My impressions is that bushibans are also getting into the business of sending kids to do summer language camp or tours in the US. Seems to me like it could be a fairly lucrative business. With all the foreigners interested in getting into the bushiban business or who already own bushibans, I was wondering if anyone had looked into this. If you own or work in a bushiban and are constantly talking to parents and kids, it seems like it’d be pretty simple to also try to sell the kids/parents on the idea of attending an overseas summer camp for a few weeks. It could help your bushiban business by helping cement bonds between the kids that are in your classes and also give your bushiban more “foreign” authenticity. The kids would obviously benefit by getting exposed to American camp counselors and they’d probably have a jolly good time regardless. Most importantly, you can probably charge a hefty price even for a 2-3 week trip because it’s a travel program. You could save because you’re doing everything in groups, so you could get group airfare prices, cook your own food, charter buses when necessary, etc etc.
Personally, I’m interested because I’ve got 160 acres (1 acre = 4,047 square meters) of beautifully wooded land in upstate New York that would be perfect for a little summer camp. It’s far away from cities and suburbs, about an hour south of Montreal and six hours north of New York City. I’m trying to think of how to get some commercial value out of it, and summer camps was one of my ideas. Maybe have to build a few structures for everyone to sleep and work in. In addition to having classes with teachers, this would be the ultimate way to teach English through playing games, because the whole summer camp experience would be constant outdoor experiences and games (all in English of course). Because it’s in the woods, I’m thinking it’d be boy/girl scouts type stuff like fishing, hiking, hunting, camping, and the great outdoors. A big benefit is that costs would be lower than any program sending kids to be housed in the dorms at some university like NYU or UCLA. But the location is close enough to some large cities that we could bus the kids into the cities from time to time for some city fun.
Anyone looked into this before or have experience in the summer camp business?
I’m looking into this very thing at the moment, for precisely the reasons you state. Anyone else have any input?
My immediate feeling is that sending Taiwanese kids into the wilderness is something that will take a whole lot of selling.
You need bathrooms and kitchens, even if they’re going to camp out in tents.
I would imagine that for any commercial operation you also need a license from the local authorities. They will presumably want to inspect your facilities, and check your insurance. Hmm, liability insurance. That’ll be cheap.
Rainy day activities? Academic component? Teachers? Prior Experience?
If you really want the kids to improve, don’t send them to a language camp. Send them to an ordinary summer camp full of native English speakers. It’ll be the best thing that could possibly happen to them. Shipping them halfway around the world to hang out with other Taiwanese kids is a bit of a waste.
There are a lot of programs already out there. We’ve taken kids to Australia, the U.S. and Canada through different camp operators and all with good success. Parents here are pretty keen the idea and there’s definitely a market. Just do a websearch and you’ll find plenty of camp operators out there. It may give you some ideas how to structure your own camp.
About four years ago when I was going through a “got to get the f@@k out of English teaching” phase, I looked into running summer and winter camps in New Zealand.
Having taught “English study camps” in Auckland (New Zealand) some years earlier, I knew I could offer a better product. I wanted to give the kids lots of great outdoor experiences, and keep out of the classroom as much as possible.
In contrast, the groups I taught in New Zealand studied English for about three hours in the morning, and then had an activity in the afternoon. The shortcoming that I saw were that the groups never mixed with other groups or nationalities, and they spent most of their afternoons riding in a bus to and from the activities. It would have been so much better if they had been based in a rural area.
I finally decided against putting my idea past the “bottle stage” because Taiwanese students have such short holidays. How can you run a business for only 1-2 months of the year?
And, of course, the weather in NZ is miserable during July-August. The best way would be to host your camps in the northern hemisphere during summer break, then take a long holiday, then return to Taiwan to start marketing your CNY program which will be down under, then another couple of months in Thailand before it’s time to come back here and start all over.
The different hemispheres things could work to the advantage of camps in NZ/Oz. Imagine the popularity of a ‘fun in the snow’ winter camp in summer, or the attraction of getting away for a week or two’s sunshine in the CNY holidays.
I once looked into it with the ACT state government who run homestay programs for high school kids. Tell them how many kids you want to bring over, and when, and they’ll quote you itinerary.
CK- Could you shed some light on the pricing structure between you and the camp? Do the camps pay you a referral fee to send your students? Or do the camps do a “custom” camp for only your bushiban students and charge you some sort of camp operator fee (which leaves you some room for profit)? What are the prices you’re accustomed to seeing as a bushiban operator?
The camps usually have a variety of programs that we can choose from, including different activities, locations, and time frames. They offer anywhere from ten days to two month programs and are amenable to designing special programs to suit our needs, as long as our enrollment is high enough.
