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Latest progress in the development of new ISO standard in managing risk for youth and school trips

Latest progress in the development of new ISO standard in managing risk for youth and school trips

Consulting

Jan 7, 2020 | Consulting, ISO standard, Risk Management, Travel Safety, Uncategorized, Youth Travel

Photo: Guillermo Zacal, President of ISO Copolco, and Joël Marier, Vice president of EBI Consulting, at the 41st annual ISO/COPOLCO Plenary meeting in Zimbabwe, May 2019

In developing an international standard, there are three phases – first, getting the ISO community to recognize the need for a new standard; second, crafting a roadmap on how we will develop the standard; and third, drafting and getting the standard approved.  This does not happen in a vacuum – 164 countries confer and have to reach a consensus, involving a large range of stakeholders (industry, government, consumers, etc.)

The first phase was completed in May 2019, with the ISO COPOLCO plenary adopting the motion at its meeting in Zimbabwe.  Since receiving the green light there, we have assembled a committee of experts to advance into the second phase.

EBI vice president Joël  Marier is leading a task group of six national standards bureaux (from Germany, France, Japan, India, Trinidad & Tobago and Canada) working on this project to identify industry experts in the fields of education, risk management, and tourism who have helped craft the terms of reference clarifying how this standard will be developed.  We have now started consulting the member countries of ISO COPOLCO to get their approval of this document.

As part of this consultation phase ISO COPOLCO is seeking approval of the roadmap and has asked the member countries, “Can you share any information about national practices, guidelines and methodologies for managing risk for youth and school field trips in your country?” With this, we hope to gather the best practices from around the globe to augment the work to date.

As well, at the annual meeting of the World Youth Student Travel Conference held in Lisbon in October, Joël Marier was elected to the travel safety panel of the World Youth Student Education Travel Confederation.  His input on the panel will help us continue to build support in the international youth and student travel community. 

As we work our way through this lengthy process, we are reminded of why we are doing this: preventable tragedies are unfortunately frequent around the world. In Canada, a teacher has recently been ordered to stand trial after he oversaw a 2017 school trip that resulted in the drowning death of a student. We hope with this standard to avert any other such tragedies from occurring in years to come.

The EBI team has developed an expertise in youth tourism and student travel over the years and is now applying this knowledge to help organizations (through conducting audits and developing policies) to mitigate risk.

For more information, please contact us at joel.marier@ebiconsulting.ca.

Jan 7, 2020 No Comments
2 Degrees Transformational Travel Becomes First Inbound Tour Operator to Earn EBI Level 1 Travel Safety Certification

2 Degrees Transformational Travel Becomes First Inbound Tour Operator to Earn EBI Level 1 Travel Safety Certification

Consulting

Oct 9, 2019 | Consulting, Risk Management, Travel Safety, Youth Travel

October 10, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal – The Canadian company 2 Degrees Transformational Travel has earned the EBI Level 1 Travel Safety Certification, becoming the first international inbound tour operator to achieve such recognition.

EBI Group Inc. launched at the 28th annual meeting of the World Youth Student Travel Conference in Lisbon its Travel Safety Level 1 Certification. This certification uses a rigorous analytical approach to measure where organizations stand in terms of risk mitigation to ensure traveller’s safety and security. Level 1 certifications focus on the areas of regular operations, policies, and staff training.

Safety and security are the new growing requests from young travellers. Reputations and financial goals are at risk. Many businesses and travel networks around the globe are looking at ways to rapidly adapt their operations to the new safety and security requirements. The international team of EBI experts helped 2 Degrees Transformational Travel to protect its long-term reputation through a customized strategy in travel risk management, quality assurance, and the implementation of international safety standards and tools. EBI Travel Safety certifications showcase the progress of organizations that reach specific safety and security benchmarks.

“It is remarkable to see the interest and the progress 2 Degrees Transformational Travel has made in the area of risk mitigation after completing the EBI risk self-assessment tool. 2 Degrees Transformational Travel completed a thorough assessment for its regular operations and, together, we reviewed and refined the effectiveness of its policies. We developed the company’s expertise and practices to maximize safety during travel for students and groups of young travellers. This is the result of a highly focused and structured approach, with clear goals and accountability for reaching international standards in the process,” stated Joël Marier, Vice-president of the EBI Consulting Group.

“Safety and security for our customers is an ongoing agenda. EBI helped us develop our strategy and tools. They were reflected in new policies and staff training materials to better integrate best practices and international standards in our regular operations. The EBI certification will help us position our company on the international market as a solid tour operator focused on travel safety. This certification shows that an independent company has verified our risk management policies and practices. The certification will help us gain even more trust from our partners, student customers, and their parents.” says Kim Carvajal, CEO of 2 Degrees Transformational Travel.

EBI grants two levels of certification. During a Level 2 certification, EBI will assess operations and develop policies to mitigate risk in extraordinary situations. The process includes the implementation of a quality assurance management system to ensure consistency and continuity in risk management best practices.
EBI is committed to achieving sustainable businesses in youth tourism and student travel worldwide by helping them adapt their operations and leadership to safety requirements and opportunities.

