About Us
Travel to Learn is a division of NZ Travel Brokers. Our travel advisors are all bonded members of the New Zealand Travel Agents Association (TAANZ) through NZ Travel Brokers. This affiliation gives you assurance that your finances are secure through a bond and trust accounting system, ensuring all payments are made directly into the NZ Travel Brokers trust account. Funds for your trip are used exclusively for that trip, with payments to suppliers typically made only 90 days before departure.
​
With over 90 years of combined experience in arranging international educational trips for students worldwide, our dedicated team of travel advisors combines travel expertise with educational insight to highlight the value of overseas study trips, both academically and socially. We specialize in creating enriching experiences for secondary school-age students, aiming to inspire them beyond the classroom and deepen their academic understanding.
​
We offer a wide range of services when it comes to School Group Travel/Educational Travel. We help facilitate immersive tours, including language tours, history tours, geography tours, art tours, commerce tours, sports tours (including but not limited to rugby, cricket, netball, hockey, karate), and more. We can organise homestays, language lessons, school visits, cultural studies, and many other opportunities for students to enhance their learning. We organise domestic and overseas travel & tours primarily for schools in New Zealand, but we also organise some tours for Australian-based schools.
Our offerings include a variety of standard tours as well as custom itineraries designed to meet the unique needs of each group. Additionally, our outdoor learning programs are crafted to engage and motivate students who may struggle in traditional classroom environments. We have strong relationships with the School Travel Collective (as a founding member) and the Student & Youth Travel Association, who both have a strong focus on creating a high standard for school travel. You can see more about both of these organisations here.
Founder & Consultant
Fiona Atkinson
​
The founder of Travel to Learn back in 2009, Fiona has successfully operated with the added benefit of support of NZ Travel Brokers and has been one of NZ Travel Brokers leading operators during that time. She has now stepped back from the day-to-day running of the company and acts only as a consultant to the groups advisors (highlighted below) who have a wealth of experience in handling school groups.
Group Advisors
Amy Turuta
​
Amy started her travel career with United Travel in 2002, where she worked for 8 years culminating in a role as Senior Groups Consultant before joining NZ Travel Brokers and now Travel 2 Learn as a Groups Specialist. Over the years Amy has arranged exciting itineraries for school choir groups to the USA and Europe, Cadet groups to Vietnam, China, and Canada, Geography groups to Japan, French classes to Tahiti, Kapa Haka groups to Dubai, a wedding in Italy, plus multiple sports teams all over the world and domestically. Amy was also fortunate enough to spend time living in the Cook Islands where she arranged multiple itineraries for sport, cultural and family groups travelling to Rarotonga and Aitutaki while working as the Sales & Marketing Manager at Crown Beach Resort which involved arranging weddings and corporate conferences and retreats. She has travelled with a number of the groups she has arranged, so has first-hand experience with what works and what doesn’t all contributing to a unified booking process from start to finish.
Rochelle Julian
​
Rochelle’s travel career began in 1992 with Ski and Self Drive Wholesaler, Value Tours based in Sydney where her passion for group travel started. After 8 years she moved on to Gullivers Sport Travel in Sydney, a specialist group operator. During her 11 years at Gullivers Sport Travel she set up music and sports festivals, arranged school group tours and itineraries for destinations all over the world, sent 100’s of passengers on Rugby World Cup Tours, and looked after incoming passengers for British Lions tours. She also joined some of the adult groups as their tour leader. Rochelle returned to NZ in 2011 and was employed by House of Travel as a leisure consultant for a short time before joining NZ Travel Brokers in the Support Team as a Groups Consultant in 2012. She was a member of the support team until 2020 and after a short COVID-enforced break has re-joined as part of the Travel to Learn broker team. She has a wealth of experience in school group travel including sporting, language, cultural, commerce, arts, and history tours through to specialist groups such as adult art tours and volunteer programs.
Sam Hedge
​
Sam began her extensive travel career in the UK 1992 working for Bob Mortimore Travel for 10 years where she was part of the Malaysia Experience division creating tours and itineraries for groups and individuals to Malaysia. She then progressed to Branch Manager where she was Head of Corporate travel and sent distillery companies to South America and Europe to sell their products. In 2002 she joined Capital Travel in Wellington where she was a Senior Consultant arranging travel itineraries for Labour and National MP’s and sent UN speakers to Europe to participate in overseas events.
​
In 2010 she joined NZ Travel Brokers and during her time with NZTB, and now Travel to Learn, she has organised a number of school groups, including amongst others, a Commerce tour to USA, a French Tour to New Caledonia, an Australian Choir group touring New Zealand’s churches. Sam also arranges School International Departments Marketing trips throughout Europe & Asia and manages the travel arrangements for NZ Football Clubs overseas and NZ tournaments. She has sent several Baseball and Softball teams to the USA and Japan to participate in local tournaments and is also involved with a professional baseball team here in New Zealand where she arranges all their group travel through NZ, Australia, USA, and Japan along with facilitating the import of players from overseas.
Management
Andrew Bowman
​
Earlier in 2018 Andrew Bowman joined NZ Travel Brokers as an independent director. Based in Auckland, Andrew is a director of BFT Management, his own consulting business that provides governance, advisory, management, mentoring and support services to the travel industry. He sits on the TAANZ Board and is the immediate past president of that industry organisation. He has recently been elected as the inaugural Chair of School Travel Collective. He has worked in the travel industry for 39 years, with experience in all aspects including retail, group, wholesale, brokers and corporate travel management.