Summer at our office – as in many companies – is a little different than our fall and winter. Since we mostly build tours for student groups, we don’t hear from them a lot outside of the school year. So one of the things we do instead is bulk up the info on our website, contact our guides, motorcoach companies, and new attractions in cities around the globe to refresh our understanding of the exciting places we can send you, including any prices that may have changed. We build an actual rapport with directors, managers, and owners of these businesses so that our work on your itinerary actually means something.

One thing we do around this time of year is familiarize new employees with some of our most popular cities. That’s why a group of us will travel to Washington D.C. and New York City next week. After our crowded days in these two cities, we’ll be able to answer your questions and build your itineraries with actual knowledge about each place, how long it takes to travel from one attraction to the other and how long you’re going to want to spend at each place.

If you have general questions about group travel tours – destinations you want to know more about, attractions you’ve seen pictured and wonder what it’s like to visit them, even if you wonder what the process is like for building tours, please leave them in the comments. Our blog is a great forum for giving us ideas on what students and group leaders really need to know before building the perfect tour for their group.

The blog will be quiet for a week while I discover all the things I’ve always wondered about Washington D.C. and New York City. I plan to come back with lots of things to share. Hopefully I’ll have a better idea of the questions you should ask about group travel, because probably most of us don’t even know what those would be.

(Photo of Bethseda Fountain in Central Park by wendyfairy on Flickr. I’m going to be there!)