Booking Student Tours Takes Some Homework

School is back in session, and with it the purveyors of student tours ready to send teenagers to New York to march with their band in the Macy’s parade, to Walt Disney World to celebrate graduation, to England as foreign-exchange students and a world of other destinations.

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education,” Francis Bacon wrote in 1625, and youthful enthusiasm for new places hasn’t dimmed in the centuries since.

The U.S. student travel market was recently growing by about 20% a year, says Michael Palmer, executive director of the Student & Youth Travel Assn. of North America, or SYTA, a trade group for travel suppliers. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks. For months afterward, schools canceled or rerouted trips because of safety concerns and closures of the White House and other tourist sites in Washington and New York, two of the top three U.S. destinations for student travelers. (The third is Orlando, Fla., SYTA says.)

But student travel is bouncing back, Palmer says. It’s big business, worth more than $2 billion a year to the 57 members of his group, which claims to represent about 10% of student tour operators in North America.

“A lot of parents want to make sure their kids have these enrichment experiences,” says William Hoh, travel planner at Adventures America in Pleasant Hill, Calif., which sends about 40,000 teenagers a year to U.S. theme parks, band performances, sports and other events on behalf of schools, churches and other groups.

For many parents, such group tours are a thrifty choice, Hoh says. Instead of taking the whole family on a trip, they can send one child at a time, and group travel is often less expensive.

Recognizing that teens have a big voice in where families vacation and being eager to influence their lifelong travel patterns, tourist bureaus and other industry professionals are courting them, Palmer says.

And their customers are getting younger. Sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders are now “big travelers,” Palmer adds.

With so many choices, parents and teens may wonder how to tell whether a tour operator is a class act, should be able to deliver what it promises and adequately supervises its ever-younger charges. The answer, experts say, boils down to this: Do your homework.

A good place to start is with SYTA, (248) 814-7982, www.syta.com, based in Lake Orion, Mich., outside Detroit. The group, formed in 1997, requires each member travel agent and tour operator to have been in business at least three years, serve at least 3,000 students per year, have a consumer protection plan with at least $450,000 in coverage and carry at least $1 million in liability insurance.

Each member company also agrees to a code of ethics that requires it to be truthful in advertising. Members are listed on SYTA’s Web site.

Another useful organization is the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel, or CSIET, (703) 739-9050, www.csiet.org, founded in 1984. Its members organize educational travel for high school students, especially foreign-exchange programs. (SYTA focuses on tour and travel groups, although it includes some foreign-exchange student planners too.)

Each summer, for the upcoming school year, CSIET issues an advisory list of student-travel organizations that meet its standards. CSIET’s 10 pages of rules require those groups to have enough money to meet their obligations and to interview host families in their homes, among other provisions.

For the 2002-2003 school year, 84 organizations applied for the list and 74 were accepted, says Vanessa Chang, membership director. Two that were on the list last year were rejected this year, she adds.

You can order the list, which includes profiles of the organizations, by sending a check for $17.50 to CSIET, 212 S. Henry St., Alexandria, VA 22314, or by calling CSIET and using a credit card. (CSIET posts the list but no details, except Internet links to some of the organizations, on its Web site.)

Other professional tour associations that require members, student and otherwise, to meet ethical and financial standards are the United States Tour Operators Assn., (212) 599-6599, www.ustoa.com, and the National Tour Assn., (800) 682-8886, www.ntaonline.com.

Members of these two groups must have been in business at least three years and carry at least $1 million in liability insurance, among other requirements. Comparable organizations for travel agents include the American Society of Travel Agents.

You can also check the Better Business Bureau in the city where the operator is based to see whether complaints have been filed against it. (For a list of the bureaus, check www.bbb.org.) Or check the state attorney general’s office to see if it has filed any fraud actions against the company. (For a list of such offices, log onto www.nacaanet.org/memlink.htm.)

Here are other tips for checking out student tour operators:

* Ask the company to provide you with names and contact information of students who have been on a previous trip so you can ask them what they thought of it.

* Ask how long the tour operator has been in business under the same owner, how long it has taken students to the destination you’re interested in and whether it has liability insurance. Ask the same questions of the charter plane company.

* Find out who will accompany the students. Many trips use teachers or volunteers as chaperons to handle discipline, but there should be professional tour staff as well.

Hoh says Adventures America generally sends one or more coordinators along to oversee the trip and iron out travel problems, such as making sure restaurants are ready to receive the group. “We also usually hire security at night,” he says, to monitor hotel hallways and other areas.

* Get a list of all hotels used on the trip, with phone and fax numbers. Parents should also get a 24-hour contact number for the tour operator in case of emergencies, SYTA suggests.

* Read the itinerary carefully. Are meals included? Entrance fees to attractions? Costs can mount quickly on a trip that seems inexpensive at first glance.

“There’s a big difference between being taken to the Disneyland Resort and having a ticket for Disneyland,” Hoh says. “In the first case, you’re left standing at the gate or in the gift shop.”

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane .engle@latimes.com.