Travel Trade Glossary
Group travel carries a vocabulary that hides what people actually buy. These are the terms used on this site, defined as we use them. Where a term has a legal meaning in Spain, we give that meaning rather than the marketing one.
How the Agency Is Licensed
Retail travel agency
In Spanish, agencia de viajes minorista. A business licensed to sell travel to the public and to issue the contract for it. The licence comes from the region, not the state. La Sirena Vacations holds licence Nº CV-AVC002748-V from the Comunitat Valenciana. A licensed agency carries insolvency cover, so a traveller who pays a deposit is protected if the agency fails.
Special IVA regime for travel agencies
A Spanish VAT scheme, the régimen especial de las agencias de viajes. The agency pays tax on its own margin rather than on the full price of the trip. This matters to a company buying travel: the invoice is a valid Spanish invoice, but the travel service on it does not carry deductible VAT. Ask your accountant how that lands before you budget.
Guide licensed in the Comunitat Valenciana
Guiding inside monuments and protected sites in this region requires a regional guiding qualification. A tour leader who walks a group between sites is not the same thing. Both roles appear on a trip, and the difference decides who may speak inside the building.
How Groups Are Sold
Private group tour
One group, one guide, one plan. Nobody outside the group joins it. The opposite is a scheduled departure, where strangers buy seats on the same coach. We run private groups of any size.
Day excursion
A single day out and back from a base, with no hotel change. We run these from Valencia and from Alicante.
Ground handling
Also called receptive services, or DMC work. A tour operator in one country sells a trip, then pays an agency in the destination country to run it: the coach, the guide, the hotels, the restaurants and the entries. The traveller books with the operator and never sees the handler. Roughly half of what this agency does is this work.
Net rates
Trade pricing quoted to another agency or operator without the retail markup, so the buyer adds their own. Net rates go to companies that send groups, not to travellers. We quote them by email.
What Appears in an Itinerary
Media pensión and pensión completa
Half board is breakfast plus one main meal. Full board is breakfast plus two. Spanish hotels quote both, and the difference changes the price of a week noticeably.
Fallas
Valencia's largest festival, 15 to 19 March each year, when the city builds and then burns monumental sculptures. Hotel rooms for that week sell a year ahead, which is why we hold them from the previous spring. A group that decides in January will not find beds.
Albufera
The freshwater lagoon south of Valencia, inside a natural park. Flat boats work it at sunset, and the rice for paella grows around it.
Guided hours
Time a licensed guide spends working with the group. It is not the same as the length of the day. A route that runs twelve hours may carry four guided hours, with the rest as travel, meals and free time. Our itineraries state both.
Money Terms
Per person price
The cost of the trip divided by the number of travellers. It falls as a group fills, because the coach, the driver and the guide cost the same whatever the head count. We quote one final figure per group and do not publish a breakdown of what sits inside it.
Deposit
A payment that holds the booking before the balance falls due. Spanish package travel practice sets limits on what an agency may take and when. The terms that apply to a specific trip appear in the contract, not on this page.
Something here unclear, or a term you met elsewhere and want defined?Ask the office. Definitions cost nothing.