How to Drive More Camp and Field Trip Business in Your FEC

It’s never too early to start thinking about your next big field trip outreach strategy.

There’s an FEC operator-led Facebook group I’m a part of that occasionally sparks amazing operator conversations. Recently, an operator asked how other facilities were marketing and booking school groups and camps. Many others flocked to give their perspectives and ideas, which was terrific to see. A rising tide lifts all boats, and it’s this kind of sharing that I love most about this industry.

It might seem like an odd time to talk about field trips, but it’s never too early to think about your strategy for the season ahead.

To help you develop your strategy, read on for some “crowd-sourced” ideas and a simple process followed by CenterEdge client, Tabatha Porter, general manager of Adventure Quest Laser Tag in New Orleans, Louisiana. Tabatha and her team offer a robust field trip program year-round, so you don’t want to miss her approach.

First things first, if you’re a new operator or this is your first time tackling youth, school, daycare, fundraiser, or field trip groups, check out this getting started guide.

Question 1: What Types of Events Should You Offer?

When it comes to youth organizations, the sky is the limit. Think daycare, school, or camp field trips, spirit nights, sports fundraisers, sports signups and banquets, and also about organizations or clubs like those for honors achievement, ROTC, future leaders, teachers, young entrepreneurs, or even for programs that reward students for things like reading, attendance, grades, etc. For more on fundraising specifically, check out these resources:

• 5 Ways to Put the Fun Back in Fundraising
• How Fundraisers Can Drive Revenue and Goodwill

One operator shared that they have found success by sponsoring honor roll and reading programs and donating $5 game cards as rewards for achievement. While this isn’t a group event like we’re talking about, it can definitely be a good marketing effort to help you develop relationships and stay top of mind for something in the future, in addition to any walk-in revenue you might see.

Question 2: Who Should You Contact?

The answer to this question is pretty much anyone and everyone you can think of and operators have found success by contacting:

• Booster clubs and PTA/PTO organizations (When it comes to fundraising and sports events, these groups are gold)
• Principals and local teachers (Start with your network of people. Who do you know that you could talk to at local schools? Try to make the most of the connections you already have so you can maximize your time.)
• Local neighborhood, community, city, and mom groups (I’m in an active Facebook group for my community, and residents ask and answer all kinds of questions in these groups. I even saw posts recently making sure parents of Ms. Owen’s second-grade class were aware their kids were invited to another student’s birthday party. There could be some great opportunities here.)

Some operators reported having more success personally visiting schools and attempting to connect with principals or administrators, while others employ dedicated sales staff who visit, bring gifts, and attempt to learn about the possibilities.

Other ideas suggest making outreach to schools and youth organizations part of your overall marketing strategy, and that makes a lot of sense, with suggestions for sponsoring things like little league teams, school sports teams, holes at golf tournaments, and more.

Question 4: When Should You Book Them In?

Field trips, daycare centers, camps, and the like are typically booked to fill your off-peak times. Field trips obviously come during the week, and in general, these groups often visit at a lower price point. You can offer a win for them and your business if you fill timeslots where you would otherwise not have a lot of walk-in traffic. You definitely wouldn’t want to offer deeply discounted sessions during primetime.

Some groups, like many daycares and camps, like to visit early in the day during the week. Tabatha at Adventure Quest Laser Tag mentioned that 9:00am is their most popular field trip timeslot and they’re able to charge a premium or require larger base packages to meet the demand. Other operators agreed that early access packages do well for them, particularly with daycare centers who will often have 100+ participants.

Question 5: How Should You Price It?

Pricing is a much larger discussion and operators vary in how they price. The general consensus from the group was that these types of groups tend to have lower budgets but, like with every other sales conversation, it’s important to qualify the needs and spend tolerances of every group. It’s a good idea to put together a package for small, medium, and larger budgets to give you somewhere to start. Consider building packages with and without food so that you can potentially build in additional revenue in advance and have a better understanding of food and beverage staffing and inventory needs upfront.

