You’re getting towards the tail end of your plans now.  You and your team have put in a lot of thought about your Where Tour, to What and Why… and now we need to chew over the last bite as this will help your partner finalise the plans and then you’re all go!

The HOW – there’s a few considerations on how this will work

Taking the decisions that you’ve made to date, you now you need to tick off some of the finer points of your plans.  This will flesh out your plans and allow you to form an itinerary and quote that fits the bill.

When?  What’s your timeline? – Do you need time to do extensive fundraising?  Are you travelling in the school holidays (this isn’t ideal for an exchange tour when people are away)? What’s the weather going to be like for outdoor concerts? What will your payment timelines look like? Is it on or off season where you’re heading for your matches, so will there even be a team to play?? There really are oh so many things to think about! 

How many are travelling?  Will you be taking just your core choir or sports team, or do you have a long list of supporters wanting to join you?  What’s your Duty of Care requirement for Adult Supervision?

How long do you want to make this meal last?  How many performances and choral workshops will you want?  How many training sessions and how many games?  Just how long will be stay in each location to then offset your sightseeing that you will want to do?  Can you actually afford to stay that long?

Which brings us to Budget … do you really need to go to Disney?  Some activities and venues will profoundly affect your end cost, especially if you have a small group.  Think carefully about what is important and what is just a nice to have.  Oh, how interesting…this leads us back to the WHY…!  What a circular elephant you’re eating, aren’t you glad you’ve got an expert on board?

The Super Niggly Questions: Will you be travelling with musicians who need to take their instruments along?   Do you need an ambulance on hand at your game, just in case?  Will there be a translator on hand to ensure we don’t do the wrong thing?  My multicultural group is travelling on international passports…now what?!

Most importantly, how can you reduce your stress..?  Your expert provider should be able to help with all these things.  They should be able to remove all the challenges and make the process smooth from here on in. 

Can you see why it’s important now to put so much effort into choosing someone who understands the group travel market up front?  Like truly understands it? You’ve got your itinerary and your quote now, your tour is everything you ever wanted and it to be and that’s because when you take the elephant one bite at a time you can only ever come out with a great outcome.  Now that hard part …. Wrangling the group members!!!  Oh my goodness!

The next bite will determine where the dart lands on the globe, as we take the next bite of this tour elephant. This is where the knowledge and expertise of your tour partner really shines through! 

The WHERE - Now you know your reasons…lets plot a course!

Performance Tours - because practice makes perfect.  If you’re looking for an audience you can’t go past Argentina, where music performances are consistently packed out. Or Singapore where the audiences are keen to hear from choirs/ensembles from other cultures, or Europe to perform in some of the most stunning Cathedrals

Festivals - for the prestige of participating … and winning!  The truly competitive amongst you will find a range of amazing festivals around the globe to tempt them.  Europe has Summa Cum Laude, Festival Corale Internationale Di Roma, Salzburg Choir Festival and the World Choir Games.

Exchange Opportunities (bringing out the best in you!) If you’re looking to share an exchange but not travel too far, why not consider an Australasian tour where you can compare your Aboriginal Culture to the New Zealand Maori culture. 

Cultural Experiences: if you’re looking for new experiences then again, you might want to consider the passionate culture in Argentina… or head to Japan to immerse yourself in their culture. Or to Europe to explore the incredible history the region holds.

Elite Training: In our experience you simply can’t go past the USA as the hub for some incredible training experiences for basketball or diamond sports…or England for football… Argentina for Hockey and Rugby… or at home here in New Zealand for a Rugby training tour with the world champs!

We could carry on, the world is a huge place, filled with endless opportunities to meet your WHAT and WHY.  Obviously at this point we have to admit that budget comes into it a little too… we’ll explore that more later, but lets face it…the further the plane travels the more expensive the flights are, so talking to your experts here is pretty important, they can talk you through the real benefits of whether you stay close to home and go now, or if you wait a bit longer and save a bit harder to go further.  They’re the experts after all!  And because they’re financially bonded, your deposits are safe while you wait!  Aren’t you glad you chose them?! 

You’ve spent some important introspective time getting to know your motivation… good stuff… now you need to talk to your partner about the next bite of the elephant and understand how to achieve your tour goals.

The WHAT – choosing the right kind of tour
Having looked at your purpose you can now more easily chose the type of tour that feeds your purpose.

Music Groups

• Performance Tours: You’re proud of your choir/ensemble and you want to share your passion for music with the world?  Great!  We all want to hear you! 

• Festival Participation: You’re the competitive type, eh?  You’ve invested endless hours in perfecting your choir/ensemble, now let’s show that it was worth it by proving that we’re the best. Festivals around the globe will give you the chance to do that.

