For Group Leaders

Take your students
beyond the classroom.

Everything you need to plan, recruit, and lead a group tour — plus 335 free lesson plans and Tour Director lectures to use in class whether you book with us or not.

A teacher-led group of students
On this page
  • What you actually get when you lead a Passports tour
  • How to plan a tour, step by step
  • Rewards, referrals, and free teacher travel
  • 335 free lesson plans & Tour Director lectures
  • Real stories from group leaders
What you get

A tour company that treats the
group leader like the group leader.

We built Passports around a simple observation: the teacher does 90% of the work that makes a great trip happen, and almost nothing in this industry acknowledges that. Everything below is in every tour, not an upsell.

Free teacher travel — always.

Every group gets free seats for the group leader. No adult fee, no hidden tripwires, no paperwork. Recruit six travelers, you go for free.

A recruitment kit that actually recruits.

Custom enrollment site, parent-meeting deck, printable flyers, and a payment portal — all branded to your trip and ready the day your itinerary is final.

One Tour Advisor, start to finish.

The same person from your first phone call to the ride home from the airport. No handoffs, no “let me transfer you,” no forgotten notes.

Travel protection, included.

PassportsCare covers every participant — trip delay, emergency medical, 24/7 assistance — with no upsell. Tipping is covered too.

335 free lesson plans & lectures.

Curated classroom material tied to each region — pre-trip, on-trip, post-trip. Use them whether you book with us or not.

Rewards that stack.

Every group you lead earns points toward a Passports-funded companion trip, department materials, or a donation to your school. Referrals stack on top.

How it works

Five phone calls.
One trip your students remember forever.

Every group, whether you're leading your first trip or your fifteenth, follows the same arc. No surprise handoffs, no mystery stages.

01

Tell us about your group.

Subject, grade level, group size, rough timing, the kinds of experiences that matter. Twenty minutes on the phone — no form fatigue.

02

We draft your itinerary in 48 hours.

A real day-by-day plan with named hotels, specific sites, and a line-item price — not a brochure. Revise until every day fits your class.

03

Recruit your group.

We build your enrollment site, payment portal, and parent-meeting materials. You bring the families — we handle the paperwork.

04

We book the world.

Flights, hotels, coaches, entrances, meals, guides — confirmed in writing, plus a pre-trip briefing for you a month before you leave.

05

Go — we stay with you the whole way.

A full-time Tour Director meets your flight. Our 24/7 line is staffed from Worcester. Every traveler already has the PassportsGo app in their pocket.

How to plan a tour, in depth Skip ahead — plan a trip
Rewards & referrals

Enroll early. Earn cool stuff.

Every application you bring in earns Rewards Points. The earlier the enrollment lands, the more points it’s worth — up to 50 points per traveler when families enroll by May 15 of the year before travel.

Spend points on a free spot at a Passports Teacher Conference (recent destinations: Munich, Lisbon, Dublin, London, Rome) or against personal travel arrangements booked through Passports.

50 ptsper traveler enrolled by May 15
1,200 ptstypical cost of a teacher conference spot
15 enrollments= a free conference spot for first-time leaders
Best
50 pts
Per traveler enrolled by May 15
Better
25 pts
Per traveler enrolled by October 15
Standard
10 pts
Per traveler enrolled by Final Payment
Year prior to travel · expires after 3 years
From group leaders

In their own words.

Drawn from the post-trip evaluations group leaders fill out after every Passports tour. The full archive lives on the Group Leader stories page.

I'm really grateful for the open mindedness and taking my requests to make something off the beaten path work. Working with everyone has been great. Honestly, that's another reason I would not switch; there has not been a soul at Passports that has not been great to work with.
As long as I lead tours, I will count on Passports for travel services. You can't be beat.
Passports is the absolute best company to travel with. I appreciate the personal care given to me and my group.
Read more testimonials
Common questions

What group leaders ask first.

I've never led a group trip before. Is this for me?

Yes — about a third of the group leaders we work with each year are first-timers. Our Group Leader 101 walks you through the full arc, and your Tour Advisor does the heavy lifting on logistics so you can focus on your students.

How early do we need to start planning?

Twelve months is ideal for international travel; nine is comfortable; six is tight but doable with the right destination. The earlier you start, the better the airfare and the more options you have on hotels.

Who pays? Me, the school, or the families?

The traveling families pay directly through your enrollment portal. The school is usually not financially involved. Some districts require school-board approval for out-of-country travel — we'll tell you exactly what to bring to the meeting.

What happens if a student has to cancel?

Every tour includes PassportsCare travel protection, which covers cancellation for a long list of reasons (illness, family emergency, school-related conflict). We've been at this since 1992; there is no scenario we haven't seen.

Are your tours educational enough to qualify for district approval?

Our itineraries are built around curriculum tie-ins (AP, IB, honors, and CTE). Each itinerary page recommends matching lesson plans from our free library — over 230 classroom-ready plans tied to specific places and subjects — and your Tour Advisor can suggest curriculum fits for the destinations on your trip. Most districts sign off on the first pass.

Full Group Leader FAQ
Group leader toolkit

Everything else you need.

Marketing planks above; the operational and program-level resources that actually run a tour, here.

Plan a tour

Where to start. Pages to compare us. Stories from leaders.

Your trip

Operational answers and tools for the tour you’ve booked.

Free resources

Lessons, lectures, essays, and the blog — all classroom-ready.

Rewards & community

Programs that pay you back — points, cash, free trips abroad.

On tour

Run your trip from one dashboard.

Every traveler on your tour gets PassportsGo — bulletin board, four chat channels, head count, meeting points, geofencing, photo moderation, and a cross-group admin view for leaders running multiple trips at once.

Announcements go out once and reach everyone. “Is everyone on the bus?” answers itself. The photo feed builds a trip scrapbook you can download the night you land.

Bulletin board
Post once, reach every traveler
Four chat channels
Group · parent · private · TD
Head Count
30 seconds, not five minutes
Meeting Points
Pin, notify, arrive
Safety suite
Geofencing + emergency contacts
Ready when you are

Bring us your class.
We'll build the trip.

Twenty minutes on the phone, a day-by-day itinerary in your inbox within 48 hours, and a Tour Advisor who will remember your students' names by your second call. No cost, no commitment.