01
City-center 3 & 4-star hotels.
Walking distance from the sights you came to see. Budget operators stay an hour out and burn two hours of every day on a coach.
See actual hotels we bookAbout Passports
We're the premier
educational travel provider.
There are other tour providers available. You won't find our combination of quality, price, customer service, and attention to detail in any other company. Here's what makes the difference — and how we stack up next to the names you've heard.
What makes us different
- City-center 3- & 4-star hotels, every night
- Three-course local meals, ~€35/traveler (~$40)
- Career Tour Directors with 20+ years average
- 5.0★ Trustpilot — 0% of reviews are 1, 2, or 3 stars
- Family-owned since 1992, in the industry since 1965
The four planks
Four claims you can verify
before you book.
These aren't marketing assertions. Each one points to a public surface — a hotel list, a meal archive, a lecture series, or a third-party review platform — where you can check us yourself.
02
Authentic three-course meals.
Local restaurants. Real food. Our nightly meal budget runs close to €35 per traveler — about $40 — at three-course local restaurants. The food becomes a reason kids remember the trip.
Browse this year's meals03
Career Tour Directors.
Most of our Tour Directors have 20+ years of experience and have led hundreds of tours with us. They're educators in their own right — many host the lectures in our free Tour Director Lecture Series.
Watch a Tour Director lecture04
Verified, organic reviews.
5.0 stars on Trustpilot, with 0% of our reviews at 1, 2, or 3 stars. Pull up any competitor's distribution and the picture sharpens fast.
Open Trustpilot in a new tabNot to mention…
Ten more things
that come standard.
Each of these is a thing other operators charge extra for, hide in fine print, or tell you about ten weeks before departure. With us, they're built into the quote you see on day one.
- All tipping included. Tour Director gratuities are baked in. No awkward last-minute group collection.
- Single rooms for group leaders. Always. You earn a free spot, you get your own room with it.
- No adult supplements. Adults pay the same rate as students. No hidden $95–$130 adult fee.
- One Tour Advisor, start to finish. From your first phone call to the post-trip photo review meeting.
- No on-tour upselling, ever. Tour Directors are explicitly told not to. Everything's in the price you see.
- Cash & travel rewards for group leaders. Free trips, recruitment reimbursements, and a redesigned points program.
- Overseas medical coverage included. PassportsCare covers every traveler. Trip interruption, emergency medical, repatriation.
- Best refund policy in the industry. 75% refund standard up to 30 days out. 100% if your group doesn't make six paying participants.
- Hotel choice for private groups of 25+. Closer to the Eiffel Tower, or closer to the trendy shopping district? Your call.
- Optional graduate / PD credits. Most school districts accept them. We'll help you file.
First-class tour services
The three things you'll feel the moment you land.
First-class accommodations
City-center hotels, every single night.
Passports books 3- and 4-star hotels in the city center. Walking distance from the cathedral, the museum, the gelato shop. Budget operators sleep an hour out — saving on the room, charging more for transit, and burning hours of your day.
For private groups of 25+, you can choose from a hotel dossier we put together a few months out. That's how confident we are in the options.
Authentic cuisine
Real food, at real local restaurants.
Our nightly meal budget runs close to €35 per traveler — about $40 — at real local restaurants. That's a complete three-course dinner. The kind of evening your students will photograph and post about.
Don't just take our word for it. Browse the photo archive of meals served on tour this season — every plate, no curation, posted as travelers eat it.
Industry-best Tour Directors
Career professionals — not seasonal contractors.
Our TDs work for us, year after year. Most have 20+ years of experience leading American student groups across the regions they cover. They know the language, the local restaurant manager who'll work with a fifty-person group on short notice, and how to handle the stuff that doesn't go in a brochure.
Several of them host the lectures in our free Tour Director Lecture Series. They're educators in their own right. You'll feel the difference within an hour of landing.
Compared to the big names
Head-to-head, in plain English.
We've written these comparisons ourselves. They're fair, specific, and quantified — adult-supplement fees, medical-coverage charges, the things that show up on the contract. Read them, then read theirs.
Side · by · side
Passports vs.
EF
The largest by volume. Where the cost-cutting shows up loudest — meals, location, on-tour upselling.
Read the comparison
Side · by · side
Passports vs.
ACIS
Closer to us in quality, but with $95 adult fees and $25/day medical. We come in lower with both included.
Read the comparison
Side · by · side
Passports vs.
Explorica
WorldStrides' budget arm. $130 adult fee, $35/night double, $12/day medical. The receipts add up fast.
Read the comparison
Side · by · side
Passports vs.
WorldStrides
PE-owned, big-team operator. School-contract structure changes who carries the liability.
Read the comparison
Trustpilot · Independent reviews
5.0 vs 4.9 looks identical. The breakdown doesn't.
A single average score hides what reviewers actually said. Below is the full distribution of every public Trustpilot review for Passports and the four operators we're most often compared to. The bars are drawn to scale — the red and orange slivers are what disappear when a company shows you only the headline number.
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
What the chart shows. A 4.9 average sounds a hair off 5.0 — but it can include reviewers who called the trip the worst week of their life. Trustpilot is one of the few review platforms where those reviews can't be removed for a fee, which is why we point group leaders at the full distribution rather than the headline number.
Take the first step
Travel with us once.
Travel with us for life.
We care deeply about your reputation and our own. We'll work tirelessly to earn your trust, and we'll have your back at every corner. That's the promise.