Educational Travel for School Groups Worldwide

Planning a Trip

ITS are contacted many times with requests to organise a trip at very short notice. Although we try and assist in these requests, it is very often the case that the school fails to reach the specified numbers for the trip to proceed. There are a number of reasons for this and the following three are the most likely:

• Advertised too late
• Too costly
• Wrong time of year

It is quite simple for us to provide the right programme for a school and many hours are spent adjusting this and the price to ensure it is the right package for your students. However, the hard work is down to the school and the teachers involved selling the trip to the parents and students.

ITS has come up with a few important points to assist schools in the selling process of a trip and to alleviate the issues of advertising too late, seeming to expensive, and going at the wrong time of year:

• Choose the dates for the trip carefully and consider the following:

o Exam dates
o Revision time
o Coursework deadlines
o Impact on teaching for different age groups
o Staff required for the trip and time out of school

• Choose the location of the trip carefully based on the time of year the school is planning to travel:

o Will the trip be affected by the weather – i.e. going to Nepal in July when it is the Monsoon; or going to Oman in May or June where temperatures are above 40°C?
o Will the season be a factor in the price? Going in the high season will incur higher costs.
o Will the trip be in school holidays that are similar world-wide? Flight prices may be higher as too will hotels, transport etc.

• Plan a date to meet with parents and students and prepare a presentation based on the teacher information pack that ITS can provide for you:

o This information pack can also be used as a student/parent info pack
o Use the FAQs document to help cover those questions parents always want to ask
o The teacher info pack will provide information down to the hotels you will use and the number of beds in each room, the transport used, food you will eat and activities the students will take part in
o Kit is a very important part of this presentation pack and should be adhered to.