About EBI
EBI Group is a premier Canadian-based international consultancy service that offers individually and collectively, value-for-money expertise in youth tourism leadership and management. EBI is leading initiatives at the international level to develop reliable and realistic youth tourism and student travel standards and policies. They are aimed at providing safe, secure and unique customer experiences for young travellers worldwide.
EBI Consulting Group provides total end-to-end solutions by integrating Safety and Security Standards in a comprehensive Quality Assurance system to ensure customized Travel Risk Management.
For mare information visit ebiconsulting.ca.

About 2 Degrees Transformational Travel
2 Degrees Transformational Travel was created to share our values around culture, the environment, and our place in it. We believe in the power of growing young minds, expanding perspectives, and teaching through travel. We use the beauty of Vancouver, Canada, to inspire and connect students to the world around them, from sustainability to new cultures and environmental awareness.
2 Degrees signifies what makes us different from other student travel programs. We teach how closely connected we are to the environment. Our program fosters the “Whom You Know” the “2 Degrees of Connection”, creating pathways both personally and professionally. It also emphasizes the behaviours needed to prevent a 2-degree rise in global temperatures. Most importantly, it refers to personal growth and our goal for participants to experience a 2 Degree shift in their perspective of the world.
For more information visit: 2degrees.travel

For more information contact:
Joël Marier
Vice-president
joel.marier@ebiconsulting.ca

Oct 9, 2019 No Comments
Safety: Who defines it and how do we ensure it?

Safety: Who defines it and how do we ensure it?

ISO standard

Aug 22, 2019 | ISO standard, Youth Travel

From the 8th to the 11th of October, more than six hundred professionals from the youth tourism and student travel industry will be gathering in Lisbon, Portugal, for the 28th annual meeting of the World Youth Student Travel Conference (WYSTC)

Lisbon will be the host of the 28th WYSTC conference in 2019.

Three experts from the WYSTC community will be taking part in a panel discussion on the theme of “Safety: Who defines it and how do we ensure it?” The discussion will aim to answer questions about and provide assurances regarding quality and safety when it comes to international educational travel experiences for young people. Establishing internationally recognized standards and certification/accreditation schemes are some approaches for standardizing quality, safety and other variables. The theoretical question underneath all this is who defines those standards.

The panel will be moderated by Tom Jenkins, CEO of the European Tourism Association (ETOA) and will comprise presenters Christina Thomas, Divisional Vice President for Youth Exchanges at World Learning; Andrew Procter, Managing Director of African Impact; and Joël Marier, Vice President, EBI Consulting Group.

Key elements of Joël’s presentation will cover industry trends and consumer needs, EBI’s experience with certification and travel risk management, as well as a future ISO standard on managing risk for youth and school trips (currently being developed).

Also during WYSTC, EBI will be issuing a travel safety certification: our first to a WYSE-TC member. It will be presented to Kim Carvajal of Study Buddy Tours in Vancouver. This certification process all started with Kim, the CEO of Study Buddy Tours, taking ten minutes to do our online self-assessment.
If your organization is interested in assessing its travel safety policies and practices, please take a few minutes to fill in our free online EBI Risk Self-Assessment Tool. It is a questionnaire which will score your organization in the following five areas:
• Administration and Finance
• Communication
• Training
• Safety and Security
• Commitment and Accountability

Following the self-assessment, those who have filled in the questionnaire receive a free report benchmarking your organization against similarly-sized or related organizations in our database in your industry along with EBI commentary on how to improve.

For more information, please contact us at joel.marier@ebiconsulting.ca.

Aug 22, 2019 No Comments
One step closer to a new ISO standard on school trips

One step closer to a new ISO standard on school trips

ISO standard

Jun 12, 2019 | ISO standard, Travel Safety, Youth Travel

In late May 2019, the 41st annual ISO/COPOLCO Plenary meeting was held in Harare, Zimbabwe.  One of the representatives of the Standards Council of Canada was EBI’s vice-president Joël Marier who presented on the need for a new international standard on Managing Risk/Incidents for Youth on Organized School Trips.  The project to develop a standard was unanimously endorsed by representatives of the 41 countries in attendance

What is ISO/COPOLCO? ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.  One of the international committees is ISO/COPOLCO, which deals with consumer policies.

According to the UNWTO, international arrivals have grown from 0.52 billion in 1995 steadily to 1.34 billion in 2017.  The Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimated 20% of world travellers in 2010 were young travellers.  The Executive Committee Chair of WYSE Travel Confederation has stated that in 2010, young travellers generated 165 billion dollars (USD) toward global tourism receipts.  But there is very little agreement on how to ensure the safety for school trips and a new ISO standard could save lives.

To take a concrete example: in Canada in 2017 a school trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario resulted in the drowning death of a high school student, Jeremiah Parry.  After investigation, in 2018 the supervising teacher was charged with criminal negligence and the case is pending.  This sort of tragedy could be avoided altogether with a stronger risk management approach.

EBI has taken the initiative of promoting a new ISO standard as a solution, based on our expertise in risk management in the tourism sector.

