Group Leader Academy

Keeping Participants Engaged

You’ve now registered a group, checked the calendar and—ugh—your trip is still many months away! Follow our tips to maintain enthusiasm about your upcoming journey, and reduce the threat of participant cancellations.

Social Media Top Tips

Keeping your students engaged is all about meeting them where they are, and in today’s day and age, they’re increasingly on social media. Don’t consider yourself social media savvy? Not to worry. We’ve put together some top tips for maximizing the potential of social media for your trip, as you recruit your group prior to departure, on the road overseas, and after the group has returned home.

Start a Travel Club

Starting a club that focuses on travel is a great way to bring like-minded students together. Meetings can be open to all students. Your travelers will have a chance to talk travel and stay excited about their upcoming trip, and other students will have the chance to be bitten by the travel bug and perhaps sign up either for this year’s tour or a future one.

Create Community with Meetings

An important part of growing your group is keeping students engaged and creating a sense of community around your travel crew. A great way to do this is to host additional meetings for your group.

small airplane model on top of a globe

Keep on Top of Payments

We’d hate to have to cancel participants for lack of payment. We recommend encouraging your participants to sign up for our Automatic Payment Plan. With automatic payments, students have more time to pay, no deadlines to remember and flexible options to match their family’s needs. Plus, they might win a free trip!

You can see which of your participants have registered for automatic payments and also if any participants are behind on payments within your trip’s participant list. If someone has fallen behind, please remind them to pay so they don’t incur a late fee and to contact our Traveler Support team if they have any questions at accounts@acis.com or by live chat at acis.com.

Engaging Parents

Don’t forget to stay in contact with your participants’ parents! After all, they are, most likely, footing the bill. Be sure to widely communicate tour information and payment deadlines. Encourage them to ask their questions, and empower them to talk up the trip to fellow community members. You can email parents using the Email Participants button within your trip’s participant list. This functionality allows you to email your participants, their parents or both at the same time.

Participant and her parents pose for a selfie