China for five weeks. I was, of course, hugely jealous that my children would get to visit China before I would. I was thrilled for them.
Quietly my mind started churning and I knew I still wanted to visit this amazing country that I had learned so much about. After our children had all been to China, I did try to convince my husband to travel with me to China and he told me plainly that he had no desire to travel there.
I remember feeling disappointed and a little hopeless, as I was not sure if my dream to go to China would happen. My mind kept churning. I was thinking, dinners, housework, part-time nursing, and volunteering at school, wasn’t there more to life than this? I was more than just a cook, housekeeper, and taxi service!
I bit the bullet, determined to see my dream come to fruition. A few days later I said to my husband that I was very keen to go to China and I would see if I could find a friend to travel with me. I put the call out for expressions of interest within my children’s school community and I was overwhelmed by the response. In fact, I found fifteen people who were keen to travel with me!
I organised an appointment with the then Principal Mr Stephen Newton. In our meeting, I asked for his help so we could visit the CGS Nanjing Campus building to see where our children had lived for five weeks. In the discussions that followed, the school offered to assist with a two- week parents’ tour of China. Having studied Chinese history, I knew where we should travel, and what the journey should look like. I loved pulling together an itinerary of exciting locations and experiences. After several months of planning, my first tour group flew off to China and so began my first ‘Tour.’
These tours to China continued to run over several years, during which time several people who had participated in the tours suggested that I should consider running my own tour company. It did not take much to convince me that combining my love of travel and adventure, meeting new people, and having some wonderful spontaneous, unplanned moments and memorable experiences, was exciting and fulfilling. So, Boutique Tours & Travel was ‘born.’
I launched my new travel business, and a website, and went off to William Angliss College to make sure I had the necessary accreditations and education. And here we are now. Numerous tours later, I still get a thrill from meeting a new group on a grand adventure, not onlytravelling to China (unfortunately we are not continuing tours to China at present) but now to other exciting and exotic places.
With the international borders opening again following the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been remembering how much I enjoyed all the places I have travelled to, and the amazing people we have met along the way and this has reignited my passion to trave againl. So, I have dusted off my passport and am ready to share my passion for travelling to amazing places with other like- minded, adventurous people again.
MEET OUR TEAM
Finance Team: Karla Trewark - Principal Accountant : Daryl Powell - Senior Consultant : Phoebe Sanders - Accountant