Next steps: the national standards bureaus of ISO/COPOLCO will be asked to vote later this year on the terms of reference of the international workgroup that will be charged to develop this new ISO standard, a process that could take two to three years

If you have any questions or want to know more about the process, please contact us at: joel.marier@ebiconsulting.ca

Jun 12, 2019 No Comments
Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Youth Travel

Jan 10, 2019 | Youth Travel

A government shut down in Washington, China threatens to invade Taiwan, street protests in Budapest and Paris, and the UK deeply divided over Brexit. Welcome to 2019. If you read only the headlines, you would wonder why anyone should get on an airplane and visit another part of the world. And yet look behind the headlines and the story is a very different one.  Absolute poverty globally is now below 10% whereas it was over 90% a hundred years ago. Mass starvation (outside of civil wars) has disappeared and the number of travellers who crossed international borders surpassed 1.5 billion in 2018. In other words, while there are major challenges facing the world such as climate change, the opportunity, the ability and the desire to see this world of ours has never been better.

The team here at EBI makes no apology for having a globalist perspective. None of us will go (nor could we afford to) to Davos to schmooze with the world economic and political elite. Yet we are committed to a better world founded on understanding and a sense of empathy for other cultures and values. Our business is to help other businesses and organisations grow and prosper by making the ability of all people, but especially the young, to travel and see the world, not as a CNN moment but as an appreciation of how 7 billion people live and have to get along on this small blue planet.

In 2019, the millennials in the US will outnumber the baby boomers for the first time. Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping are vestiges of a different age and value system that, notwithstanding their present status, is and will recede. It is to the millennials and their children that we at EBI commit to help see and enjoy the world as it really is and help them create a better world for all. Welcome to 2019!

 

Jan 10, 2019 No Comments
Nighttime excursions in natural settings: a case study from Israel

Nighttime excursions in natural settings: a case study from Israel

Travel Safety

Nov 24, 2018 | Travel Safety, Youth Travel

Educators and tour operators agree that taking school/educational groups on nighttime excursions in nature (whether as a standalone event or as part of a longer trip) could have some substantial added values – participants can have fun, experience nature by night, learn to take personal responsibility and adjust to the realities of the wilderness at night  – to name  a few.

However, nighttime excursions have to also be carefully planned and managed, as normal day time risks can be much compounded in the dark and specific dark hours risks could also be encountered (tripping, getting lost, encountering wild animals – just to name a few).

With that in mind, some countries develop special risk management procedures and regulations regarding youth nighttime excursions and without meeting these , it is not possible to obtain a permit for the night excursion. Some disallow night trips excursions in certain terrains altogether.

For example, in Israel the Ministry of Education requires the following:

  1. Sufficient moonlight on night of the trip – dark, stormy nights are not recommended or suitable.
  2. Terrain must be well trailed, clearly marked, and not be too demanding for the students. Walking in ravines or on cliffs, is entirely disallowed in darkness.
  3. Tour guides must have a preliminary coordination meeting with teachers and chaperons – prior to the night of embarkment.
  4. Tour guide/s must take a preliminary walk in the proposed trail during daytime and mark to themselves the potential obstacles and pitfalls.
  5. Finally, each participant is to have a personal light/torch during the entire walk.

Earlier this month, an Israeli court was deliberating on a law suit filed by a eighth grade student who took a night excursion back in November 2010 with his Jerusalem-based school group
(“Dibros Moshe, Talmud Torah” school, from Jerusalem) in the desert in the Masada area, went astray, and fell from a cliff, breaking few of his ribs and a vertebrae in his back. The court ruled awarded 400,000 ILS (Approximately 110,000$ US) as compensation to the student, finding several major breaches in policy that should not have happened all:

  • The school did not ask for a specific night walk permit from the proper echelons
  • The tour guide of the group did not bother to take a preliminary day walk to assess potential risks on the trail. Though hundreds of groups use this very popular route- this is not enough.
  • The school decided to set out on a rather dark night, in spite of the warning against it.
  • Several route signs were missing, yet the guide did not stop the group from continuing to hilly areas that were not supposed to be part of the trip.
  • Finally, tour staff and professional guides only met first at the time of the night excursion, not having reached the proper level of coordination required.

Furthermore, due to the severe consequences, the judge has forbidden the Israeli Ministry of Education to allow night walks at this area at all, deeming the terrain as “too hazardous for school groups”. Both the dispatching school and the Israeli Ministry of Education were found liable in this case, and therefore, will jointly pay compensation to the student.

Nighttime excursions are one of many possible risks in youth tourism. This is why EBI Consulting Group has set out to develop a new ISO standard on Managing Risk/Incidents for Youth on Organized School Trips.

As part of our ongoing efforts to spread best learnings about risk management, we are soliciting your input and suggestions. If you have examples of similar experiences, please do not hesitate to contact us.

As well, EBI has developed tools to help increase the level of preparedness for organizations – Please take our free Risk Management Self-Assessment Tool.

Please contact EBI Group Inc. for further guidance on this topic and how to arrange for proper procedures before you set out with your group.

 

Nov 24, 2018 No Comments