2024 ACIS Annual Overseas Meeting

It’s that time of year again: ACIS operations team members from our global network joined together to review the 2024 travel season and discuss the future of educational travel. This year’s destination? Uzbekistan!

The overseas meetings are a core part of our commitment to delivering the best educational travel experience possible. We take a collective look at what worked for the past travel season and how we can make our tours better in the years to come, plus discuss upcoming initiatives that will shape the ACIS mission.

Key Discussions

Here are some of the key topic highlights that came out of the Fall 2024 Overseas Meeting in Uzbekistan:

• “Going Global” Programming – While ACIS tours travel around the world, the majority of our groups explore countries in Western Europe. We want to encourage travel opportunities beyond the traditional and keep up with the growing demand for destinations across Asia, Africa, and South America. In 2024, we launched new itineraries in Türkiye, Malta and Mexico and are developing future itineraries that support students’ interests in subjects such as ecology, global women’s suffrage, and indigenous heritage. We’re also exploring ways to refresh the existing tours to popular places like France and Italy, imagining more diverse themes for itineraries.
  
  
• Sustainability – We’re committed to making our travel programs as sustainable as possible and have been working on itineraries such as the City Stay programs that put a bigger emphasis on local transportation, cuisine, and sightseeing. The ACIS team is examining core issues such as food waste, and seeing how we can adapt meals to maximize food choice and minimize leftovers. We’re also working to expand our network of sustainably owned suppliers and finding women and minority owned businesses that will support local economies. We discussed in-house strategies for reducing waste as well across our global staff offices.

Time for Exploration

Every overseas meeting presents an opportunity for staff to discover new places, with an emphasis on sampling local culture. The meetings were held in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The city’s history spans thousands of years, from prominence on the Silk Road to its role as a model Soviet satellite. After two full days of meetings, Team ACIS took an evening tour of Tashkent with a local guide that focused on Soviet architecture and the subway system, which is stunningly ornate.  On day three, the group traveled to the ancient city of Bukhara (Pronounced Bu-jhara). Also located on the Silk Road, the city has long served as a center for trade, education, culture and religion.  The city center is full of highly decorative Mosques and Madrasas and listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.   

After Bukhara, the team then moved onto Samarkand, another important stop on the Silk Road. Here they saw the imposing Registan square, the center of life during the Timurid empire, and visited the local market.

Everywhere they went, Team ACIS met kind, patient people, who may not have spoken much English but were extremely hospitable and excited to share their culture with newcomers.

From expanding our destinations to shrinking our collective carbon footprint, ACIS is committed to providing an exceptional travel experience for students, teachers, and travelers of all kinds. To learn more about how we measure up to other educational travel companies, discover our checklist.