Joint effort seeks adventurous students

Spokane’s Ambassadors Group Inc. has formed a deal with the Discovery Network to offer adventure trips for students, to start in the summer of 2010.

Ambassadors Group for years has offered cultural-exchange travel for student groups, primarily to Europe and other well-visited locations and mostly through its People to People student ambassador program. That effort will continue. The new focus will be on offering guided travel adventures for students from grades five to 12, said Ambassadors CEO and President Jeff Thomas.

The joint effort is being called Discovery Student Adventures.

Both companies were aware of the lack of guided trips catering specifically to students looking for experiences that combine adventure and learning, said Thomas.

“We’ve never focused on that area before but we knew it was out there,” he said. “We’ve talked to families and students and know that this part of the market is not being served.”

Those trips might include ocean dives in shark cages, zip-lining in Costa Rica or wildlife studies at the poles.

The two companies, Ambassadors and Discovery Education, would share revenue from the travel, Thomas said. The exact terms are confidential.

Thomas added that Ambassadors Group has been looking at how to tap into the area of adventure travel for a while but decided that working with Discovery Education seemed the best fit. He added that Discovery Education, because of its vast collection of educational videos streamed to classrooms worldwide, is a leading nonfiction media and content brand.

“It’s an honor and privilege for us to work with them,” said Thomas.

The cost of the travel trips will be roughly what the People to People cultural exchange programs run, said Thomas. Those range from as low as $2,000 to as much as $8,000 per student.