How to Choose a Soccer Tour Company for Your Club

We are a soccer tour company, so treat this article accordingly. What follows is the list of questions we would want a club to ask us, including the two or three where an honest answer sometimes points at a competitor rather than at us.

The reason to publish it is simple. Most clubs we speak to have never bought an international team trip before, they get three quotes that look superficially similar, and they have no way to tell what the differences actually are. The differences are large, and they are not visible in the itinerary PDF.

First, know which of the three you are talking to

There are three kinds of company that will quote you, and they are genuinely different businesses.

**The large education travel companies.** They run school and sports travel at scale across many countries. You get a US-based office in your time zone, familiar contracts, big-company processes and real financial backing. What you give up is that they rarely deliver the trip themselves. They subcontract it locally, so the people meeting your team are a company you did not choose and did not vet.

**The US-based sports tour brands.** Soccer specialists rather than general travel companies, often founded by coaches, strong on the sporting side. Most of them also subcontract delivery in each destination country. Same trade-off as above, usually with better soccer content.

**The ground operator in the destination country.** This is us in Spain. The company arranging your hotels, buses, pitches and fixtures directly, with its own staff on site. You get local relationships and one fewer margin stacked on the price. What you give up is a US office in your time zone, and you are dealing with a smaller company, which is a legitimate thing to weigh.

None of these is automatically the right answer. A first-time high school program that wants maximum hand-holding and a domestic contract may genuinely be better served by a large operator. A club that wants specific opposition, a specific region and a price without three margins on it is better served going direct. The mistake is not choosing wrong. The mistake is not knowing which one you bought.

So: **question one, who is physically on the ground in Spain, and do they work for you or for a subcontractor?** Ask it plainly. The answer is revealing regardless of which way it goes.

Question two: is this quote ground-only or does it include flights?

This is where most quote comparisons fall apart, and it is not always deliberate.

A ground-only price covers everything in the destination country: accommodation, meals, transport, training, fixtures, staff. An all-in price adds international flights. The gap between them is commonly $900 to $1,600 per traveler depending on departure city and season, which is easily enough to make the more expensive package look like the cheaper one.

Put every quote on the same basis before you compare. Ours is ground-only, from $1,400 per player for 6 to 12 nights based on a group of 20 twin-sharing, because flights from Dallas in June and flights from Newark in April are not the same number and we would rather not pretend otherwise a year out.

While you are there, check what "meals" means in each quote. Full board and half board are different trips for a hungry 16-year-old squad, and that difference is often buried.

Question three: who exactly is the opposition?

This is the vaguest section of most soccer tour quotes and the one that decides whether your players come home having gained anything.

"Friendly matches against local teams" is not an answer. Ask what level the opposition is, how it gets matched to your squad, and what happens if the fixture falls through. A trip where a competitive U16 side plays three overmatched or undermatched games is a bad trip regardless of how nice the hotel was.

The honest operator answer is that fixtures are confirmed closer to travel than clubs expect, because Spanish clubs set their own calendars. What you should expect in writing is the level being targeted, the number of games, and who is responsible when a scheduled opponent pulls out. We match opposition to age and level ahead of the trip, and we would rather tell a club in advance that a fixture is being changed than have them find out on the bus.

Question four: who is actually with the group, and when

Supervision is the question parents care about most and the one quotes are vaguest on.

Ask three things. How many company staff travel with the group, and are they with you for the whole trip or only meeting you at the airport and at fixtures? Are those staff being counted toward supervision, or is the ratio really your own volunteer parents with a local guide appearing at intervals? And where does the group actually stay: a hotel with the squad on its own floor, or shared accommodation with other groups?

Ask what the evenings look like too. Most of what goes wrong on a youth tour does not happen at training. It happens between dinner and lights out, and the companies who have run a lot of these have a clear answer about how that part of the day is handled.

Question five: the payment schedule, and what happens when a player drops out

Players drop out. Someone gets injured in March, a family's situation changes, a senior gets a college offer that changes their summer. It happens on most trips, and how the contract handles it is worth reading before you sign rather than after.

Ask what the deposit is and when it becomes non-refundable, what the payment milestones are, whether the per-player price is banded by group size (it usually is, so losing four players can move everyone else's price), and what the cancellation terms are per traveler rather than for the group as a whole.

Also ask who holds the money. If families pay the club and the club pays the company, the club is carrying that risk on its own balance sheet, which is a conversation the board should have deliberately rather than by accident.

Question six: free staff places, and whether they are disclosed

Nearly every company in this industry includes free places for coaches and chaperones, typically one per a set number of paying travelers. That is normal and there is nothing wrong with it.

What matters is whether it is disclosed. A free staff place is funded out of the paying families' money, so it should appear in the quote where the club and the parents can see it. Ask directly how many free places are included and how they are priced in. A company that answers immediately is telling you something good about how it operates. A company that gets vague about it is telling you something too.

The related thing to watch for, and we will say this even though it costs us: be careful with any offer of a personal benefit to the person choosing the vendor. If a company offers a coach, Director of Coaching or athletic director something of value for selecting them, and the club and families are paying, that is a conflict of interest. Many US clubs are nonprofits with written policies against exactly that, and school programs sit under procurement rules. It is not worth anybody's job.

Question seven: which clubs like ours can we call?

Not testimonials on a website. Names and phone numbers of clubs of a similar size, from a similar part of the country, who traveled in the last two seasons.

Then actually call one. Ask what went wrong on their trip, because something always does, and the useful information is how the company handled it. A company that has never had a problem on any tour is a company that is not telling you about the ones they had.

The things worth checking on your own side

Three of these are the club's job, not the tour company's, and they are the most common causes of trouble.

**International travel authorization.** US teams playing abroad generally need to go through their state association or US Club Soccer, and the timelines are longer than people expect. Start it early and confirm the current requirements directly with them rather than assuming last season's process still applies.

**Passports.** Check every player's expiry date the day the trip is agreed, not three months out. Many countries require validity beyond the return date, and passport renewal is the single most common reason a player misses a tour.

**Insurance.** Assume you are bringing it. Most operators, us included, do not include participant travel insurance in the package price, and reputable ones make it a condition of travel rather than an optional extra. Confirm what your club's existing policy covers internationally, since it may well not, and check that whatever you buy covers competitive play and not just leisure travel. That gap is far easier to close in November than in June.

Where we sit

We are the third type: a Spanish ground operator, running group sport tours in Spain since 2005, with our own director traveling with each group rather than a local subcontractor meeting them at the airport. Our published entry price is from $1,400 per player for 6 to 12 nights, ground services only, group of 20 twin-sharing, flights separate.

We are a good fit for clubs who want a specific region, specific opposition and a direct line to the people actually running the trip. We are a weaker fit for a program that needs a US-based office in its own time zone and a domestic contract, and if that is your requirement we would rather say so now.

Ask us all seven of the questions above. We will answer them in writing before you commit to anything, which is the standard we think every club should hold every company in this industry to, including us.

You can see the full picture on our soccer tours in Spain page, the tournament options on the soccer tournaments in Spain page, and how we work with US groups on our tours for US teams page. When you want real numbers, start the conversation here. If it is a player or a parent trying to get this in front of you in the first place, send them how to get your club to take a soccer tour to Spain.