Maritime & Shipping Awards 2017

, 1702WF08 Best Educational Travel Expert Consultancy - Australia Latitude Group Travel are the industry leaders when it comes to design and delivery of unique, learning focussed tours. We spoke to JennyMurphy to learnmore about these innovative market leaders. Latitude Group Travel Pty Ltd are a unique business that offers the full range of tours required by schools, and can even combine subjects on the one tour, or take all the performing arts genres together, running specific workshops concurrently. Jenny discusses other key factors which set the firm apart from its competitors and mark it out as a great option for clients seeking an innovative and unforgettable tour. “Unique in every way, Latitude Group Travel is the only company that does not use organisations, located in the country of travel, to book the tour elements. We book everything ourselves in order to ensure the highest quality of tour and that everything occurs seamlessly. “Most important to our service offering is our unique methodology, used to custom design and develop the tours. All tours are custom designed according to the school’s brief and they are linked to the school’s specific curriculum. A vital part of our approach is to include a wide range and high number of experiential learning activities in every tour, to engender real learning outcomes for the students. We also emphasise our ethos of providing nothing less than world class service which is intended to make the lead teacher’s workload as small as possible, in relation to the organisation of their tour. “When clients see our extraordinary itineraries and how detailed and all-inclusive they are they are usually a bit staggered. The itinerary is a substantial way to demonstrate how unique we are. We leave no free time in our itineraries and everything in the itinerary is included in the tour price. Latitude Group Travel also includes a full time Tour Director. Their role is to provide knowledgeable commentary and to organise all the logistics for the tour.” Though currently based in Australia, Latitude Group Travel is expanding and is also very comfortable in providing their outstanding products and services to schools and higher educational institutions anywhere in the world. “Distance is not an issue for us”, says Jenny. “ We can work with any organisation and any curriculum worldwide. Communication is just so easy now, that strong relationships can still be formed from a distance.” While Latitude Group Travel is beginning to expand its business into Asia, there remain great opportunities within Australia, as Jenny explains. “Clients are generally comfortable to deal with an organisation based in any state of Australia, regardless of where the school is located. This is particularly true for Latitude Group Travel, because we travel to the school’s location twice during the process of delivering a tour. Once is for an information presentation for interested parents and students, while the other is a pre-departure presentation, which prepares the group for leaving on their tour. The school is then very comfortable that distance does not impact them receiving the full range of our services. These visits allow us to meet the lead teacher and sometimes the Principal face to face, fairly early in the process.” Looking to the future Jenny is excited as she outlines the various developments the firm has in store and how these will benefit both clients and the business alike. “Latitude Group Travel’s future is predicated, to some degree on the formal partnerships we have with Australia’s most innovative teacher/school/ principal associations. We are only just beginning to meet their members, to show them who we are and what we offer. Additionally, we have just begun to develop and offer teacher professional development tours on behalf of some of these associations. There is, therefore, a great deal of potential growth ahead of us. “Another key development is the fact that we have been approached by some highly experienced individuals keen to expose us further into international markets and also by companies interested in aligning with us to offer products and services that are synergistic and will benefit schools in ways that we could not do alone. These are exciting opportunities, which we believe will only add to our ethos of making a difference. “Overall, these are exceptionally exciting times for Latitude Group Travel and we look forward to see how all our alliances will impact our company and add value for our current and prospective clients.” Company: Latitude Group Travel Pty Ltd Contact: Jenny Murphy Contact Email: jenny@ latitudegrouptravel.com.au Address: D3.0, 63-85 Turner St Port Melbourne, Victoria, 3207 Australia Telephone: +61 3 9646 4200