Responsible Manager: Tour Coordinator

Depending on the size and scale of the activity or excursion, the Head Office team may have pre-purchased tickets, and pre-arranged bookings for venues on your timetable (both free and paid activities). These will be communicated with you through your Programme Manager. If you have not received anything for an upcoming event, you must ask your Programme Manager for more details.   

Typically, pre-booked details will be sent to you by email, and you can share this information with the relevant team. On occasion, you may be required to print a physical copy of the ticket or booking, so please check. 

For smaller activities and excursions, and for public transport including mainly trains, but also buses and taxis, it is your responsibility to arrange tickets and make the required bookings. Keep in mind that a lot of free attractions (like The British Museum or the National Gallery) require prior bookings, and it is always a priority to check availability and book your slot in advance, especially for large groups. If you are in doubt, speak to your Programme Manager for guidance.   

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When arranging travel or tickets for events and activities, where needed, payment is made in advance, through your Programme Manager. This can be done by requesting payment from the supplier/venue by invoice either prior to the event or after the event. Some companies will require payment before the event, so this option is only viable with a good amount of notice. If this option is available, contact your Programme Manager to arrange payment. 

For bookings to standard activities, for which online ticketing is bookable, payment can be made using the Pleo card on site. Confirm with your Programme Manager if you are unsure. 

When booking, you should always check to see if you can get group discounts, or early booking discounts. Often this might mean going through their sales channels rather than just booking online. 

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There are a large amount of excursions that are booked through a third party contact, for which payment does not need to be arranged on-site, but actual bookings (time/date/numbers) do. These must be booked 10 days in advance, and all emails should be CC'd to your Programme Manager. 

If payment is not available by invoice, a Pleo payment is possible (see 1.5 Budgeting & Finance section). The Pleo card (physical or app based) can be used to make payments over the phone or in person. Wherever possible, these payments should be made in advance of the activity/excursion. Any payments for group excursions must be approved by your Programme Manager.

Only in extreme circumstances, and only when approved by your Programme Manager, should students set off on an activity or excursion without confirmation emails or bookings and payments. 

Responsible Manager: Tour Coordinator

Your main modes of transport for students will include the Underground (London) or tram network (Manchester), public buses (Manchester), and private coaches. In the event of an emergency, and with approval from the Programme Manager, taxis may need to be arranged for student transfer or transport. 

There may be occasions which require team members to use taxis or additional transport, and often at short notice with no access to company finances. In these instances, and with prior approval from the Programme Manager, costs incurred by the team member can be reimbursed at a later date. 

The travel time and costs of commuting to and from work are the responsibility of the team member, and they are not to receive reimbursement for those costs. 

Responsible Manager: Tour Coordinator & Campus Coordinator

For London centres, Underground tickets are pre-purchased. These are physical paper tickets and require a stamped date on each ticket before use. Language in Action pay per stamped ticket, and as such any errors in stamping, or lost tickets can cause unnecessary costs which will negatively affect your centre’s budget. It is important to ensure that the team members you delegate this task to understand the requirement to be accurate and precise with the stamps. 

Stamping tickets takes a lot of time. This workload is detailed on the Daily Planner for each centre, and is done several days in advance.

You must be organised with the storage, labelling and distribution of tickets (particularly in larger centres, where you could be handling several hundred tickets each day)

Travel Card Swap

In order to maximise the use of a daily travel card, all tickets used for AM tours and excursions must be returned to the office at lunchtime, and collected again for the PM tours and excursions. Each Tour Guide should collect only the tickets they require for their group, and shouls not handf out the tickets to any of the students or gorup leaders in their group. It is the responsibility of the morning Tour Guide to stamp the correct number of tickets for their groups. 

NOTE: There are some agencies that have purchased full day travel cards, these will be highlighted by your Programme Manager, and will be handed tickets each day, rather than collecting them back in. 

Responsible Manager: Tour Coordinator

For each tour there is a set of Tour Notes. These are educational notes that are used as the building blocks of a guided tour and outline key information including dates, times, locations, maps and trivia, interesting points, and facts about the location. You must encourage the Tour Guides to expand upon these notes with their own research or knowledge.

These Tour Notes should be sent to the the tour guide assigned that shift by 6pm the day before the tour is scheduled.  It is important to ensure that the team members are familiar with the document before the activity begins. 

There may be an occasion for which there is no excursion sheet available. You can create a new one using the template in the staff documents drive. 

For more see the next section - 1.2 Excursion Sheets

Your team must remain in contact with the managers WhatsApp group chat throughout the day, communicating any problems that may occur, as well as their successful departure and return. Knowing which groups are in the school, and which groups are on tours/excursions is an important part of fire safety. 

Message should be short and concise, e.g. “Travelling Fox on way to British Library”, “Travelling Fox are back”, and should not turn into a conversation about how fun the trip was. It is important to keep the management group as clear as possible so that information can be parsed quickly and easily in an emergency.

*Travelling Fox is the name of one of our groups/agencies

Should your team contact you during an tour/excursion, it is your responsibility to ensure that the problem gets resolved – if something goes wrong, your team member will be busy looking after the students and may not be experienced enough to solve the problem alone. 

Each problem must be assessed individually, however there are some key things to remember; 

• The safety and welfare of the students is paramount. If you feel there is a risk to this, you must act immediately. This might mean arranging transport, food, shelter, emergency protocol activation, or sending out additional team members to assist. See section 2.4 Emergency Plan of Action for more information.

• The student experience should not suffer. Problems with travel, bookings, activities, or problems within the group can all have a negative effect on the student experience. If the activity cannot go ahead for any reason, you will need to make arrangements for the students to do something else. Contact your Programme manager, as some activities can easily be moved around, whilst others cannot be rearranged, and other options may need to be assessed. 

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Travelling across the city can often cause problems due to slow or overcrowded public transport, cancellations, or strikes. Delays are often unavoidable; however, they are usually not cause for concern. If the welfare and safety of the students are affected, you may need to act. For example, if students are delayed returning to the school, you might need to liaise with the catering team to ensure meals are still available on their return. If an outbound journey is delayed, you might need to contact the destination to ensure tickets will still be valid or to change the booking time. If you are not sure what to do, contact your Programme manager. You should alert the group leaders to the problems that public transport can bring in both the day one meeting, and daily excursion meetings.