Should You Plan Your Own Group Trip?
For many group leaders and directors, organizing a trip is a meaningful tradition—a chance to showcase your students’ talent, bond as a group, and create lifelong memories. But when it comes time to start working on logistics, a critical question arises:
Should I plan this trip myself, or work with a professional group travel company?
Green Light Group Tours is a professional group travel company, so we want to share our expertise and experience to answer this question: what if you did plan your own band trip? What should you expect? And is it what’s best for your program?
How Long Does It Take To Plan A Group Trip?:
It takes Green Light roughly 200 hours to plan one trip. Most teachers/directors work at least 40 hours a week, so the real question is: when would you plan this trip?
Another element to consider is that we know who to call and what to do when planning a trip- and it still takes us 200 hours! Most teachers/directors who are trying to squeeze it into their nights and weekends do not already know who to call, and that makes the process take even longer.
The Cost-Saving Tradeoff Of DIY:
Though planning your own trip can sometimes be the cheaper route, we advise you to think of it in the same category as cutting your own hair or changing your car’s transmission. Yes, you’ll save money by doing those things yourself, but will it take you longer than a professional? And what will the finished product look like?
Many vendors set pricing based on volume. For example, if a band director were to purchase Orlando theme park tickets directly, they’d pay approximately $80 more per ticket than they would through a tour operator that does a lot of volume with the theme parks. This savings becomes the travel company’s profit, your students don’t pay more for the trip, and you just saved yourself a lot of time and effort.
What Would You Rather Be Doing?:
You probably became a teacher or director because you love what you do, not because you love emailing the 14th draft of a rooming list at 1 AM. The point is: when you delegate group travel planning, you get more time to focus on what you love doing, including teaching your students and enjoying the trip!
Of course there’s the possibility you really love group travel planning in which case, have you considered a career with Green Light Group Tours? Just kidding. Or are we?
Experience Matters:
When making the decision to plan your own trip or not, take your experience into account and be objective. If you’ve been planning your own trips for 30 years, this article doesn’t really apply to you and you could probably teach us a thing or two! However, if you’ve never organized an overnight trip, or are new to group trips and you want your group to experience those things, you probably want to work with the professionals.
Top 5 Things To Know If You Plan Your Own Trip:
Ok, so let’s say you’ve decided to plan this trip yourself. Exciting! Here’s the top 5 things we think you should know:
- Hire a Tour Manager: This is a professional guide who travels with your group and keeps things awesome and organized no matter what happens.
- Carry-post departure insurance: This protects your group from travel delays, cancelled flights, and whenever the “what-if” happens.
- Anticipate rooming list imperfections: you might want to consider charging each student a little extra to cover the cost of incomplete rooms if your number of boys and girls isn’t perfectly divisible by four.
- Hire nighttime security guards: Allow professional guards to watch over your group at night so you can actually sleep!
- Don’t forget to enjoy: Planning a band trip can be challenging. Savor every minute that you can!
No Matter What You Choose, We’re Glad You’re Traveling!
The bottom line is, there’s no right or wrong answer here. We’re happy you’re traveling no matter who plans it. Hopefully this article has helped you to feel more confident if you choose to handle it yourself, or has opened your eyes to the value in working with a professional group travel company. Now that you know what to expect when planning your own group trip, at least you can make a more informed decision. Do whichever you feel will make the best trip for your students and what will benefit your program the most in the long run. Happy travels!