What actually goes wrong when you take a tandem to Europe?

I work at Life on a Bike, a marketplace of self-guided cycling holidays in Europe — the sort where a local operator books the hotels in order, moves your luggage to the next one each morning, and hands you the route as a file for your GPS. I'm writing because the tandem is the one case where I know that arrangement tends to come apart, and I'd rather hear it from you than guess at it from a desk in Italy.

Here is what it looks like from my side. The packages assume a solo bike. The hire fleets don't have tandems, so you bring your own, which quietly makes getting there your problem rather than the operator's. The luggage van is sized and routed for ordinary bags. And the hotels come off a list drawn up for two people with two ordinary bikes — whether the storage at the far end will take something the length of a tandem is nobody's job to check.

What I don't know is which of those actually stops people, and which ones you all solved years ago and stopped complaining about.

So, four questions.

How do you get the tandem there — roof of the car, train, ferry, box on a plane? And does that decide where you go?

Does luggage transfer between hotels work for you as sold, or have you given up on it?

Is the real trouble at the far end: rooms, storage, whether a hotel will have a tandem indoors overnight?

And what have you tried to book and been turned down for, or abandoned halfway through?

Two things, so nobody wastes an evening writing to me under a false impression. I have no tandem holiday to sell you today — our partners run standard packages, and I'm asking before building something rather than after. And if the answers come back saying there's no real gap, that tandem couples are perfectly well served by loading the car and driving, that's a useful answer too and I'll say so.

If you have five minutes and something to say, write to me at info@lifeonabike.com.
I read everything, and I'll reply to everyone who writes.

Riccardo Sedola, Life on a Bike