• Musical exchange opportunities: connection and personal growth is a lofty goal for any choir/ensemble.  Exchanges have less “performance” and more “sharing”

• Unique WOW experiences: This is where you get the chance to dream big, to set a Big Goal - Carnegie Hall, St Peters Basilica, The Great Wall of China… what’s your Big Goal?

Sports Groups

• Friendship and Match Exchanges: You just wanna get out and play the sports you love and make new friends…and why not, you’re awesome people, lets go be awesome somewhere cool!

• Training Tours: Your training has gone as far as it can at home?  Lets go find some new experts to take your training to the next level! 

• Tournaments: Time to put all your skills to the test and show the world how talented you are… world beating Kiwi’s!!! Tournaments are the way to go! (Or a mixture of Matches, Training and Tournaments)

Special Interest Groups

• Religious Tours: Pilgrimages bring the bible to life for their group members in a spectacular way or fellowship tours will allow you to connect with people who share your faith and allow new friendships to be formed

• Train Tours: Enthusiasts from around the world descend on New Zealand to see our spectacular scenery and do a little bit of trainspotting along the way

• Anything goes: A special interest tour is as individual as the tour participants, so this is where sitting and talking about your WHY will lead to a world of WHAT as an experienced and specialist tour provider will know just what to do to make it special.

The leg work is done when you chose your WHO, and determined your WHY, and will now lead you on a very new journey with your provider as you digest the WHAT… because the WHAT is actually almost an elephant on its own.  New Zealand and the world hold so many opportunities for you if you just take the time to look outside the box you’ve been holding on to for so long.  So, the next question is WHERE provides you with the opportunities you’re looking for?!

So your first bite of the tour elephant was choosing your partner who can ensure your financial and group safety… NAILED IT!  And now here we are at the next bite!

The WHY – looking behind your decision to tour?

The beginning of every tour starts here: All tours have the same starting point, no matter where you are…working out why. What is your end goal? What are you trying to achieve? What is driving you to even tour?

This is going to require some self-examination

• If you’re a Music Teacher or Choral Director, you may want to gift your students the opportunity to see what other cultures have to offer with their music. You may want to prove yourself on the international stage and win an award or two.  

• If you’re a Community Choir, your committee may want to put all your practice to use and share your hard work with the world. 

• If you’re a Sports Coach, you may want to put your players to the test, they’ve gotten complacent playing the same old team, they need to extend themselves or you may just want to find a trophy to take home to put on the shelf

• If you’re a Spiritual Leader you may want to help your congregation reconnect with their faith in a deeply personal and real-life manner! 

• Reasons are an individual as the people involved….

As part of this process, you will need to figure out who your key stake holders are and then talk openly, as your reasons drive the choices you make next.  If you’re not on the same page as the rest of the stake holders in the venture, your tour may well choke.

Without a purpose there can be no plan: once you define your purpose and reasons, move forward quickly to maintain momentum, if you don’t take this all important bite, you will literally be taking a wild punt at the type of tour you’re wanting to achieve and be left feeling unfulfilled.  It is important to do this leg work now to ensure that the rest of the bites are palatable.

When you’re looking at reasons why you’re touring, you need to be fully honest with yourself.  One of the best reasons we have had is a MD from California telling us that she takes her choir around the globe to create global citizens… her tours are experiential and are built on relationship forming and understanding so that her young choristers go back more aware of the world around them and that they move head in their lives as true global citizens.

So – What’s making you tick, what’s your motivation… plain and simple…WHY are we even talking?  Next time we’ll look at the type of tours that match your WHY as we move on to WHAT.

Awesome, you’ve found yourself a licenced and bonded tour provider who understands the intricacies of working with groups!  CONGRATS! You’ve chosen a great partner!  Now…where are you going to go???  What next?  Time to get down to the nitty gritty.

Touring is a huge undertaking;  we understand that especially at the beginning it can seem overwhelming and just too big a task to start on…which is where most tours fail, in the planning stage when you realise just how huge this elephant is…however when you break it down and take a bite sized approach, you too can see your plans come to life.  It’s as easy as breaking it down into a series of words that we can ALL understand.

 Who - Engage experts!!  Look at you go, you’ve already done this

Why - What is the driving force behind your tour plans?

What – What types of Tours are there to achieve your goals?

Where - Destination Selection!  Where in the world should you go?

How – A million things to consider…where to start?

You might already have a great idea on how this tour experience looks for you, you might even have a previous tour plan that you’re wanting to relive to make this whole process easy… so now is the time to sit down with your experienced and knowledgeable provider and go through the above and nut out the real reasons behind your travel - as that will drive you towards the perfect tour experience. 

We’ve broken these questions down further to help you understand exactly how to get this tour elephant eaten…