What To Consider When Planning Your Next Sports Tour
The key factors to think about before launching your next school tour
A sports tour can be a defining moment in student development both on and off the field, so it’s important to get the details right when planning to ensure they are both accessible and successful. Here are our top factors to consider when planning your next school sports tour:
Pick Your Sports
Let’s start at the beginning and decide which sports to take! The sports heading out on tour can often dictate the destinations available to you. Of course, football can be played almost anywhere in the world, but if you’re looking to take your netball teams on tour, this will narrow down your options to a select group of netball-playing nations.
On our website, you have the ability to filter destinations by sport so that you can see each destination suitable for your touring teams, including a wide range of multi-sport friendly locations where you can find quality fixtures for a variety of sports.
Group Size
The number of players on a tour has an enormous impact on the tour’s price, and the key to a cost-effective tour is a healthy group size. There are certain shared costs within a tour, for example, coach transportation, that when shared across a large group can drastically reduce the cost per person.
Maybe the school has a strong rugby focus and you have a large pool of players to fill a tour with one sport, or maybe you’ll need to invite a second sport along to ensure a full trip. We’d always recommend aiming for a minimum of 35-40 players to make the tour as cost-effective as possible
Health & Safety
Ensuring a your trip operates safely is a crucial factor in ensuring the success and enjoyment of the tour, whilst it's not the most exciting thing to consider, it's arguably the most important.
A lot of this burden can be relieved by choosing a responsible tour operator, members of the School Travel Forum have to ensure that they and their suppliers meet strich health & safety guidelines. From auditing transport suppliers and accommodation to completing risk assessments for fixtures and excursions, we can mitigate risks and deliver a safe and memorable tour, for all of the right reasons!