NTA Student Trip Planner 2012-2013 : Page 9
students following World War II from England to Germany. They were able to talk with people who witnessed the landings on the beaches of Normandy (France) and all kinds of different things. There’s lots of talk of Cuba right now; we are a licensed travel service provider, and we’ve taken student groups to Cuba the last couple of years. NTA: In what ways do your travelers experience local culture? Lohier: What we’ve found to be mean-ingful on a pretty consistent basis is interaction with the local students. We pair our students with some local students, and they’ll go on a scavenger hunt through town or they’ll go and spend some hours at a local community center talking with holocaust survivors in Prague, which is extremely powerful. We make sure that all of our [student travelers] have the ability to spend time with local students; showing Americans around their town and what it’s like to be a student in their part of the world today. The special, unique highlights come through people-to-people connec-tions and conversations. A native of Bellingham, Massachusetts, Helen Medler entered the travel industry out of college in 1973 as a tour manager for a small motor-coach company. She purchased Salem-based Hawthorne Tours in October 1993 and serves as its president. Hawthorne has five employ-ees and specializes in tours to America’s Northeast region. NTA: Who are your travelers and where are they going? Medler: We do mostly eighth graders and juniors and seniors in high school. They drive our business; it’s about 80 percent of what we do. We sit in that his-tory corridor, and we’re so fortunate that we have so much history and so much to talk about so close by. Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Gettysburg—all of those destinations are big for us. We also do student tours in Texas, California, Washington state, Florida, Savannah and Charleston; basi-cally we’ll do whatever the client needs. It just happens that, curriculum-wise— and that’s what drives these tours, what they need to accomplish to enhance the curriculum—Boston, New York and D.C. cover just about everything. NTA: Why should a student travel plan-ner work with Hawthorne Tours? Medler: First and foremost, it’s safety and security. When they book with us, we know what a school needs to accom-plish and also know how to keep the students safe while they’re traveling. We make sure that there is security every www.ntaonline.com 9