alumni futures

Educational Tours Featured in AP Story

The Educational Travel Conference is underway in Baltimore, and the Associated Press is carrying a story from there today:

Travelers Flock to Educational Tours

The article quotes a cross-section of industry people, many of whom will be familiar to alumni professionals, and summarizes the rationale for universities and tour companies this way:

For universities, alumni travel programs offer another method of fundraising and a means of tightening bonds with their alumni and encouraging future donations. For travel companies, extra features like lectures from scholars help sign up customers for group travel, especially sophisticated baby boomers and people who have ever more options for booking discounted flights and hotels online.

It's interesting that they don't point out one of the most obvious features of the tours themselves: they are educational programs. Maybe that's implicit in the article, but I think it warrants being highlighted.

Meanwhile, the links beneath the article are limited to two prominent (non-alumni) non-profits, the Travel Conference homepage, and another organization that sponsors volunteerism-focused opportunities. Should there be a clearinghouse on the web for all alumni association travel program web pages?

The Educational Travel Conference 2007

For many years the meeting place for non-profit organizations with educational travel programs (i.e., expert-led tours) has been the Educational Travel Conference, formerly called Non-Profits in Travel. Run by Travel Learning Connections, Inc., the huge meeting brings together the different players in the educational non-profit travel business:

• the planners (like alumni associations);
• the operators (i.e., the tour companies);
• the suppliers (like airlines and cruise ship companies); and
• the destinations (such as tourist boards and visitor centers).

This year's conference is just a few days away: February 20 to 23, 2007. Every year, the attendee list and the presenters' roster reads like a who's who of the business. And although the scale of things can be overwhelming at times, it's the easiest way for an alumni officer involved in planning alumni travel to see the key players in a very short span of time.

Educational Travel Conference Web Site

The conference is the brainchild and long-time labor of love of J. Mara DelliPriscoli and her staff at TLC in Montana. If you can't make it this year, bookmark and explore the web site, and plan ahead to participate next year.