You might be asking yourself why your school tour costs so much. Or maybe you’re concerned about your student group using their own spending money on their school tours. We get these questions from educators often, and it makes sense. It can be confusing when there are companies out there offering less expensive trips. So why do some student tour companies charge more than others?
The main factors affecting a school tour’s cost are the level of support and “add-ons.” It’s essential to understand tradeoffs in levels of support. Add-ons are unique items added to your educational travel experience. Let’s dig into these factors and how they apply to your great trip.
Every student trip has three key phases:
1) trip planning
2) Pre-Departure
3) Supporting groups on tour.
The approach to each phase will vary by company. We're going to walk through each step, how we approach it, and alternatives to our process.
Some travel companies support your trip from the initial planning phase to your trip completion, and some don’t. Some travel companies will start from a blank page and design a trip based on your specifications and trip goals. While other companies work with hundreds of groups and simply cannot create custom tours. While it may seem unnecessary to have a new itinerary for your group, you should understand the benefits.
We’ve found many trip leaders think their biggest problem is a basic itinerary when the root of the problem is usually planning a trip that inspires. If you pick a city or two, you get a basic trip following every other school group. To avoid a status quo trip, decide on your trip goals and must-haves. Once a tour coordinator understands your vision, they create the perfect itinerary for your school group.
Your trip exists to inspire students, and that end starts with the quality of your itinerary. Your tour coordinator supports all phases of your journey. They'll design your unique itinerary, help you win support from administrators, and host your trip kick-off meeting. And once you’ve completed these steps, you’ve built the foundation of leading your best school trip ever.
Next, pre-trip planning. One of the most common questions trip leaders ask us is, “once our trip is planned, you’re done until our trip departs, right?” Great question. Like most things, trip planning takes time and many revisions. Some travel companies support your trip behind the scenes, and some don’t. While it may seem inefficient to support a trip from the planning stage to trip completion, here’s the rationale behind the process.
Think about planning a student trip like building a brick house. Your tour coordinator and operations team form the “bricks” for your trip. Your planning team secures flights, hotels, busses, tour guides, meals, and attractions in this step.
The “mortar” for your trip is added to the “bricks” over several months. As flights change (this is common) and reservations windows for activities open, your itinerary changes. Usually, these changes are minor, but there are cases of significant flight changes. Public Service announcement to airlines: Please stop creating major flight changes for group travel!
A 5 day trip from California to Washington DC and New York might look like this. Eighty participants, seven chaperones, one trip leader, two tour directors, two site coordinators, Tour central, and around 50 vendors. From the initial trip planning phase to your group returning home, a supported trip will have thousands of touchpoints. While an unsupported trip may leave some things to chance, a supported trip will not.
Finally, supporting your trip on tour. A tour manager, site coordinator, tour central, and bus driver are the team that supports your trip on tour. The quality, level of experience, and training of your trip’s support team vary from company to company. Some companies hire a group of unrelated contractors to run a trip. While other companies manage hundreds of trips, quality can be hit or miss. We’ve found to have a cohesive team that understands the mission of your trip. Training a team in house creates a trip of higher quality experience.
The question is, how do you want to build your brick house? Maybe you're handy and want to carry the heavy load of building the brick house. Perhaps you’re okay with a basic house. Or, do you want to have a custom home built for you by an expert team of trained professionals?
You’d be surprised to find that sometimes the cost between standard trips and the custom trip is the same.
You're not a tour director, onsite coordinator, operations manager, tour coordinator AND group leader. Your team of experts makes your trip a top priority.
What Will Your Trip Cost?
The average cost of an educational trip varies. Consider the number of days of your learning experience, destination and departure cities, and whether your trip is an “air” or “bus” trip—tour support and quality range from unsupported to white glove.
At GL Travel, you can expect an “air” or “bus” trip for a custom 3-7 day tour to range from $900-$4,000. We know. That’s an extensive range. Trip prices are all based on the list of inclusions below. All trips receive support from the GL Travel way.
Departure City
Location(s) of Tour
Travel Dates
The number of days and nights traveling.
Is your group traveling by air, bus, or both?
Checked Luggage
Refund policy for all travelers
Chaperone to student ratio
Single Occupancy rooms
Size of the group
Airport Transfer to and from school
Hotel proximity to the city center
Hotel star rating
Full-time guides
Special Dinners and meals inclusions
Trip Swag
Special Activities
Insurance Cancellation Programs
The distance between the departure and destination city will impact the price. The size and number of flights from an airport factor into costs. Regional airports are more expensive than larger airports.
The top 5 places students tour on the historic east coast to be most expensive to least expensive.
New York City
2. Boston
3. Philadelphia
4. Colonial Virginia (Williamsburg)
5. Washington DC
Fall tends to be less expensive than peak spring and summer rates.
The number of days and nights traveling.
The length of your trip adds hotel nights, meals, etc., to trip costs.
Is your group traveling by air, bus, or both?
Air can be more expensive than traveling by bus.
Smaller groups are more expensive than larger groups.
Consider the list above when dreaming up your memory-making trip. Rank order your most important “must-haves'' to your least important add ons. On your planning call, your tour coordinator will listen with an open ear and create your vision. The result is a trip that you and your students will love.
By now, it is (hopefully) more clear why some school trips cost more than others. And maybe the justification for the pricing is there, but there is still no justification for spending more for a trip. We get that. Not every group is in a place where spending a little more makes sense. So what can you do?
Fortunately, there are plenty of other options out there. Here are a few ideas:
Travel off-peak. Steer clear of peak demand in the spring and summer. The other advantage of traveling in the fall is fewer groups and more accessibility for you and your current students. Bonus, imagine traveling with students and seeing the beautiful leaves changing colors. Bring your high school students on a college campus tour!
Combine two grades or two schools - Adding more students to a trip will bring down payment options. Adding two grades or two schools can be a great way to add more students to a trip. A bonus for schools traveling every other year is lower trip payments spread out over time. Groups also see great results from holding fundraisers.
Airfare can be pricey. Plan a bus trip!
Open trip enrollment early and create a low-cost payment plan.
Find a company that specializes in low-cost trips.
Low-cost trips usually have minimal support.
The most significant difference between educational tour providers is add-ons and the level of support for your field trip. Some student travel companies sell status quo trips, and others provide your trip with limited support. A well-supported trip looks like a team of experts working together to deliver your perfect travel experience. This likely adds to the cost, but it removes your trip’s risk of not meeting your standards.
In case you haven't received our not-so-subtle hints yet, we help trip leaders create premium trips for their students. So if you have any questions about redesigning your student trip, free to schedule a call right here, we’d love to help.