We work with independent travellers, academic groups, cultural organisations, and corporate delegations. The descriptions below represent our established service lines — we also design custom programmes for requirements that fall outside these categories. Contact us to discuss non-standard engagements.
01 — Bespoke Itinerary Planning
Our core service. Following an initial consultation, we design a day-by-day programme tailored to your interests, group size, fitness level, and travel duration. The programme includes annotated site descriptions, recommended entry times, logistical connections, and a curated reading list. We also flag sites currently under conservation restriction and suggest alternatives with comparable historical significance. Delivery: 5–10 business days after consultation sign-off. Available for trips of 2 days to 4 weeks. Suitable for solo travellers, families, academic groups, and corporate delegations.
02 — Egyptologist-Led Site Visits
Our Egyptologists accompany you to individual sites or across multi-day programmes with continuous expert commentary. Unlike a standard licensed guide, our Egyptologists are published researchers who can answer specialist questions, translate inscriptions on the spot, and explain the scholarly debates surrounding what you are seeing. They hold current Supreme Council of Antiquities clearances for restricted areas. Available for single half-days or multi-week residencies in Egypt. We currently have specialists stationed in Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan — day trips to Saqqara, Abu Simbel, or Abydos can be arranged from these bases.
03 — Grand Egyptian Museum Access Programme
As one of three authorised private partners, we arrange access to the Grand Egyptian Museum's scholarly reserve galleries — areas containing objects from the Tutankhamun collection not yet on public display, alongside conservation laboratory viewing by arrangement. Our GEM programmes include a two-hour preparatory briefing the evening before, a full-day museum visit with a resident Egyptologist, and a written summary of the artefacts examined. Maximum group size: 8 persons. Minimum booking notice: 14 days for public-area programmes, 30 days for restricted-gallery access.
04 — Nile Cruise Curation
We do not operate cruise vessels — we select the right vessel for your requirements, arrange the boarding and disembarkation, and place an Egyptologist aboard for the duration of the cruise. Our current preferred dahabiya operators for private small-group cruises include Aswan-based family-run companies whose vessels carry 6–12 passengers and travel at a pace that allows extended stops. For those preferring a traditional felucca journey, we arrange itineraries on working sail vessels with overnight camping on the riverbank — a sharply different experience from any hotel. All academic commentary and site briefings are provided by our staff rather than vessel crew.
05 — Remote Pre-Visit Consultation
Available to clients anywhere in the world. Consists of up to four 90-minute video sessions with a specialist Egyptologist, timed to suit your schedule, plus access to our digital resource library for the duration of your preparation. Sessions are recorded and shared with you. Topics are entirely client-directed: you may want an overview of the New Kingdom, a detailed study of hieroglyphic notation, a survey of current excavation findings, or a practical briefing on what to expect physically at specific sites. Remote consultations are available in English, French, German, and Arabic.
06 — Family Heritage Programme
Designed for families with children aged 7 and above. Our family programmes are paced for mixed-age groups, using hands-on activities — hieroglyphic writing workshops, replica artefact handling sessions, papyrus-making demonstrations — alongside standard site visits. All activities are conducted in secure, supervised environments approved by the Ministry of Tourism. We provide age-appropriate printed materials that children can use during visits and take home as reference documents. Family programmes are available in Cairo, Luxor, and Alexandria.
07 — Academic Research Support
For researchers requiring access to specific site archives, restricted areas, or scholarly collections, we act as institutional intermediaries with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and affiliated universities. We assist with permit applications, introduce researchers to local academic contacts, arrange access to the Egyptian National Library and Archives manuscript holdings, and provide introductions to current excavation teams who may permit observation visits. This service is available to affiliated university researchers with a letter of introduction from their institution.
08 — Islamic Cairo Walking Programmes
Led by our Islamic heritage specialist Layla Mostafa Hassan, these programmes cover the medieval city of Cairo in depth: the Fatimid gates, the Citadel of Saladin, the mosques of Ibn Tulun and Sultan Hassan, the medieval merchants' district of Khan el-Khalili, and the Coptic Quarter of Old Cairo. Full-day or half-day programmes. We also offer dawn programmes covering the mosques of Al-Azhar and Al-Hussein with attendance at the morning prayer — by arrangement with mosque administration, in appropriate dress. Participants are required to comply with site-specific conduct guidelines; we provide a full briefing on arrival.
09 — Alexandria Day Expedition
A structured full-day programme from Cairo by high-speed rail, covering the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa (the most complex funerary monument of the Greco-Roman period anywhere in the Mediterranean), Pompey's Pillar, the Greco-Roman Museum (reopened after restoration in 2023), and the corniche seafront promenade. The programme concludes with dinner at a seafood restaurant operating since 1926 in the historic Anfushi district. Departure 07:30 from Cairo Ramses Station; return approximately 22:00. Group minimum: 2 persons; maximum: 12.
