Partners · Schools & Student Travel

Every trip your school sends out, protected, and every trip gives back.

Before BonaVia there was Student Traveler: a program conceived to protect students abroad, whose families were often an ocean away. Schools are still the reason this company exists. But the semester in Madrid is only the headline: a school’s real travel calendar is the eighth-grade DC trip, the language-department exchange, the robotics team’s national, the service-learning cohort. Nearly a million student trips a year in the US, most of them booked by a teacher after hours. A partnership is designed to help protect all of it, and to send a sponsorship from every covered trip back to the program that made the travel possible.

Why schools partner with BonaVia

A service to your students. A service to the program.

Your families’ need first: the semester abroad or the DC capstone is the biggest check many families write all year that nothing protects: health plans routinely stop at the border, the airline owes a rebooking and little more, and when it goes wrong, the program office is who answers the phone at 2 a.m. with nothing to offer.

Then the program’s need: school travel runs on fundraising: deposits, candy bars, spring car washes. And every dollar of it costs volunteer hours. The sponsorship attaches funding to money your families are already spending on travel.

The sponsorship funds access

We share up to 40% of what we collect with your school as a sponsorship, in plain dollars the program office can report: study-abroad scholarships, the travel fund, aid for the family that can’t write next year’s check. Travel that funds access to travel.

Zero cost, zero lift

No fee, no minimums, no admin seat to staff. Families pay the same price they would pay anywhere else, and your co-branded page exists the day you sign up: one link in the parent newsletter, one line in the pre-departure packet.

The school never sells insurance

BonaVia is the licensed producer; coverage is underwritten by our licensed carrier partners. Your school introduces the protection and names the cause: the licensing, the disclosures, and the claims stay ours.

Your students carry real help

Every covered traveler has the plan card in their phone’s wallet and a 24/7 assistance number riding with it, so the pre-departure packet includes a number that answers, an ocean from home.

The napkin math

A high school with an ordinary travel calendar, illustratively:

Spring DC capstone: 90 covered travelers
Band trip, robotics national, language exchange: ~120 covered trips
Families’ own travel through the school page: 50+ covered trips
What sponsorship credit a typical active partner organization receives for its cause: ~$1,200+ a year
In program terms: the deposit that puts one more student on the plane

Illustrative volumes and typical-partner sponsorship credit from the BonaVia working model, not a quote or a promised rate. Sponsorship credit is credited per covered trip and scales with travel volume.

The water’s edge problem

The junior spending a semester in Madrid discovers her family’s health plan stops at the water’s edge. Her parents learn international billing at 3 a.m. from a kitchen table an ocean away. Most universities already require international medical coverage for study abroad, including evacuation and repatriation [university education-abroad policies, 2025–26]. The requirement exists because the gap is real.

And the semester abroad is only the headline. About 848,000 students traveled on organized domestic group trips last year [SYTA, 2024], and the average traveling teacher organizes 1.7 trips a year [SYTA, 2024]: every one of them deposits, airfare, and other people’s children. A four-day multistate trip runs $2,156 per student [SYTA, 2024]; when a school closure or a family emergency shuts the trip window, that is a year of fundraising sitting in non-refundable deposits.

The school carries the trust of every family that signed the permission forms, and the travel industry pays the school nothing for any of it. A partnership is designed to protect the whole calendar and send a sponsorship from every covered trip back to the program that made the travel possible.

What goes wrong out there

The Madrid semester

A junior from a Michigan liberal-arts college is six weeks into her semester in Madrid when an appendectomy lands her in a Spanish hospital. Her family’s health plan stops at the water’s edge; her parents are learning international billing at 3 a.m. from a kitchen table an ocean away. This is the exact moment travel protection was designed for: emergency medical benefits and coordination help, so the school’s pre-departure packet is the reason a crisis stayed a story instead of becoming a debt.

The DC trip that never left

An eighth-grade class at a K-8 in suburban Atlanta spends the year fundraising for the capstone Washington, DC trip: $1,400 a student, paid in deposits across three semesters. In March, a norovirus outbreak closes the school for a week and the trip window with it. Trip cancellation protection is designed to help families recover eligible prepaid costs instead of eating a year of car washes.

The robotics national

A high school robotics team from rural Nevada qualifies for the national championship in Houston: flights, hotel, and a crate of custom-built hardware. The connecting flight is cancelled by weather and the rebooking lands them a day late; the crate lands somewhere else entirely. Travel delay and baggage benefits are designed to help with the hotel night, the meals, and the essentials while the airline finds the robot.

Students cross borders at scale

298,180

US students studied abroad for credit last academic year, up 6%: each one a family health plan that may stop at the border.

IIE Open Doors, 2025

~848,000

students on organized domestic group trips last year, nearly all booked by a teacher and carried on the school’s name.

SYTA, 2024

$5.6B

the direct economic impact of student group travel every year: historically, none of it returning to the schools that organize it.

SYTA, 2024

$2,156

the per-student cost of a four-day multistate trip: deposits a family can forfeit if the trip window closes.

SYTA, 2024

1.7 trips/yr

organized by the average traveling teacher: after hours, between classes, on trust.

SYTA, 2024

39%

of student trips are performing-arts travel: instruments and costumes riding in the checked hold.

SYTA, 2024

Figures are risk context, not a description of coverage.

What happens when you sign up

Tell us about your school or program

The programs that travel, the calendar, and the cause the sponsorship should feed. We respond within two business days.

Your page goes live

A co-branded page with your school or program’s name and cause, reachable from the pre-departure packet, the program site, and the parent newsletter the day you sign up.

III

Groups enroll together; families see a price in minutes

The spring band tour, the language-department trip, the service-learning cohort: one organizer, everyone on the same plan. Families answer a few questions and see an honest total for their own trips too.

The sponsorship supports the program

We share up to 40% of what we collect with your institution as a sponsorship, tracked in plain dollars your program office can report.

The year in trips

A school’s travel calendar never actually stops, and every covered trip on it accrues sponsorship:

FallThe study-abroad cohort departs; international students arrive; the college-visit road trips begin.
WinterThe band’s bowl-game trip; the ski club; the debate team’s national circuit.
SpringThe DC and NYC capstone trips; the language exchange; the service-learning trip; spring break.
SummerFaculty-led programs; sports camps; the pre-college summer session abroad.
All yearFamilies use the same school page for their own travel, and at universities, Greek chapters book formal, retreat, and convention travel through it, so support accrues even between school trips.

What could your sponsorship fund?

You name the cause. Every covered trip funds it.

Study-abroad scholarships
The spring trip fund
The band’s instrument repairs
Competition fees
Classroom grants
Teacher travel stipends
The chapter’s philanthropy fund
Aid for the next student who can’t write the check

…or anything else your school cares about: you tell us who. A thousand dollars is a semester’s textbooks, or the deposit that puts one more student on the plane.

Out on the road

The appendectomy in Madrid, and the family health plan that stopped at the border.
The DC trip cancelled by a school closure, a year of fundraising in deposits.
The stolen backpack in Barcelona with the passport in the front pocket.
The connecting flight that missed the robotics nationals check-in window.
The study-abroad student who needed a medical flight home.
The language-exchange host family emergency that ended the trip early.

Talk to a partnership director

Fifteen minutes, and you’ll know exactly what this looks like for your school, from the pre-departure packet to the scholarship it funds.

Tell us about your organization and how your people travel. A partnership director reads every note and responds within two business days.

Or check a trip price first

Sponsorship terms