During every sales conversation with your groups, remember to discuss food and beverage with group leaders so that you can be prepared. It might sound like:

• “Are you thinking you’d like to come for food and fun or just fun this time?”
• “What are you thinking about food and beverage since you’ll be here at lunchtime?”
• “We could put together individual lunch combos, pizzas, or anything else. What are you thinking?”

Question 6: How Should You Reach Them?

How you should be reaching out to prospective groups comes down to the way that each person prefers to communicate. Raise your hand if you love talking on the phone. Raise your hand if you prefer text messages. Raise your hand if email is your jam. Or if you are most easily accessible through direct messaging through Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram. The point is that there are a lot of different ways to connect and you need to get creative and find what works with your prospective buyer.

For example, throughout my travels, I’ve learned that the best way to connect with someone quickly at American Airlines is via app Live Chat or to call early in the morning. Jetblue responds best to Facebook direct messages, though they take about two hours. Southwest is lightning-fast on Twitter. Marriott makes you wait on the phone and Hyatt has a decent Facebook Messenger game. I know that through lots and lots of practice contacting these organizations. People around us are no different, so whether you’re reaching out to an organization without a contact person or an individual specifically, cast a wide net when trying to determine what works.

When I am contacting a prospect for the first time, I call first. After all, I think we can all agree that an actual five-minute conversation is way better than an hour-long text thread. If I don’t get the person, I attempt to leave a voicemail. I then send a quick text, “Hi Jimbo, it’s Sherry from CenterEdge. I just left you a voicemail about an idea/client spotlight/product I wanted to chat quickly. I’ll send you an email as well but feel free to call me on my cell at…. if that’s better for you. Thanks.”  After that, I also send a similar, brief email so that I’m more likely to meet them where they like to be. Once they respond I make a note to use that method more often as a starting point.

Question 7: Ok, But Exactly How Do You Book More Field Trips and Camps?

On my most recent visit to New Orleans with the IAAPA team to plan site tours for the 2025 IAAPA FEC Summit, I had the opportunity to visit CenterEdge client Adventure Quest Laser Tag. The team had already hit the ground running to welcome in more than 2,500 children this summer in camps. They also manage a robust field trip business all year long. Tabatha agreed to share her best booking practices and this is what she had to say.

“For field trip summer camps, we start reaching, no later than April. First, we run a report in CenterEdge, filtering it by field trips for the past three years during our summer camp time period. We then identify the field trips that generated the most revenue and call them first to make sure we have space for them. Prior to calling, we typically send them an email giving them a heads-up that we will be reaching out. We keep track of it all by entering it into our CRM, HubSpot.

Once we’ve contacted all of the larger field trips, we then start contacting the smaller ones. We use a combination of marketing email blasts to all past field trip customers as well as more targeted personal emails from our sales team. We also generate a list from the previous Summer of people who inquired about field trips, but we did not have the date or time that they needed. We make a point to reach out to them prior to doing any form of cold calling.

After we have exhausted all of our current contacts, we start looking at camp directories listed online or printed in local magazines. From there, we try to identify the summer camps that do offsite field trips and contact them via email and phone.

I also have customers who will book this summer for next summer while they’re checking out during their field trip! We get these by asking them if they’re interested in locking in next year’s dates so they get the dates and times that they want. We have very few timeslots left for this summer and we are still getting incoming calls to book every day.

Additionally, we are running a special promotion for our most loyal field trip groups. We are offering our current customers with at least two booked field trips that if they book a third, they will receive a free end of summer party for their staff. End-of-summer camp counselor parties are something else that we try to offer to our current field trip customers. It’s going well.

As far as school field trips go, March, April, and May tend to be our heaviest months. Demand tends to increase closer to the end of the school year. Demand is also very high during testing weeks when certain grades have to be offsite. We use a similar outreach process as our summer camps to contact our past customers, focusing on larger groups, and we start reaching out to those groups no later than February.”

With groups booking year over year and the obvious intention the Adventure Quest team puts behind their efforts, it’s easy to see why they’ll welcome over 2,500 campers this summer alone.

And much of that same success can be within reach for you as well, good luck!