Explorica Educational Travel - Not so Friendly to Students?
My wife teaches 6th, 7th and 8th grade girls at Hanger Hall here in Asheville. It’s an amazing school that provides unbelievable opportunities for the students. One of those opportunities is to take a school trip each year to expand their cultural awareness. Every year for the last few, the 8th graders have gone to Mexico. Wow! I can’t imagine having an opportunity like that when I was in 8th grade.
But this year, as you may know, traveling to Mexico doesn’t really seem to be such a great idea. Here are a few of the headlines I found with a quick search for “mexico cozumel violence” on http://news.google.com.
- College Students Warned About Travel to Mexico
- US-Mexico Border Violence Causing Travel Fears
- Mexico Drug Violence Has Travelers Changing Plans
- and my personal favorite Mexico police find severed heads
So, the school administration wisely decided to avoid traveling to Mexico with 20 8th grade girls later this spring. They had planned the trip with Explorica - a company that provides group, educational travel packages for middle and high schools. The administration called up the folks at Explorica to see what could be done about it.
Well, apparently it seems that nothing can be done. Instead, Hanger Hall - a small, not-for-profit school who struggles financially while providing what most Ashevillians think of as one of the best educational experiences in the area - must choose between the risk of traveling to a suddenly violent Mexico with lots of pubescent girls, or losing thousands of dollars in pre-payment to Explorica.
Really, in this day and age of instant communication across the Internet, it’s just not smart to piss off your customers and assume that nobody else will be the wiser. Come on now, Explorica. Can’t you bend a little bit? These are young girls who have worked hard to raise money to take this trip. Hanger Hall is a regular customer of yours. And you can’t provide them with even a single dollar in refund?
It seems to me that it’d be easier for you to just to ask the Hanger Hall administration to stop being your customer. Because that’s what you are doing. (NOTE: I do not speak for Hanger Hall administration, they may be perfectly happy about the situation, but I’m hopping mad).
So, use the power of the internet to try and get their attention (if nothing else) at Explorica. If you’ve read this far, forward a link to this post to your friends. Tell them how unreasonable Explorica is.
If my wife and her students have to suffer financially because people in Mexico are having their heads removed or instead, they choose to go to Mexico themselves to risk the same fate, I think it’s only fair for Explorica to suffer a little bit too. If this post prevents them from getting just one tour group - makes just one school decide it will choose to go with someone else - it will be worth it to me.
Thanks!
