Why It’s A Good Idea To Book Your Inca Trail Trek Early
by Chris on 21st November 2018
Chris is the CEO of The Adventure People and has over 20 years experience in the travel industry.
Inca Trail
However, it’s worth noting that there are limits on how many people can trek the Inca Trail per day and so, dreams are often dashed and adventures left on hold as spaces sell out. Lots of people underestimate the popularity and the fact that the permits sell out well in advance. This post explains how Inca Trail permits work and why it’s a good idea to book early.
This post is being written on 20th November 2018. Already permits for trekking the Inca Trail during May 2019 have almost sold out.
There are 500 permits per day available globally. The public cannot book trekking permits, you have to go through a tour operator or travel agent. When securing your trekking permit the issuing office allocates each pass based on passport number. It’s for this reason the tour operator or travel agent will ask for your passport details when making a booking. Going back to our May example that’s almost 15,000 permits selling out 7 months in advance.
500 passes is quite a large number but what many people don’t realise is that this is inclusive of any staff and employees of any tour operator. From this 500 come the guides, porters, chefs etc… which means, in reality, there are typically between 200 and 300 passes for trekking available to the public on any given day.
So now we have just 300 passes per day available on a global basis. The Inca Trail is closed during most of February so roughly there are 100,000 trekking passes available to the public per year. It sounds like a lot but it’s really not that many given those passes are for everyone in the world. We think about a global outlook because it’s such an iconic trip, people all over the world dream of trekking to Machu Picchu.
May is one of the most popular trekking months because it is warm but not hot and typically dry, ideal trekking weather. Other months will begin to sell out now too, next will be June and April then September. Here is a link to the permit availability. This is 24 hours out of date as permits can take 24 hours to secure and the website is updated once per day, none the less it is a good guide.
If you’re thinking about trekking the Inca Trail then we’d urge you to book your space early with a deposit, that way you now you’re going on the dates you want to go.
However, if you're thinking about going in the coming months, contact us and we can let you know what the availability is like. You can always give us a call on 0208 004 8886
