Is this sentence grammatically correct? If so, is it a good way to express it?

Question

Below is an excerpt from a book.

I’m a man who loves traveling by myself. On every vacation in university, I spent about 7 to 10 days as a backpacker, traveling around China. Since it was self-guiding tours, no guide would come to help me arrange anything.

As I understand, self-guiding tours is a plural form so it should be Since it were self-guiding tours. Is my understanding correct? Or should it be changed to Since they were self-guiding tours? Which one is correct?

'It' is a 'dummy subject' in your sentence. There's a nice explanation on dummy subjects here — S Conroy, Oct 14 '18 at 21:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 14 '18 at 12:14

"It" seems to refer to the collectively self-guiding nature of the holidays as a singular item, thus "it was" is appropriate, if a little awkward and clumsy. You could change it to "since these were self-guiding tours...". You cannot use a singular pronoun "it" with a plural verb "were".

Is this sentence grammatically correct? If so, is it a good way to express it?

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