"Off-Season" Travel

There are many advantages to avoiding travel during peak periods. For most educational (i.e. school organized) trips, they usually occur during the school year, thereby avoiding the peak summer months for tourists in the northern hemisphere and most groups wouldn't even consider the Christmas/New Year holiday. 

What peak travel is to educational groups

What most educational travel pros refer to as "peak travel" time is over spring break (aka March Break, Reading Week) and the months of May and June. Spring break is popular for high school teachers that want to plan overseas trips that would last more than a week so they can cut down on the amount of classes the students would miss. May and June are very popular for elementary or middle schools planning shorter trips because for many students, it is a celebration of a successful school year. Many teachers have found that the students brains switch into summer mode once the trip is over and don't take much to learning anymore. Traveling prior to May deprives teachers of a behaviour management tool ("flunk another test and you're off the trip!") as well as a reward.

Advantages of traveling off-peak

• Less crowded. You won't be fighting for limited tour slots at popular student attractions. Washington DC is overrun with student groups in May and June, and tours inside Canada's Parliament buildings or Supreme Court (that includes a mock trial) are near impossible to get. 

• Better tour guide. Your tour leader or guide is more likely to be one of the more experienced the company has. Most tour companies hire a small army of guides to keep up with the demand starting in May. As a result, you might have someone not fully trained (especially in the last weeks of the school year where demand is REALLY high), or as well trained as a senior guide employed to do trips year-round. Tour companies that provide guide services (just like airlines, hotels, and other suppliers) experience overbooking problems from time to time.

• Better bus. You are more likely to get a good motor coach. Coach companies are like the other suppliers when it comes to supply and demand. If the tour company works with large coach companies most of the time, during the peak months, the coach company might farm out work to smaller companies. Since they don't want to lose money, or make the most money from the deal, they could hire buses from other companies that don't have equipment that is as nice. It does not happen often, but it happens - I've guided trips that has happened to. 

• Better driver. You are more likley to get a great coach driver. From May - August it's "all hands on deck" for the bus comnpanies and many new drivers are trained in the spring to handle the spike in business over the warmer months.

• Save money. You can save quite a bit of money by traveling off peak. Many tour companies offer incentives like lower prices for booking trips departing before May 1st and a lot of hotels up their prices in the spring because the rooms are in demand. many hotels book solid starting in May.
  

A Word to Teachers 

Book your trips as early as you can, and try to avoid the last weeks of June most of all. If you are looking to book now for those weeks, see what your tour company rep says to you when you suggest moving the trip to late April. If things have not been booked or confirmed, they'll probably thank you. I know I did when I managed school accounts. If you absolutely must travel during the peak weeks, understand that unless you booked realy early, the tour company has to work with time slots for certain attractions that are limited in availability and might only be available during inconvenient times (like 12 noon or 5-6pm). I once had a tour with a CRAZY itinerary. We drove back and forth across the city and had to fight rush hour traffic each day to get around. I learned later the group had booked last-minute for the trip in June and this was the very best possible itinerary available based on what they wanted to do and the times available to them.