If you’re looking to plan your first educational tour program to Korea, it might feel like a daunting process. From the planning stage to the learning objectives, international flights to the health and safety assessments – there are a lot of factors to consider when planning a program to Korea from the US, and many ways in which the Learning Adventure can help you with the process.
Below, we’ve put together a handy step-by-step guide to the key stages of planning a Korea educational program from the US.
Step 1: Decide where you’re going – and when!
If you’re new to tour organizing – and to South Korea as a travel destination – an important first step is to determine where you’d like to travel within the country. This can be informed by your learning objectives or subject area, to help ensure that you’re getting the key experiences for your trip. While capital city Seoul provides a well-rounded experience from itineraries ranging from business to culture, you can also consider bustling second city Busan for subjects like STEM, or service learning in lesser-visited destinations like Hangcheon.
You’ll also need to consider when you’re planning on travelling. Be sure to align this with both what works for your school semesters and the students’ schedules – and talk to a specialist to find out when a Korea trip could be most beneficial for you.
Step 2: Get in touch with us to talk itineraries
Once you’ve got the where and when sorted, it’s time to reach out to our specialists! Though we offer a number of showcase itineraries for educational tours to Korea, these are all entirely customizable to ensure that they’re as goal-oriented as possible for you. When you reach out to our team, you’ll be assigned an educational tours specialist, who’ll work with you to draw out and refine any key elements of your tour itinerary, amend any days that don’t work, and build in any must-visits for you.
Step 3: Interest-gathering & promotion to students
Once you’ve got the trip you want planned in theory, it’s time to make sure your students will go on it! At this point, you’ll want to start interest-gathering among students and parents, sharing overviews of the itinerary and firming up your travel dates. We can assist here, by providing promotional materials like posters or presentations that get your students engaged and on-board with your proposed tour. Throughout this process, as you start to get a clearer idea of the number of students expected to travel, we can continue to refine the itinerary.
Step 4: Deposit collection
At this point, we’ll start working to gather first deposits from students travelling so that we can lock down the details of the itinerary. With your dedicated sales expert, you can work out a payment plan that suits your school and students, as well as confirming your preferred pay styles. Perhaps you’d like to collect internally? That’s fine. Or, if you’d rather students sign up directly, we can set up dedicated pages that take payments to enable us to organize from our side. As with most things in your planning process, setting up the payment plan is something that can be an ongoing discussion with your point of contact.
Step 5: Let’s book those flights!
If there’s one thing you need to take an educational tour to Korea from the US, it’s a spot on a plane. Working with the Learning Adventure to plan your tour, you can either be introduced to our flights partner to work on sourcing these flights yourself, or you can outsource this to us for us to book on your behalf.
Step 6: Health & safety
When you book an educational tour to Korea with the Learning Adventure, we ensure that ahead of your trip, you’re provided with all the paperwork you need to lock down every aspect of the itinerary. From audits of all the accommodation you and your students are staying in, to risk assessments for all aspects of your program, we’ll provide everything you need. Once you’ve got these, everything’s confirmed and it’s time to get your students excited to travel!
Step 7: Getting ready to travel
Now all the majority of the admin is out of the way, it’s time to get yourself – and your students excited about your upcoming educational tour to Korea! There’s just a few bits left to sort – but the good news is, US citizens don’t need to a visa to visit South Korea from the United States. The only thing you may want to consider is a K-ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) ahead of arrival, as it means you won’t have to submit an arrival card when you get there, streamlining the first day of your tour.
Other things you might want to look through are a packing list, to ensure that students are fully prepared for the individual activities on their tour – or our handy guide to the basics of the Korean language and culture, which you can read here. You can also find lots of information on the Korean Tourism Organization website. As the countdown to your trip begins, feel free to ask your dedicated specialist any last minute questions you might have.
If you’d like to learn more about our booking a school trip to Korea, you can explore our range of showcase itineraries, or email our Sales team.
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