Field trips

[whiskyowl]

We've had a lot of problems recently with issues around field trips. Many of these come down to staff who aren't trained as events organisers being asked to do the job of a travel agency! Others come down to the sad fact that student travel no longer seems to be regarded as a special case by many countries.

I was wondering if people have any experience of organising field trips using external agencies/companies, rather than organising them in-house. I'd be really interested to hear from anyone who has done this.

[kscience]

I got back this week from a trip to Vienna organised through FHT (Further and Higher Travel). Dont know how they compare on price but they had everything organised that we needed for a disabled student.

[Hefzi]

Try Uni Travel (I think) at Lancaster - I don't know if by arranging field trips you mean things like lectures, site visits etc as well, but they are definitely brilliant at things like coaches, flights, suitable accommodation etc

[whiskyowl]

Yes, travel abroad. Given that mistakes are costing a small fortune to put right, paying a bit extra to an agent and not having a whole bunch of work sounds preferable!

[BackforGood]

Travel abroad you mean ? Of course there are companies that do it, but you pay a premium for them doing it for you of course.

[whiskyowl]

We have STA, but I think we need someone who organises the whole package imposter. There must be agencies that do this, right? There have been a number of expensive fuckups recently, caused by staff who aren't accustomed to booking this sort of thing having to do it. I'm wondering if we could avoid that by using a company that organises these things professionally!

[impostersyndrome]

Does your university have an approved travel agent? Perhaps they can help. I agree though - in our case we have an administrator who handles this well, but that's only thanks to many years' experience. It's only going to get more complicated with visas post-Brexit, isn't it?

And yes to the idiocy of asking academic staff to take on this role along with HR, finance, marketing, communications etc. How about we do the job we're paid to do?