The Six Things That Matter Most

Specialization. It’s an age of specialization. Taking your students out of the province or out of the country is a big responsibility, so it makes a sense, when planning a field trip to Québec or Montréal, to deal with someone who not only knows the destination intimately, but who also understands the interests of French students and the needs of French teachers. Having planned school and class trips to Montréal and Québec City all day, every day since 1986, we do know students and teachers of French very, very well.

Itineraries that Work. Our tour itineraries are meticulously crafted to give you and your students the maximum exposure to the language and culture of Montréal and Québec City during the limited time you will be there. We know large, well-known companies that plan their trips by reading about the destinations in guidebooks; some companies flatter us by copying our itineraries (though, of course, it's one thing to write itineraries but quite another to execute them), and many of these trips are planned and sold by staff who have never set foot in Québec. Our tours are expertly planned by experienced staff that has been sharply focused only on French trips to Montréal and Québec for more than 20 years. If there are better tour itineraries anywhere in the marketplace, honestly, we have never seen one.

Tour Guides. We use only licensed, professional, fully bilingual, and generally native francophone guides, and never hire guides whom we haven’t met. We know virtually all of our guides personally (a number of them have been with us for a dozen years or more). Those we’ve retained over the years are not necessarily the guides who know the most, or talk the most; they’re the guides who enjoy working with and communicate most naturally with school children. We sincerely believe that our guide group is the very best in the industry. And, of course, our guides will be happy to conduct your trip in French, English or any combination of the two.

Affordability. We believe that an inexpensive trip is better than no trip at all, and thus, we have planned our trips so that virtually every deserving student can afford them. We learned many years ago that if students can’t afford the trip, and don’t go, nothing else matters. We have also observed, over and over again, that allowing the more affluent students decide on an itinerary that’s longer or more deluxe than it needs to be, and which only they can afford, can scuttle a trip for the whole group before it ever gets off the ground. That said, our trips aren’t cheap. We don’t cut corners, because we also believe that selling deceptively cheap trips to kids is a great disservice, and lesson in life that we want no part of teaching them.

Organizational Support. At VISIT QUÉBEC, you will always be able to reach someone by telephone who knows Québec City and Montréal intimately, often the person who planned your trip, and/or someone who is able to discuss every aspect of your tour itinerary in detail (without having to look it up and read it to you out of a brochure). Taking French students to Montréal and Québec City is all we do, and there is nobody working here who doesn’t know the subject backward and forward.

Safety and Security. Last but certainly not least, our foremost priority is and always has been to keep you and your students (and/or your sons and daughters) as safe and secure on their trip to Montreal and Quebec City as they would have been if they (and you) had not left home. We have learned a great deal while observing the habits and behavior of nearly 75,000 students on our trips over the years, and the result is that our copyrighted safety manuals and safety protocols are unsurpassed, as far as we know, by literally any educational tour organization in North America (if not the world). We are parents of school aged children, and we care about yours.