Educational Travel · Est. 1992

The world is your
classroom.

Passports designs unforgettable group tours for American students and their teachers. You bring the curiosity — we plan, book, and guide every step.

Budapest skyline over the Danube at dusk
About Passports
  • City-center hotels, walking distance from everything
  • Authentic cuisine at local restaurants, every tour
  • Full-time Tour Directors, gate to gate
  • More included — teacher travel, tipping, medical
5.0★Trustpilot
Since 1992family-owned in Worcester
Freeteacher travel, always
Includedtipping, every tour
Verified on Trustpilot

Hundreds of teachers reviewed Passports.
99% gave us five stars.

It’s a number every educational travel company tries to claim. Passports is the one where the breakdown matches the headline — look us up on Trustpilot, then look up the others on the same site. The chart below is every public review, drawn to scale.

None in our company’s history. Not a single one-, two-, or three-star review on Trustpilot — ever.

Reviews are public and verified. Trustpilot prohibits removing them for a fee — which is why we point group leaders at the full distribution, not the headline.

Read every review on Trustpilot
The alphabet soup, at the same scale

5.0 vs 4.9 looks identical. The breakdown doesn’t.

A single average hides what reviewers actually said. Below: the full public Trustpilot distribution for Passports and the four operators we’re most often compared to. The red and orange slivers are what disappears when a company shows you only the headline.

Passportsus5.0
1–3★ reviews: 0% — none in our company's history
ACIS4.9
1–3★ reviews: 8% of reviewers — about 1 in 13
EF Tours4.5
1–3★ reviews: 16% of reviewers — about 1 in 6
WorldStrides4.3
1–3★ reviews: 21% of reviewers — about 1 in 5
Explorica3.8
1–3★ reviews: 31% of reviewers — about 1 in 3
From the post-tour evaluations

What teachers tell us, directly.

After every Passports tour, the group leader fills out a private end-of-trip evaluation. A few quotes from our published set — across hotels, meals, tour directors, customer service, and the trip overall.

Overall

This was an outstanding tour experience from start to finish. The trip flowed extremely well, with strong attention to detail at every stage. Even when minor issues arose, they were addressed quickly and professionally, which reinforced confidence in the Passports team. I am very much looking forward to my next trip with Passports and would confidently recommend them to any educator.

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · March 2026
Overall

When we switched to Passports from our previous travel company, we wanted two things: better food and less time on the bus. Passports exceeded our expectations! We loved having hotels where we could walk and didn't have to get on a bus. Even riding the subway in London was a fun experience!

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · March 2026
Overall

Compared to stories I have heard about other companies, this was an absolutely incredible experience. I have nothing to add to make the experience better as the entire experience, from pre-planning to post-trip, was incredible. I will never use another company and will highly recommend Passports for everyone.

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · March 2026
Overall

Truly, we did SO much during this trip — it was great and exhausting! You guys did a great job!

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · April 2026
Overall

Everything I would want in a tour company.

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · March 2026
Overall

This was my first time leading a trip so I had a lot of uncertainty heading into it, but Passports really took care of everything and made things so much easier.

Passports post-tour evaluation · Group leader · April 2026
The app no other tour company has

PassportsGo.
In every pocket. On every tour.

The travel app that runs the whole trip. An announcement feed from your Tour Director, live group locations on a map, geofenced meeting points, three chat channels, a moderated photo feed, and a parent loop that keeps families in the know. iOS, Android, the web — and free with every Passports tour.

The big tour operators don’t have this. Not as a comparable product, not as a paid add-on. It’s the operational layer of every Passports tour.

In your pocket on tour
Announcement feed
Tour Director broadcasts the day's plan and updates — everyone sees instantly
Live group locations
See where every traveler is on a map, in real time
Geofenced meeting points
Auto-alerts when travelers arrive at the spot — and when they wander
Group chat channels
Group, parent, and private DMs — everyone has the right room
Photo feed
A moderated trip scrapbook that builds itself in real time
Parents in the loop
Real-time updates from the road, so parents aren't texting at 3 AM
Hotels & meals · the daily quality

City-center hotels.
Three-course dinners. Every tour.

