Stories
Here are just a few of the many stories that prove you can entrust Son Tours with Your student groups.
On two occasions over our 30 years in business, we have had weather situations come up that cancelled our group's return flight home. Booking a flight home for one person is one thing, but for 90 people it is not that easy. It typically takes 4 days of waiting before you can return home if your group flight has been cancelled. That means there are hotels rooms, meals, entertainment expenses that you hadn't planned for. With Son Tours, our groups did not have to pay one dime. We took care of the hotel, 3 meals a day and all of their expenses, even laundry. In one case the group was stranded over Halloween. Target donated bags of candy so that we could trick or treat in the hotel. We even held a Halloween costume contest from whatever the kids could find within the hotel. I heard later that it was the best Halloween they ever had!
On another occasion in Boston, my group had arrived the morning of the Boston Marathon. We were walking and touring on the Freedom Trail when we started receiving phone calls from the principal saying something had happened in Boston. On the trail, a few miles from the marathon finish line, we were unaware anything had happened. But as we were near the Old North Church we had been told there has been a bombing. I had planned to take them to the Bunker Hill memorial anyway, so we decided to leave the immediate downtown area and crossed over the Charlestown Bridge into the neighborhood of Bunker hill. As we crossed over the bridge, we encounter several fire trucks racing back into Boston. While at Bunker Hill we had all the kids call their parents to let them know they were safe. At this point, since authorities did not know exactly what was happening, they jammed phone signals so that no more calls could be made. Fortunately, while we were on our walk, I saw where our coach was parked. The driver was not very familiar with Boston, so I figure he would not go far. We walked back into town and I cancelled our dinner at Cheers at Quincy Market so we could get out to the hotel and find out more information. I rescheduled it for the next night which was fortunate as our dinner on the second night was at Copley Square, which we could not have gotten to as it was closed down.
Once at the hotel we figure out the entire scope of the Boston Marathon bombings. The group made the decision to stay as they had just travelled all night from West Virginia and were not about to turn around and go right back. On the second day we went to Salem and Concord and stayed out of the city. We had the tour field to ourself since many groups had cancelled. By the third day of the tour, we headed back into Boston for our whale watch. The city was deserted, but the police were out in full force and it felt like the safest city in America by that time. The group returned home without any hassle.