2 months prior to departure

Optional excursion enrollments
Confirm with your tour consultant which travelers are enrolled on optional excursions by 50 days prior to departure.

Flight, hotel and tour director information
You will receive the flight itinerary from your tour consultant around 30 days prior to departure, as well as your hotel details and the name of your EF Tour Director by 14 days prior to departure. This information will also be available on your group leader website.

Group leader balance (if applicable)
If there are any outstanding items on your group leader account or if you do not have enough paying travelers to cover your free places, you will receive a final invoice reflecting your balance due. If we do not receive your final payment by 14 days prior to departure, you will be charged a non-refundable Late Payment Charge of $40.

Bon Voyage Email
Your tour consultant will send you your Bon Voyage Email 21 to 14 days prior to departure. This email contains all of your tour information and airline and departure details, including your airline/e-ticket receipts and hotel information. You may also be expecting a cash stipend at this time.

Final meeting
You should hold a final meeting once you receive your Bon Voyage Email. Typically, most EF Group Leaders hold this meeting two weeks prior to departure. During your meeting, you should cover all of your on-tour expectations for the group. You should also ask your tour consultant about any other tour-specific information you should pass along to your travelers.

On-tour conduct
Be sure that travelers know what’s expected of them and of their group leaders, from punctuality to EF tour regulations. When your travelers enrolled on the tour, they agreed to EF’s release and agreement.

Exchanging money
Let students know that before departure, they should exchange $50 for the foreign currency of your arrival city for necessities and snacks upon arrival. We recommend that all travelers use debit and credit cards to access money while abroad and discourage the use of traveler’s checks. Traveler’s checks can be time-consuming to exchange, and exchange offices are not always available. Don’t forget to notify your bank or credit card company that you will be traveling abroad!

EF eKit phone card
By now, your travelers have received information about our prepaid international calling card. All they have to do is charge it and activate it to save up to 85 percent on calls made from hotels and pay phones. They have also received information on how to purchase an international cell phone for their tour.

EF TourLink Make sure your travelers know about EF TourLink, which allows family and friends to go online and follow the progress of your tour every day. Your EF Tour Director will carry a GPS locator to track your group’s location on tour. Your tour director will also record each day’s activities in a daily trip log and post pictures from the tour.

In-flight meal requests
If a traveler has any special in-flight meal requests, make sure that they call the airlines directly between seven to three days prior to departure.

Departure day
Discuss where and when your group will meet on the day of your tour’s departure (e.g., at school or at the airport). Plan to arrive at the airport three hours prior to departure for check-in.

Passports
We recommend that you ask all travelers for photocopies of their passports. This will be useful in case of lost travel documents.

Airline tickets
Most of our groups are issued electronic tickets (e-tickets). However, if you received paper tickets, we recommend photocopying them. If any paper ticket is lost, you then have the information needed to replace it. Be aware that airlines charge fees for replacing lost paper tickets. Any penalty will be the responsibility of the traveler who lost his/her paper ticket.

Tipping
To make the tipping process easier on everyone, we suggest that you predetermine what each traveler’s tips should be for the entire tour and collect all tip money at your departure meeting.

Upon arrival at your international destination, be sure to exit all the way through customs and baggage claim to meet your tour director.