Frequently Asked Questions Our 3 Steps Travel Student Trip Organizer Company Receives
Making travel plans tends to always seem like quite an undertaking. Planning an out-of-town field trip for the students you teach or one that will leave a lasting, memorable impression on your team, band, or club can be even more challenging. However, it doesn't have to be when you allow our 3 Steps Travel team to assist you in carefully curating those sights, sounds, and experiences to align with the curriculum and students’ interests or managing the collection of each participant's payment of their share of the trip.
3 Steps Travel team receives a wide range of questions about our company's origins, full-concierge educational trip planning services, and policies and procedures. Below you'll see where we highlight some of the frequently asked questions (FAQs) we receive at our student trip organizing business, along with responses to them.
Our Student Travel Company's Origin Story and Mission
We often receive questions about who created 3 Steps Travel and their goal in creating the company, such as:
How is 3 Steps Travel different than a regular travel agency?
Former middle school teacher, Mike Lineberry, started 3 Steps Travel with the goal of making field trips and other student travel planning efforts much more personalized, easy to manage, and less expensive than the way it was when he was responsible for it at the school he previously worked for. What sets 3 Steps Travel apart from your typical travel agency is that it provides curriculum-aligned, fun, and engaging field trip experiences that are affordable for parents and stress-free for teachers. Our student trip organizing company's sole focus is offering concierge-level planning of school trips and educational-oriented group travel.
Trip Planning Our Student Travel Company Offers
We often receive questions about the types of educational clients we serve, the field trips we offer, how we build our itineraries, and the selection of our vendors. Some of those commonly asked questions and responses to those inquiries include:
What types of clients does our student travel company serve?
We serve homeschool co-ops, charter, private, and public schools, institutions of higher learning like community colleges and vocational or technical schools, colleges and universities, and virtually any other academic or educational entity. In addition to field trips or class trips that the general student body may participate in, we're also often asked to plan trips to academic bowls or conferences, games or championships, performances or concerts, and other events by school sports teams, bands, choirs, and student interest groups or clubs at high schools and higher education institutions.
What kind of field trips are available at 3 Steps Travel?
Here at 3 Steps Travel, we plan both day trips as well as one or multi-day overnight trips, whether it’s local or long-distance or domestic or international. We don't try to sell you on a cookie-cutter, pre-planned itinerary for your trip like every other school group takes. Instead, all of our trips are fully customizable. You tell us what types of experiences you're looking for your students to have, and we craft an itinerary for you that includes extras like pre-paid meals, trip T-shirts, and interactive or special events. No destination is too big or far to have our 3 Steps Travel team create your ideal educational tour for you and your students.
We have taken a trip before that we thoroughly enjoyed. Can we use the same itinerary again with you?
Absolutely! We can plug your previous field trip itinerary into our trip-planning resources. The trips we plan are often more cost-effective than schools can book themselves when planning their own. Due to the partner pricing relationships, we have worked hard to establish over the years, we are able to offer our student trips with deep discounts you can’t find anywhere else.
What types of vendors does 3 Steps Travel use for field trips?
We only use charter bus services approved by the state and local school districts. We only select hotels with at least a 4 out of 5-star rating left by previous guests when quoting hotel options for student trips. Plus, each vendor service we utilize for field trips carries full liability insurance coverage.
Student Trip Booking Policies and Promotions
Teachers and schools who utilize our services to book educational trips often inquire about the minimum and maximum amount of students and adults who must commit to going on the trip for our 3 Steps Travel team to handle the booking. Here are some typical questions we get about this:
Are there any limits on how many people can attend a student trip that 3 Steps Travel plans?
We require a minimum of at least 20 guests, including teachers, students, and chaperones, to initiate the planning of a field trip. There is no maximum limit to how many participants can take part in the trip. As an added benefit, educators travel for free, provided minimum student participation numbers are reached.
Payments for Student Trips
Common questions we receive about trip price quotes, methods of payment, and payment installments include:
How do we pay for our trip?
At 3 Step Travel, we can take student trip payments directly from parents or schools through our secure website. Payment methods we accept include credit cards and PayPal. We can also arrange for payments to be made by check if needed. We additionally offer installment payments for larger student trips.
Do you handle any fundraising to help students, teachers, and chaperones pay for field trips?
No, we do not arrange or administer fundraising efforts. However, we'll gladly apply any fundraised funds to the overall trip cost, thus lowering the amount each individual participant will need to pay.
Acceptance of Referrals by Our Educational Trip Company
Here at 3 Steps Travel, we often receive questions about how we handle referrals. Here’s one of the more common questions we receive in this regard:
My student's school is taking a trip. Can I refer them to 3 Steps Travel for a quote?
Yes, we would love to receive the referral. We provide anyone whose referral leads to a paid and completed trip with a visa gift card to show our appreciation for thinking of our educational tour company.
We hope that these FAQs have provided additional clarification about our company’s origin, the services and payment options we offer at 3 Step Travel, and other relevant details you may have wanted additional information about. Please feel free to reach out to us with any additional questions or concerns or to get a quote for your upcoming trip.