French outbound educational travel collapsed due to Brexit and Covid

After 20 months of the pandemic, there is one sector where the struggle is not over and that is the educational travel involving school trips.

Globally, the operators and specialists in school trips in most European countries are inactive as school group travel, within their own country or abroad is still restricted.

We look today at France where the industry specialists, hope for better, but also are struggling as, since the beginning of the pandemic, they had dealt with cancellations, they issued credits and offered postponements of trips. They are still not able to fully enter the recovery stage due to challenges such as Brexit (the UK has been an important destination), economic crisis and the need for health pass in France.

Jean-Pierre Mas, president of Travel Companies in France, a professional association that brings together travel agencies and tour operators, believes that overseas travel and school trips are two particularly damaged sectors.

The health pass is required for minors from 12 to 17 years old and this will restrict the decisions from schools regarding organizing school trips.

The French Ministry of Education announced that school trips without accommodation and school trips with overnight stay are authorized in strict compliance with health and safety conditions. The restrictions of the health pass and compliance with all other health measures will make the organizing of school trips very hard.

Other representatives of companies involved in school trips and educational travel have reported very little or almost no work. Xavier Obert, president of Go & Live Group, said that they have made 5 stays in France and none abroad in 2021.

The Vefe Voyages Educatifs mentioned that 2021 saw a drop in revenue of 90% and the enquiries for 2022 are very few.

The impact of Brexit on travelling and school trips represents another concern.

UNOSEL (French association of organizers of language stays, summer camps and educational school trips), together with other industry professionals called for officials to keep the IDs as travel documents and the travellers’ list for groups of students travelling from France.

The campaign did not see success, therefore from 1st October all travellers require a valid passport to travel to the UK and the travellers’ list that previously allowed school children who are nationals of a State outside the European Union or the Schengen area, usually residing in France and participating in a school trip to enter the UK without a visa has now been stopped. This will cause an increase in budget and a decrease in interest in the UK as a destination overall.

Many operators have tried to adapt and offer other destinations instead, such as Ireland or Malta but these alternatives might not be ready to receive the number of school groups due to the capacities as the UK could.

The situation looks similar in other European countries and all parties concerned, operators, agents in both sending and receiving countries hope that the changes to better will happen soon, to stop further losses of business, jobs and to restart the safe travelling experiences for students.