EF Tours blog

What’s one surefire way to gain and mantain customer interest? Become a trusted source of content. EF Educational Tours’ blog does just that. With articles ranging from student stories to destination guides to partner profiles (and a whole world of posts in between), the blog serves as a content hub for everything student travel—and informs, prepares, entertains, and inspires travelers along the way.

Moments with Mirka

At EF Tours, we partner with a lot of great people—especially our amazing Tour Directors. So we started making video profiles to show how incredible they are. But, we needed an equally incredible place to house these videos. I worked with a designer to create a system and structure that would templatize these articles but still give each post the freedom to express the unique tenor of each Tour Director’s personality, and wrote the article plus all of the footer copy that is now used in the entire series. (To read the full article, click here.)

Designers: Kristi Oster, Will Crawford
ACD (copy): Heather McHugh
ACD (design): Adam Schwartz
Video shooter & editor: David Blumer
Producer: Alex Corcoran

Best Day Ever: Tokyo

We wanted to find a unique way to highlight our Japan tours. So we decided to do that through our “Best Day Ever” blog series, an insider’s city guide to locals-approved sites and bites. I took the lead on content, interviewing one of our Tour Directors Kumiko, crafting her perfect day in Tokyo, writing the article, and managing our team’s relationship with her. (To read the full article, click here.)

Designer: Michelle Peck
ACD (copy): Heather McHugh
ACD (design): Adam Schwartz
Producer: Addison Dlott

The 7 best travel podcasts for students

Because students often sign up for tours years in advance, we need creative ways to keep them excited. I pitched this listicle about staff-recommended travel podcasts to address that need and to help readers connect with EF by showcasing the real people who work here. I did all the work that comes with writing—interviewing, researching, etc.—and also worked as a strategist, collaborating with marketers on brief building and planning. To read the full article, click here.

Designer: Amanda Bentley
Marketers: Rachel DiBattista, Sophie Henneman
Editor: Sarah McLaughlin
ACD (design): Adam Schwartz
Producer: Alex Corcoran

Walking around Rome
with Patrizio: The magic
of taking it all in

Now that the Tour Director profile template was templatized, it was time to feature another story: Patrizio’s. It was clear that Patrizio was part Tour Director, part philosopher, and part really cool guy. I leaned into his comments on slowing down and created an angle for the piece: Patrizio lives by the concept of il dolce far niente, or the sweetness of doing nothing. I used lush language, colorful imagery, and focused on how he truly epitomizes a culture—and can authentically share that culture with all his travelers. I also named the video. To read the full blog post, click here.

Blog takeover: Student travelers show their photos of D.C.

What’s the best way to show customers the impact of your product? Have other customers show it. That’s why EF gives students disposable cameras on tour, asks them to take photos of whatever they want, and shares them on online. For this iteration of the series, I decided to not just let the photos speak for the students—but their quotes speak for them, too. We kept the quotes true to their middle school voices, and I grouped them into subheaded categories, which we put directly into the films in the design. To see the full post, click here.