If you are a teacher, organising a school trip probably isn't your main concern, but it's what we do every day.
To help you plan and organise your perfect school trip we’ve assembled a specialist team, many with a teaching background or direct personal experience of our top destinations, and speaking an impressive 11 different languages.
At Voyager School Travel we are committed to making your educational trip not only enriching but hassle-free.
With nearly two decades in school travel, Nigel's ethos is simple - deliver highly educational tours with clear learning outcomes, guarantee value for money and remember the experience of the group is everything.
To make that happen, he has hand-picked a team of dedicated, experienced and professional people, who share his values and are committed to making your school tour a success.
He has also put Voyager owned and run centres at the heart of most of our programmes, where we control every element of your trip to ensure the highest levels of service, in schools only environments.
Nigel Stout has been our Chairman since April 2018. He has spent 35 years in education first as a university lecturer, then a school teacher and, most recently, as a Chair of Governors of various independent schools. He was Chief Executive of the MPW Group of sixth-form colleges between 1996 and 2015.
He says “What attracted me to Voyager was the outstanding quality of its programmes and the consistent testimonials from teachers about its willingness to go the extra mile in service provision. Voyager completely understands schools’ requirements in pivotal areas such as risk assessment, safeguarding and the hard educational outcomes that pupils can expect to achieve from their trips."
With a long career in school travel, including several positions at senior level, Tricia has a wealth of experience to complement her customer focus and infectious personality. As our senior troubleshooter, Tricia main role is to use her experience and contacts to inject the Voyager ethos across the growing company.
Tricia has spent time in Germany and speaks fluent German. She has also been stationed at our Moulin Aux Draps school centre in Northern France, setting up the schools programme and training the overseas team. Latterly Tricia was responsible for integrating Pegagus Coaches into the business. She is currently heading up the sales team, driving product knowledge and delivery across all of our tours. She also loves a coach and can often be found deep in conversation about drivers' hours regs and coach sizes!
With extensive experience in school travel, Louise decided to join Voyager in 2008 and is our General Manager. Louise is responsible for many aspects of our company, with a focus on managing our team of busy tour co-ordinators who make our whole range of trips happen. She also is committed to making sure each group is ready to travel and that each trip will run according to the itinerary, ensuring all health and safety documentation is up to date and in order. Her knowledge and expertise are only matched by her motivation and commitment to your student's experience.
Sharon brings a wealth of experience to the travel industry having organised group tours for both leisure and educational markets for more than 15 years. She is ambitious, helpful, and always looking for ways to make tours engaging and tailored to the needs of schools and their students. she strives to make the whole booking process as easy as possible for group leaders.
Nicky has worked in the school travel industry for almost 25 years - in sales, as a tour coordinator, and also at a commercial level, and so has a great understanding of the business. She has also worked as cabin crew and for a cruise agent.
Nicky works with schools to put together the perfect trip. She will create a package that meets their requirements, their learning objectives, and is at a price that they can afford. From assisting party leaders from their initial enquiry through to confirmation of the trip, she takes great pride in all aspects of her work and will always do her best to ensure the trip runs smoothly.
Nicky enjoys walking in the Peak District and the Lake District.
Lucy helps schools' party leaders find the right trip for their group at one our four immersive French language centres in the North of France, in the UK and our Normandy Experience Programme. She listens carefully to what schools want for their pupils and liaise with our team in the UK and France to try to make the vision a reality. She is here to help with any questions about future trips.
Having run many residentials to France and Spain as a Head of Languages in a previous life (including several with Voyager Travel), Lucy knows how important it is to get the details right in the planning of a residential. Lucy is passionate about promoting a love and respect of language learning and always had a spring in her step on her return from a trip.
Knowing how busy life is as a teacher, Lucy hopes to be able to take away some of the stress involved at the planning stage and enjoy being able to help.
Flick works in the sales team and provides schools with advice on booking school trips, pretty much anywhere in Europe, and some Worldwide destinations.
Raised in sunny Brighton where our office is, she has worked in the school travel industry for over 7 years, gaining a great knowledge of her school areas' needs along with fluent French and some Spanish speaking skills. She has led trips to Disney and America. She loves to travel and especially enjoys encouraging trip leaders to take their pupils to far-flung destinations so that she can live vicariously through them!
Liza supports teachers in choosing the trip that suits their group and learning objectives, and works with our suppliers to make sure that all aspects of the tour are in place, and that the price is right!
As an ex-Head of MFL Liza understands the pressures that teachers are under, and tries hard to make booking all trips a smooth process. The trips she led as a teacher are amongst her fondest memories of teaching, so she loves helping other teachers put together the tour that meets their group's needs. In her spare time, she loves walking, going to the cinema and tasting good food and wine.
Emily supports teachers in planning unforgettable trips brimming with educational, interactive and fun experiences to destinations far and wide. She's has assumed the role of school trip leader herself a fair few times thanks to her decade-long career as a teacher & HoD. This means that Emily has a wealth of experience when it comes to understanding the kind of challenges teachers can face when launching a trip—and how best to overcome them!
When she's not helping to make your group's trip a reality, you can find Emily stuck into a good novel, exploring the UK's historical sites or planning her next trip to Central or South America (she was a geography teacher, after all).
Lucia designs itineraries and coordinates the visits different trips. She works with customers, suppliers and colleagues to deliver a great experience for the groups.