The two daily-quality decisions that separate Passports from the alphabet-soup competitors — and the two line items they cut first. We don’t. Your group sleeps downtown, walks to the duomo before breakfast, and eats local at dinner every night.

City-center hotels

Walkable. Downtown. Modern.

Downtown locations, not suburban budget chains. Modern rooms, real elevators, proper breakfast included, multilingual staff. The kind of hotel where your group walks to the cafe square in the morning and the metro stop after dinner.

“Excellent rooms, excellent breakfast, excellent elevators, excellent location, excellent staff.”Group leader · post-tour evaluation
How we pick hotels
Authentic local meals

Three courses. Local restaurant. Every dinner.

Restaurants your Tour Director knows by name — not the chain that serves chicken-fingers-and-fries to the bus tour next to you. Family-style or plated meals, dietary requirements handled before you fly, breakfast included at the hotel, lunch on your own from a curated shortlist for every city.

“Hofnin Restaurant, Reykjavík — easily the single greatest dining experience ever. Amazing!”Group leader · post-tour evaluation
Quality vs budget, line by line
Why Passports

Small enough to care.
Experienced enough to pull it off.

We're located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Not a call center. Your tour advisor stays with you from the first phone call to your departure gate and to the ride home after your return.

One advisor, start to finish

Same person from your first call to your post-trip photo party. No handoffs, no “let me transfer you,” no forgotten notes.

Overseas medical, included

Every Passports traveler is covered for medical care abroad — included in the program cost, not a paid add-on. Nobody on a Passports tour travels without it.

Tips, included

Tour Director, bus drivers, local guides, hotel staff — every gratuity is built into the program cost. No envelope math at the end of the trip, no awkward conversations on the bus.

The promise

Recruit your group with
zero downside.

Every other tour operator makes you commit before you know if you can fill the trip. Three policies turn that decision back into something a first-time group leader can actually say yes to.

75% / 30d

Cancel up to 30 days out. Get 75% back.

Most of the industry locks you at 60 days and keeps every penny if life intervenes. Our default cancellation policy gives you a 30-day exit door — and our private custom tours can do even better.

$0

Don’t reach six travelers? Everyone gets their money back.

The single biggest worry of every first-time group leader: “What if I can’t fill the trip?” If your group doesn’t reach six paying travelers, every dollar comes back. No cancellation fee. No pressure to recommit.

Invited

A seat at our international training conference.

Several times a year, Passports hosts a group-leader training conference at an international destination. Once your group reaches 15 paying participants, we’ll invite you to attend one — all-inclusive — so you can see how a Passports tour actually runs and meet the team that’ll be helping yours.

March 2020 — the policy, under stress

When the world shut down, the major operators fought refunds in court and handed out travel credits with expiration dates. Passports refunded every traveler, in cash, on the original payment method. Our policy isn’t just on paper — it’s what we actually did the one time the entire industry got tested at once.

Family-owned · Worcester, MA

We’re a family.
Not a brand.

Most of educational travel is publicly-traded or owned by private equity. Passports is family-owned, second-generation, with the founder’s son at the helm. We have one office on Union Street in downtown Worcester. When you call us, you talk to people who actually work here.

  1. 1965Gil Markle, a Clark University philosophy professor, founds ALSG at the Worcester Airport — the first outbound student-travel company in the United States.
  2. 1992Passports is founded as the family’s next-generation educational travel company. Same city. Same family. Same standard.
  3. TodayGil’s son David Markle runs Passports from 51 Union St, downtown Worcester. Sixty years of teachers and students later — still answering our own phones.
Group organizers

You provide the group. We'll handle the rest.

Pick an itinerary, recruit your travelers, and we take care of the logistics — flights, hotels, guides, meals, entrances, and round-the-clock support.

Step 1
Pick a tour or design one
5 min
Step 2
We build your custom quote
48 hrs
Step 3
Recruit your group
3–6 months
Step 4
We book, you relax
handled
Step 5
Go — with a tour director
on the ground