EDUCATIONAL STUDY TOURS
“Experience, travel - these are an education in themselves.” — Euripides
Our educational study tours are centred around cultural immersion, hands-on learning and authentic connections. Our tours are always FUN.
In this episode of The Hospitality Spirit Hello! Tours founder Laura Blackhall joins Dr Nick Thomas and Dr Lisa Young to talk about the founding of Hello! Tours, the exceptional guides in the Hello! team, and the role of Study Abroad and how it enhances the learning experience, particularly for students looking to go into the hospitality field.
How we work with educational institutions
We work directly with programme directors and professors to design a bespoke itinerary.
We ensure that we understand your learning objectives and customise your programme around them.
We provide subject / course specific recommended case studies for pre-reading from the Harvard Business Review. These are paired with site visits during the trip.
We coordinate visits to other educational institutions or industry experts that you may have professional relationships with.
We provide you with our tried and tested recommendations for hotels and other supplementary activities.
Inspire your students through global travel on expertly guided immersive tours.
Complete customization of your program.
Hands-on learning.
Why work with us
We build learning into interactive and immersive small group tours. Students are fully engaged and having fun whilst they are enhancing their knowledge and understanding of the world and their subject.
Our guides spend time building relationships with every single student to create a safe, trusting environment where EVERYONE feels comfortable asking questions and learning openly.
We offer ‘all inclusive’ tours so there is no need to worry about budgeting on the day for meals or gratuities.
We recommend hotels based on how well they fit into your budget, itinerary and specific needs, not on how much commission they offer. We give you the recommendations, you make the decisions and the booking.
Every single university that has worked with us has rebooked with us again, and in some cases again, and again and again!
HONG KONG
SINGAPORE
TOKYO
We operate in three cities across Asia. We can build a stand alone itinerary with you for one city, or combine two or three cities into one longer trip.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF OUR TOURS
We work with professors from undergraduate, graduate and MBA programs as well as culinary schools.
We believe in putting a little bit of all of the below into our itineraries, in order to provide a well rounded educational journey. We will design a bespoke itinerary with you, which is more heavily focused towards your students field of study and learning objectives .
We do not deliver overly academic fact heavy content. We are not docents or historians, nor are we professional chefs. We are a team of passionate tour guides who will get your students out on the streets, walking around, looking at things and engaging with them on a personal level. We want you to have fun!
Culinary Experiences
- Eat like a local food tours.
- Market visits: understanding where produce comes from.
- Speciality store visits.
- Tea ceremonies and workshops.
Hospitality and Tourism
- Lobby walkthroughs of key hotels. Understand their value propositions.
- Does a city have a brand or value proposition? What is it that attracts tourists? Visits to key touristic sites and attractions.
Architecture
- Visit architecturally significant buildings and understand the stories and design elements behind them.
City Planning and Social Sciences
- Understand the basic fundamentals of healthcare, housing, education and transport infrastructure.
Discuss similarities and differences to the students home city.
Business and Economics
- Visit the Central Business District and gain insight into key industries and economic drivers.
History and Politics
- Understand the key historical and political events that shape the country / city and its people.
- Visits to noteworthy buildings
PRICING
We price our educational travel tours at the same rates that we charge individuals (holiday makers). We do not up-charge universities for the additional work that goes into planning the program. You can refer to the pricing on this website for our Private Customised tours and Food Tours. Airport transfers, meals, gratuities etc are priced separately and added in according to your requirements.
SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES
Our supplementary activities have been chosen because we believe they will add value to your visit to Hong Kong, through team building and by giving a deeper cultural insight. They can be booked as a stand alone activity or incorporated into a day tour. We work closely with all of our activity partners to ensure a high quality experience.
TESTIMONIALS
Students from DePaul University learning about where produce comes from and daily shopping habits in Hong Kong. Academic study tours.
Students from UCLA discovering Hong Kong’s street art on their expertly designed educational travel tours.
Students from William Angliss Institute learning about a speciality Hong Kong beverage; Lai Cha, on their Hong Kong academic study tour.
“We have been working with Laura and the Hello! Tours team on our study abroad trips since 2015. Every year we take a group of 20 students from the School of Hospitality Leadership to Asia to gain a global perspective of their studies. We started working with Laura after the first year where we had an average experience with a very large travel & tour company in the region. So I began searching for a more personalized approach. After corresponding with multiple tour companies over several months, I found the ideal study abroad tour company – Hello! Tours.
Laura and Hello! Tours were able to offer a customized tour where students could explore each destination like a local, via interactive, informative, and tasty walking tours, which is how students want to experience a destination. The program that Hello! Tours runs for us is state-of-the-art! Laura and her team have worked with me to create a customized experience in each destination based on their current tour offerings. They’ve given me the opportunity to integrate case studies and other learning experiences to create a bespoke learning experience for my undergraduate and graduate students. The office–based staff plan our program perfectly. Each year as new companies, restaurants, and tourist experiences become available, they make recommendations on how to further improve the learning for the upcoming year’s trip.
Additionally, we have been blown away by the experience when we are at each of their destinations due to their outstanding tour guides. They are top notch - super knowledgable and so very friendly. They genuinely care about our students and bond with them on a personal level. Every year! Every destination! The trips that we've taken have been truly magical and an invaluable learning experience, for both the students and the faculty leaders. We use Hello! Tours for an 11-day combined Hong Kong and Singapore trip and are planning to start a spring break study program to Tokyo now that they have tours available there. I highly recommend Hello! Tours for your study abroad programs. They are brilliant!”
— Lisa Young, PhD. Associate Professor, School of Hospitality Leadership, Driehaus College of Business, DePaul University, USA
“57 participants from both The University of Applied Sciences St.Gallen and The University of Applied Sciences Bern in Switzerland came to Hong Kong for a weeklong study program as part of their MBA course. A tailor-made itinerary was produced by the wonderful team at Hello! Tours to suit their needs and covered many areas of the city. Needless to say, the students were fascinated by all the sights they visited – some of which included Wong Tai Sin Temple & fortune-telling, the remnants of Kowloon Walled City and the less wealthy areas of Sham Shui Po. It was eye-opening for them to see the contrast of lifestyles in certain districts in Kowloon as opposed to the glitz and glamour of the island. The guides at Hello Hong Kong did a fantastic job guiding and providing essential information and history. Would highly recommend to anyone travelling to Hong Kong and wanting to get a taste of the ‘real n local’ scene.”
— Claudia Solenthaler Head of the Swiss Business Hub Hong Kong and coordinator of the weeklong study program
“William Angliss Institute sent three groups to Hong Kong and used Hello Tours for food tours . We took the tours early in our trip and used them as a familiarisation to food and lay out of Hong Kong . We also tied the food tours to units of competencies, in particular Specialised Foods .
I did a lot of research before the first trip in 2015 and was not disappointed by what Hello Tours offered. The tour was fantastic and the guide was brilliant.”
— Dale Lyman Professional Cookery Teacher, William Angliss Institute, Australia.
CONTACT US
If you would like to speak to us about an academic study tour please use the contact form below.