She's not new to this business and continues to love what she does often using her fluent Italian and English speaking skills. She could be doing a million different things but Voyager is where she chose to be.
Sophie creates itineraries, essentially working out how best to fit in all of the activities that a group would like to do - in the smoothest, most enjoyable way.
Having spent many years as a language teacher, an activity leader and coach and picking up Spanish through immersion, Sophie is passionate about developing perfect language and learning experiences for students. She loves seeing how children surprise themselves by how fast they learn when they're exposed to another language every day!
Julian helps our clients by adding his own knowledge of our specialist countries and removing the stress and huge amount of time needed to plan your much loved school tours around Europe and beyond.
He's been lucky enough to live and work in many wonderful cities and countries around the world, most recently 10 years in Hamburg, North Germany before returning to England in 2022 and, as a result, is fluent in German.
Swan is in charge of booking and planning school trips as well as making sure everything runs smoothly.
He was born in France and raised in Costa Rica, helping him develop his fluent Spanish, French and English speaking skills. Before he settled in Brighton, he spent lots of time travelling and working in many different places and environments. Working at Voyager, he loves being able to use all three of his languages on a daily basis.
Sammi has worked for COGO Travel since 2016. She has always had a passion for travel and completed a degree in the Business of Travel Management. She works directly with party leaders to tailor-make and finalise tour arrangements for performing arts and educational tours worldwide.
Sammi has organised and run many successful events for Disneyland Paris, such as the biannual ‘Time to Shine’ event for thousands of performing arts students and their families, as well as the Business and Travel and Tourism conventions for college students from all over the UK. Her clients always receive the best customer service and rebook with us year after year.
Sofie works across our travel brands to arrange transport and supporting the administration of our trips as well as supporting the admin, research and social media for our performing arts team.
She comes from Brighton and has worked in Customer Service for 18 years. Sofie thrives on variety and making systems run more efficiently - loves a challenge and turning a problem around!
Carole has worked in the school travel industry for nearly twenty years and is responsible for Voyager's Normandy tours which include the Château de la Baudonnière, La Grand'Ferme and the Normandy experience. Carole loves to use her wealth of experience to support teachers, before, during and after their trip and obtain constructive feedback to continually improve the service at our Normandy centres.
The marketing team looks after the communications, websites and social media for all the Class Tours brands - Voyager School Travel, Chateau de la Baudonniere, COGO Group Travel, Pegasus Coaches and Family Adventure Holidays. She loves the varied nature of her role and no two days at work are ever the same.
Before joining Voyager, Kate worked for an educational publishers and strongly believes that school trips should deliver the highest educational standards for the school that organises the trip, the parents who fund it and, most importantly, the students who participate.
Kate says the most gratifying part of her job is seeing students on a language trip grow in confidence in recognition that they can communicate, and be understood, in another language.
Interesting fact: Kate bought an apartment in Valencia while appearing on Channel 4’s A Place In the Sun.
As part of the marketing team, Rachel helps communicate our tours and centres to our customers. She works across all of the Class Tours brands creating content, updating websites and managing the online marketing.
Following an early career in marketing, she retrained as a teacher and worked in primary education for 10 years. Having taken her own pupils on school trips, she understands the ups and downs of organising school trips. She was excited to join the Voyager family because of the educational value of the experiences that we offer.
Sam started at Voyager School Travel as a Digital Marketing apprentice and he's still here all these years later (so we must be doing something right...). From website upkeep, copywriting & social media marketing, Sam particularly loves the creative aspects of his role. From the creation of website, email & social media graphics, plus our workbooks & other printed materials—he certainly knows his way around Photoshop, InDesign & Illustrator.
Sam is an étudiant de français himself, so feels a real affinity for the work we do in promoting a love for learning languages in young people, particularly so in France. His favourite thing about working in the Brighton office? Hearing the different languages spoken amongst his colleagues each day.
After spending over 25 years in Healthcare, Lisa joined the Family Adventure Team in 2016 to help out and is still here. With 2 boys of her own, she has a vested interest in making sure our Family Adventure Holidays meet expectations and is continually looking at ways to improve our existing holidays and develop new ones. She is very aware that many of our families have tried all our holidays and are just waiting for their next adventure together.
We get many fantastic comments from our families, this is one of Lisa’s favourites. "The kids – I forget I have kids – are safe and smiling as they take off for archery. They run to us at the end of a session to babble their happiness; then run away from us without a ‘Goodbye’ to the next event, arms round a new friend and squealing nonsense."
You are in specialist hands
Our team use their teaching, language & destination experience to organise educational trips that are not only enriching but hassle-free. Read more →
Safety assured, bonded & accredited
As a member of the School Travel Forum & protected through ABTA & ATOL you can be sure of our high standards. Read more →
Trusted by teachers
Schools trust Voyager School Travel to organise the educational trips for over 32,000 passengers a year. Read more →
We deliver the educational elements
Signature educational experiences with our own language & activity instructors allow teachers to enjoy the trip too. Read more →
Stay at our own residential centres
Groups staying at our own residential centres in France will benefit from high quality learning, safety & service. Read more →
Our own overseas teams
Peace of mind knowing our French managers, instructors, coach drivers & support team will look after your every need. Read more →
For teachers who are serious about the educational outcomes of their school trip.
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