When Should You Launch Your Spring Trip?

It’s a crisp morning and the sun is still hiding behind the trees. Despite the early hour, your mood is electric. It’s the first day of your group’s big spring trip!

Before you know it, you and your students will be on your way to an exciting destination- one that you’ve all dreamed about for months. Good thing you launched the trip when you did. Wait.

When did you launch this trip?

What The Heck Is “Launching” A Trip?

Launching a trip means:

Receiving trip approval from school administration.
Providing students and their families with trip information like when and where it’ll take place and how much it costs.
Giving your students a way to sign up or pay for the trip.

When Should I Do All That?

The truth is there are pros and cons to launching your trip at various points throughout the year. This article will cover the three most common times that group leaders launch their trips, and go over the benefits and drawbacks of each so you can decide when is best for you.

The Early Launch

This means before the end of the previous school year, or almost a year before the trip.

Pros-

Long payment window: more monthly payments, which means smaller monthly installments.
Kids know about the trip when registering for classes and it could be what gets them to sign up for your program, or stay in it for another year.
First crack at flight and hotel reservations.
Gets the trip on the school calendar before other organizations.
One less thing to worry about in the fall.

Cons-

Flights and hotels will not be on sale yet and you’ll need to publish an estimated price, which will be adjusted (up or down) when those items are available.
Programs do not yet have the next year's freshman class. While they may be able to join the trip in the fall, they’ll be late to the party and will need to catch up on trip payments.
It's harder to get excited about something this far off in the future.

The Beginning Of The School Year Launch

This means launching your trip in August or September, whenever your new school year begins. Roughly 6-10 months before the trip.

Pros-

A reasonable payment window and monthly payment amount.
Gives kids something to look forward to through the hard days your program, like a dangling carrot, increasing retention.
Early access to flight and hotel reservations, with accurate quoting.
Early enough that parents will plan vacations and camps around the trip dates.

Cons-

The beginning of the school year comes with upfront costs, like fair share, and this adds to the amount a family will need to pay.
The trip launch could get lost in all the other beginning of the school year noise. Overcome this by launching during band camp or similar, before school starts if applicable.

The Late Launch

This means launching your trip later on into the school year. Roughly 3-5 months before the trip.

Pros-

The program is established, the beginning of the school year noise has passed, and the trip announcement might create a buzz for the upcoming spring semester.
Better late than never!

Cons-

Short payment window: this means asking families to come up with the full trip cost rather quickly.
Finding a date amongst all the other school trips, dances, testing dates can be a challenge.
The reservations you want may already be booked up.
Getting school board administration approval can take longer at this time of year.

Launch Your Trip When It’s Right For Your Group. But Launch it!

In short, every group is different regarding when they should launch their spring trip. What’s most important though, is that you launch it. Give your students the chance to travel. They’ll dream about the trip until it happens. Then once it does, they’ll cherish the memories they make forever.