Cost is always negotiable and very dependent on the kind of activities we choose to include in the program. Something like an afternoon of horseback riding obviously costs a lot more than taking the group swimming at a public pool, so all of these things add up. We start with the set price they offer for their standard program and work out a price from there. We usually tend to favor operators that are open to offering discounts for the more students we bring; ie: 30+ students, they give us 10% off, 40+, 15% etc.
The final price they offer ends up having a lot to do with which camps we choose because, on top of their costs, we also have to factor in airfare to the destination in our final price. Obviously, there’s only so much a parent is willing to pay to send their child to camp, so whatever profit we can tack on to the price is pretty much determined by the deal we work out with the operator. It really comes down to volume - the more customers, the higher the margins.
If, as you say, your property is located in upstate New York, I might see this as a bit of a deterent because it would easily raise the costs of airfare by NT$5-10k per head compared to a camp in Vancouver or any of the Western United States. That might be something to keep in mind when you design your programs and set your prices.
I can imagine last minute scheduling is definitely a planning problem for operators, although I think the way around it is to offer better pricing for people that plan ahead. Everything- plane tickets, summer camp, etc etc.- will be cheaper if they plan ahead. There’s always going to be that 20% of customers that want the advance rate and then there’s the 70-80% that only plan a month in advance.
Orange County, L.A. has a huge Taiwanese population. I don’t know if that will help you planning. But it seems kind of odd still for Taiwanese kid to come to the USA to hang out in a Taiwanese community.
When my neice came over to our USA home we sent her to a western day camp and she hung out with PRC immigrants her age in her spare time, since there were more PRC immigrants in our area now.
Don’t really think her English improved that much, but it is better than nothing I guess.
Neo, this could actually be a good idea. There is a lot of business to be made in the eastern European countries. They still value education much as a tool for upward social mobility for their offspring - and contrary to public believe its not all poverty there.
In the west I could imagine there are a lot of parents who would like to give their kids a US summer camp experience. And there is an existing distribution chain through language holidays operators - which are numerous.
An added advantage with European vs. Taiwan kids would be that the Europeans would be forced to use English to be able to communicate among themselves due to their diverse linguistic backgrounds.
Now to take the idea perhaps to the extreme, but how marketing the fact that you have a multilingual European student body right upstate NY to sell to US parents that their kids who learn a foreign language could profit from the camp too. And then you are in business with peer language learning or tandem language learning and the like.
I have worked at an “International Summer Camp,” in Ontario, Canada. It was not specifically geared towards Taiwanese kids. We had kids from all over the world, mostly from Latin America. I find two problems trying to make money from the Taiwanese:
1.) Taiwanese campers compared to the rest of kids of the world (Japan, Korea and HK included) are the more spoiled, whining, pain-in-th-butt campers. I regret being able to speak Mandarin and I had to solve all their problems. The reason is b/c they are raised by over-protective parents and the Taiwanese as a group did not adapt very well. They even had a “teacher” (agent) from Taiwan stay at the camp at the wish of the parents, in case they had trouble communicating and needed someone to spoil them. All the other agents that accompanied the kids to the camp left them in the care of the staff and returned to pick them up. The Taiwnese whined about everything… while the kids from the other countries, took what came at them.
2.) You must look for a camp out west. Eastern Canada and US is too far to travel and costs a lot more for travel. TPE - VAN/LAX/SF/SEA - east coast. It’s a long trip and I think west coast locations are better. I mean the plane ride costs NT$50-60,000 to east coast in the summer. Then you have to pay tuition for the camp: 2 weeks NT$45,000 (2001 price). Plus many of the parenst want their kids to go on a trip to the city afterwards (i.e. Toronto, NY, DC… something big). That would cost another NT$30,000 minimum for a five day trip to the city. Plus the parents need to pay for the agents/teacher to fly with them from Taiwan to the camp, and maybe stay with them. I have thought about this, but too much truoble to start a camp from scratch and easpecially in the east coast. How do you plan to pick up the kids at the airport? They all come in a on different flights at different airports. What about losing kids? Less flying, the better.
I worked at the camp for four years and most of the money can from Latin Americans (Mexico mainly). It’s a BIG business, but you need to have local agents in each country to do this.
What is your goal? Run a camp? Or be an agent selling the camp? There are 100s of these camps in existence already. Owning a camp is VERY rewarding, but there is a lot work starting a camp.
My wife’s been in this business for several years now, and there’s a lot of competition out there. And those companies that have been doing it for a while generally have the best prices cause they’re sending lots and lots of kids. There’s still potential, but if you want to make it big, you’ve got have some connections. Finding the kids is one small part of it (though not necessarily the easiest) … then there’s the ticketing, the host families, the school, the contracts, the insurance, the chaperones, the legalities, etc.
From my understanding, parents are more discerning these days - they won’t just send their kids overseas with any mickey-mouse organization.
