For Group Leaders
How to organize an educational travel group
If you build it, they will come.
However, you don't want to build the wrong thing, or build the right thing and then give it to the wrong company to operate for you. Take the steps following here, and you'll be OK.
There's no time like the present. 
Start now! Your students and their parents need time to prepare for this important educational travel opportunity. Avoid procrastination and in-school competition. Early groups are always the biggest groups!
Get school approval. Meet with your principal and/or school board to discuss your travel plans. Be sure to refer to the multi-million dollar passports "Umbrella" liability insurance policy and to Paragraph 18 of the Release and Agreement in the Enrollment Guide. Administrators and school districts are routinely named as "specifically insured" by company insurance carriers. (So are you, for that matter!)
Choose your educational program... Use the Tour Selector to choose one or two appropriate travel programs. Photocopy them if you wish, or call in and ask for colorful page offprints! We'll have them to you overnight.
Try not to offer too wide a selection. Pre-choosing before you distribute materials means less confusion and fragmented interest. Steer students toward the program you think they need.
Can't find the perfect group tour? Contact us at 1-800-332-7277 for assistance in designing a custom itinerary all your own. More and more group organizers are now experienced and sophisticated travelers who know just the sort of trip they want.
Join them in creating your own travel adventure.
Schedule a student-parent meeting. Hold your initial meeting after regular school hours. Announce it with fliers, letters and phone calls. Give out the Tour ID to your new passports.com web site. Remember, you're not recruiting; you're selecting!
Enlist the help of your best students. Get students involved from the very beginning. Choose those who show leadership potential; they will be enthusiastic, and will motivate other students toward enrollment.
...and your colleagues. Contact your friends. Student teachers are often a perfect choice. If a colleague is unavailable, enlist a spouse, or a significant other to assist. These "co-counselors" can travel with you — for free if your group is big enough — and are entitled to the same benefits as the "main" Group Leader.
Send in those applications! Don't sit on them! Mail them in instead. Each student will then be sent an exciting Acceptance Notice, along with a Going Places newsletter, insurance information, and other materials.
Participants benefit from a unique "Convenience Billing" plan, which budgets tuition costs over a period of many months, bringing the tour within reach of almost all families, and helping to avoid any late payment penalties.
Enthusiasm will spread quickly, producing a "snowball" effect. Further mailings from the company throughout the school year will keep interest focused, and your group growing.
Once you put up the posters and make it clear what you're doing, people will be calling you! This is a thing that your families want to do.
Talk it up! It's not just an intrinsically good thing you're doing — taking your students on an eye-opening educational tour overseas — it's also interesting and press-worthy news. News that can help your group grow.
We'll help with local newspaper Press Release copy that you can place in periodicals of your choosing.
It's out of a field of dreams that your educational travel experience gets made. Make it happen with passports.
