How would your client like to be a fashion designer in Italy or a monk in India for a week? A new program from Perillo's Learning Journeys called "My Week As..." will be offering these types of opportunities in 2020. This kind of immersive travel has been the benchmark for the operator, a division of Perillo Tours, for the eight years since it was founded.
The president of the company, Carol Dimopoulos, said the company's mission has always been to make travel a serious educational experience. The operator specializes in special interest programs-no matter the interest or the destination. Although a part of Perillo, Learning Journeys ventures far beyond Italy to all parts of the world.
Dimopoulos started Learning Journeys after a career both with tour operators and as a university professor-which she continues to be while also pursuing a doctorate and running the business. She sums up the way travel advisors need to sell her product this way: "Agents need to ask clients not where they want to go but what their interests are."
Among recent Learning Journeys excursions were a belly-dancing tour of Morocco and a rug-hooking excursion to India. The trips, while they include traditional sightseeing, said Dimopoulos, "are an investment." She explained that travelers come back with new skills and even certifications.
In addition, there is a community service element to every program where groups meet with locals and learn from them while the operator makes donations to various causes. For example, one group met with an organization in Nepal that fights human trafficking.
The "My Week As..." program will allow participants to live in a culture as a local and experience a career path such as running a bookstore, working as a photographer, model, fashion designer, artist, chef and more. It's a great way, said Dimopoulos, to test the waters of a new career.
While most of its programs are customized, Learning Journeys does offer set itineraries. Three new family vacations were recently launched, including a nine-day "Italian Family Discovery" through Rome, Florence and Venice; a 10-day "Southern Africa-Botswana-Namibia-Zimbabwe" river cruise; and a seven-day "Peru: A Family Adventure in the Andes." All of them offer extensive educational opportunities.
Since the time Learning Journeys started, traveler numbers have doubled every year as multi-generational travel grows and the craving for experiences explodes. "Once you sell one of these trips," said Dimopoulos, "you have a client that is loyal for life."
Also new is a Learning Journeys Professional Development Series, which are enhanced fam trips accompanied by Dimopoulos. They include a combination of classes and hands-on learning experiences that help agents learn how to sell transformative travel and create their own brands around their own special interests.
Recently, Learning Journeys took 25 agents to Italy for an immersive trip that involved mornings in the classroom and afternoons visiting olive oil plants and so forth.
The next professional development excursion will be to India and Ethiopia with an emphasis on personal growth and reflection in India and culture and history in Ethiopia. The trips offer 10 CEU credits at the Travel Institute.
The big differentiator for Learning Journeys, said Dimopoulos, is that it is truly about professional development. For these agent trips, advisors are interviewed to make sure they are sincerely interested in learning about this kind of travel. "If they ask what hotel we're staying in," said Dimopoulos, "they're disqualified." She personally works with agents to guide them in their training.
The operator wants to train agents to approach universities and nonprofits, to serve as "ambassadors" for Learning Journeys. An agent doesn't have to be an expert in a subject because Learning Journeys will do that for them.
Trips are four-star and above, but there is also a luxury option. Dimopoulos said one mother and her adult son take an annual immersive trip worth about $100,000. One was a Dracula trip to Transylvania and another a World War II Trip. "These high-end trips," said Dimopoulos, "are really special to the point where we close museums for clients."
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