Only a few of my travelers are still missing some of the forms that I requested before we travel. I already have all of the tip money divided into envelopes that are labeled for each tour guide and bus driver. I also included Alaska magnets as tokens of remembrance from us and our state. Meanwhile, I've set up the room arrangements for our first hotel stay. In short, aside from the final packing, I'm pretty well set for the trip.
There are a few things that I think that I will do differently in planning for the next trip:
1. I would have the travelers pay me via Venmo, PayPal, or check for their tip money rather than in cash and then withdrawn the money from my account (perhaps in manageable chunks). At present, I have entirely too many small bills which is making for some bulky envelopes. Honestly, I'm almost tempted to go with a company (like Worldstrides) that includes the tip money in the original cost of the trip.
2. I would round the tip money up to the nearest $5 from what EF Tours recommends. Not only would this eliminate many of the $1 bills I now have to handle, but the recommended tip amount was short of the amount I needed to provide a full tip to all of the tour guides and bus drivers. The additional couple of dollars per person would have mostly filled that amount (rather than my paying it myself).
3. I would set up my Remind app at one of the early meetings to get everyone on right away (I could remove those that drop later). That way I could use the app to send out meeting reminders as we approached the trip date.
4. I would make it clear that the charter bus payment was a required element of the trip from the start. A lot of my stress is concerning some of my travelers not making it to the airport on time. The amount per person would have also been much more manageable (especially when more than one traveler from a family is going) and thus would have more participation.
In truth, things are working out well even without my having done any of the above. I'm glad that I downloaded a traveler spreadsheet from the EF site, set it to an online Google Sheet, and added some of my own categories so that I could keep track of who has turn it what. I even set up "conditions" so that it would color code based on whether certain items were turned in or not. Right now, it's almost all in the "greens" and "blues" with only a few "pinks" showing.
I just need to figure out the packing.