For thousands of years people have been organizing trips to Israel.
A trip to the storied land can be a life changing experience, full of history, insight and adventure. It can also be an organizational nightmare.
Don’t close this window, however. The administrative obstacles to be overcome before you set out for the Holy Land can be daunting. They can also be overcome easily with a few online tools and some research.
Some tips to making the Israel trip planning easy:
- Keep planning simple
- Understand the basics first
- Think about cost and funding
- Consider a travel agency and tour guides
- Start collecting funds
- Make sure all bases are covered
- Take off!
Let’s dive in to how to make this happen:
Don’t over-complicate your Israel trip planning
The easiest way to start planning your trip is to keep it private – that is, open only to a select group. Your group might be a just your church, or just the seniors in your religious education program. Hosting a trip that is open to more people can help to do things like lower cost but it also introduces a lot more variables. If you keep your trip private you limit your audience to one that you already know and you need to do a lot less fact-finding.
If you don’t already have a mission trip registration software in mind, this can also be a good time to start shopping for one. The early steps can be done with services like Google Forms, or even paper questionnaires.
You’ll find with paper or basic form tools though, planning can quickly get out of hand, especially if money is involved.
Eventually, however, you’ll want some more advanced tools to help you to keep track of all of the moving parts.
Get your facts straight!
Fact-finding will still need to be the first step.
This is a big undertaking and you should start it at least a few months to a year in advance, especially if you are doing a trip for the first time.
Start by understanding things like how many people are going to be involved and when is the best time for everybody. This is also a good time to find out whether anyone needs passports, &c. This early fact-finding will help you to build up to later concerns like how much the trip might cost and how you might approach paying for it.
It’s also a great baseline for creating a to-do list and building out your registration forms so you gather the data you need.
Paying for Your Mission Trip to Israel
As details like those discussed above come together, you can start thinking about cost. Cost includes things like air-fare, food, and lodging. When looking into transportation and lodging, be sure to ask about group-rates. With large groups, you can often save some money with group discounts although food will only become more expensive.
If you have any other activities in mind like tours, you should also check to see if these have any associated costs. As you explore activities like these, you can also use the research for inspiration to ask your travelers what kinds of activities they may be interested in. Of course, it’s always a good idea to have some extra money for any unforeseen events or circumstances.
Once you have an idea of how much the trip will cost you can start to think about how it is going to be paid for. Maybe your church has a budget for such activities? Maybe you can ask parishioners for donations or look for fundraising activities. You can also include in early questions whether or how much the families of the travelers might be able to pay. Be sure to advise your travelers to have some additional spending cash on hand for any snacks or souvenirs they may want on their trip.
Get help from the pros!
Going through a travel agency can help you to figure out things like itineraries and how to get the best rates on things. They can also be another huge administrative cost. Whether you go through a travel agency should depend on the funds available or how much you are willing to ask from your travelers.
In addition to travel agencies, many areas have local tour guides and companies. While an additional expense, these local guides can often give great tours and the best advice on where to eat or other attractions and activities.
A great alternative to a local guide, or in addition to one, is enlisting your church leader / group leader to lead the trip!
Managing Payments for your Trip
Assuming that you need to collect money from the travelers, that is likely going to be the next step. This is the part where having dedicated registration software can come in handy. These tools let you accept payments from your travelers and keep track of who has paid and who hasn’t.
Taking payment online has a number of advantages. For one thing, you don’t need to worry about losing cash or checks, or managing the recording of those cash payments. Two, it’s all automatic! You can create payment plans and send out automated invoices to travelers without lifting a finger!
Online payments increases your cash flow, and reduces your work load. You can dedicate more time to trip planning and less on trip management!
Final Check!
Money isn’t the only thing that you may need to collect from your travelers. You should also be considering ways to obtain financial and legal protection, including waivers and insurance.
As you collect payments and waivers, be sure to collect contact information including email addresses and phone numbers. It will be even more important to know how to get into contact with people once they signed up.
Once you have your funds collected you can start confirming plans and paying out your expenses for the trip, like a tour, museum tickets and more.
Ready, Set…
Once you’ve covered these steps, it’s time to go. Or maybe you planned ahead and still have some time before your flight. This is a good time for you and your travelers to go over things like local customs and important phrases.
You should also be going over internal rules for your group. This includes safety protocols and what to do if anyone becomes separated from the group.
Managing a group trip to Israel can take a lot of work, but it’s worth it! The group will have the time of their lives! And you can make your life easier by using online tools to help manage the nitty gritty aspects of your trip! That way, you can invest more time in the quality of your program!
