If your dream of leading your students on a life-changing, educational tour always snags at the price part, then you’ll want to read this article carefully. It is possible—and surprisingly easy—to design a trip your students can afford. Making some relatively small changes to your dream itinerary can have a big impact on the price your students pay. So don’t give up on that dream trip just yet. Read on.
1. Choose an all-inclusive tour
This may seem counterintuitive. After all, shouldn’t you choose the tour with the lowest starting-at price? No! And here’s why: those bare-bones itineraries are deceiving. If they only include airfare, hotels, some meals and some activities, your students will be left paying for lots of extras (think travel insurance, drinks with meals, activities to fill up all the “free time” holes on the itinerary). It’s crazy how fast all those “optional excursions” add up. Knowing the actual price of traveling from the beginning will help your students’ families plan accordingly, and no one will be left with a bad taste in their mouth from surprises.
2. Shorten your trip by a day
Often the easiest way to bring the price of your trip to a more modest level is to shorten the itinerary by a day. Practically, this means one of two things: either forgo a couple on-tour activities or quicken the pace of your trip.
3. Consider opportunities closer to home.
If a trip to Europe is just not in your students’ price range, it’s time to get creative. The North American continent is teeming with educational travel experiences, from the Yucatan Peninsula, to New York City, and on to Quebec. Define your educational goals and consider whether or not they can be met with an educational tour closer to home.
4. Stay in one or two locations
If only an overseas destination will do, lower the price of your educational tour by sticking to one or two destination cities. This will greatly reduce the transportation costs, in addition to giving you the opportunity to explore one or two places in more depth!
5. Travel in the low season
You don’t have to travel during summer vacation or spring break. Check with your principal and school board to see if they would allow for student travel during regularly scheduled school days. The advantages are many: lower hotel and transportation prices, fewer crowds and sometimes milder weather, to name a few.
6. Take fewer chaperones.
Chaperones travel for “free”, but the price of their trip is spread across the paying participants. The standard chaperone-to-student ration is 1-to-6, but you can significantly bring the price of the tour down by bringing along one chaperone for every 8 students, for example.
7. Consider a student exchange program.
Increase the cultural value of your trip at the same time as you decrease its cost by participating in a student exchange program. Many European schools seek this type of exchange whereby their students’ families host your group, and then your students’ families host them at a later date. The cost of these programs is typically much lower than a regular educational tour.
So don’t let the initial sticker shock hold you back from further exploring all the amazing benefits of educational travel. Give us a call! We, too, want as many of your students as possible to see the world.