10 — Seasonal Event Access
We arrange attendance at events not accessible through standard tourist channels: the Abu Simbel Sun Festival (22 February and 22 October), the Luxor African Film Festival (March), the International Moulid Festival in Luxor (timing varies by Islamic calendar), and the annual opening of the Royal Mummies Hall at the Grand Egyptian Museum for academic study groups. These events require advance notice of at least 90 days; access is subject to annual confirmation of availability. See our seasonal highlights page for full calendar details.
11 — Photography & Documentation Permits
Professional and semi-professional photographers visiting Egyptian heritage sites are subject to specific permit requirements that differ from standard tourist photography rules. We arrange Ministry-level photography permits for commercial and editorial use, provide access to sites at optimal lighting times (typically requiring early-morning or late-afternoon entry beyond standard visiting hours), and arrange tripod use permissions in sites where they are normally prohibited. Permit costs are passed through at cost; our service fee covers the application and coordination. Typical processing time: 21 business days.
12 — Post-Visit Reference Package
For clients who have completed a visit with us, the post-visit package includes a curated bibliography based on the specific subjects covered during the programme, high-resolution photographs of inscriptions and objects taken during the visit (where permitted), a written narrative summary of the chronological and thematic arc your guide presented, and access to a private digital archive of reference materials. The package is delivered within 14 days of your return and remains permanently available via a personal access link. Optional: annual update notifications when significant new scholarship relating to sites you visited is published.
The Egyptian heritage tourism market contains a wide range of providers, from highly professional academic operations to licensed guides working informally without institutional backing. The difference is not always immediately visible to a first-time visitor, but it becomes apparent over the course of a day on-site. Here is how our service model differs from the standard tourist experience at each stage.
Standard tour packages begin when you land. Our engagement begins months earlier, with a consultation process that identifies your specific interests, flags sites that are currently restricted or under conservation, and prepares you with written materials, video briefings, and a reading list calibrated to your level of prior knowledge. By the time you arrive, you have already absorbed the chronological framework that our guide will build on — so that site time is spent deepening understanding rather than establishing basics.
Our permit applications are submitted through the Supreme Council of Antiquities with full institutional documentation, not through informal arrangements that can fall through on the day. For restricted-access sites and special permissions, we maintain a standing relationship with the relevant departments and track permit processing status weekly. Clients who have booked restricted-gallery access or special events receive written confirmation of permit status at least 30 days before their visit.
Our guides hold current academic credentials in Egyptology or a directly related discipline — they are researchers, not performers. This means they can answer specialist questions, adapt their commentary to your level of prior knowledge without being asked, and engage substantively when you raise something they have not been asked before. The difference between a licensed guide reciting memorised commentary and an Egyptologist responding in real time to what you are noticing is the difference between a tour and a conversation.
We cap group sizes to ensure that this quality of engagement is possible. For site visits, maximum group size is 8 persons per guide. For museum visits, maximum is 6 persons per guide (in compliance with museum regulations for scholarly access groups). We do not amalgamate unrelated clients into combined groups to reduce per-person costs; every engagement is its own arrangement.
Most tours end at the airport. Our engagement continues with the post-visit reference pack: a bibliography, a narrative summary, and where permitted, high-resolution photographs of inscriptions and objects. We also maintain a record of what each client has visited and studied, so that return engagements — and many clients do return — build intelligently on previous experience. This accumulated knowledge of each client's interests is one of the significant practical advantages of working with a specialist consultancy rather than a general travel provider.
The following comments are drawn from written responses submitted by clients after completing their programmes. Names and affiliations are published with permission.
"The bespoke itinerary planning service gave us a document that was more useful than anything we found in published guidebooks. Every recommended entry time turned out to be accurate. The annotation on the Saqqara map alone saved us hours of disoriented wandering. The post-visit bibliography introduced me to three scholars whose work I have been reading ever since."
Classical archaeology, Uppsala University
"I booked the Grand Egyptian Museum access programme specifically to see the conservation work on the Tutankhamun collection. The conservator who spoke to our group clearly knew our guide personally and spoke with a frankness about the current challenges — humidity management in the display cases, ongoing consolidation of deteriorating gilded surfaces — that would never appear in a public tour. This is the kind of access that justifies working with specialists."
Architectural conservator, Edinburgh
"We used the remote consultation service for four months before our trip, working through the religious symbolism of the Amduat text with our assigned Egyptologist. By the time we arrived in the Valley of the Kings, we could read the ceiling iconography ourselves — or at least recognise what we were looking at. That preparation made the physical visit an entirely different experience from anything possible otherwise."
Independent scholar, Florence, Italy
We regularly design programmes for requirements outside our standard service lines — archaeological photography expeditions, academic conference field trips, charitable organisation educational visits, and heritage-focused honeymoon itineraries, among others. If you have a specific requirement, contact our team with a brief description and we will respond within two business days with an assessment of what is feasible.
Not sure which service applies to your situation? Our initial consultation is always free. Tell us what you have in mind and we will match you to the right offering — or design something new entirely.