What an amazing fall season! By the numbers, it was our busiest season yet. Between our fall training in early September and our last trip at the end of November, we somehow managed to squeeze in 39 discrete programs involving 2,200 students. The majority of our trips were repeat programs with repeat clients, in familiar locations: Yangshuo, Sichuan (Chengdu), Hangzhou, Beijing, Fujian, and Guangdong. That being said, all of them involved new elements, including upgraded accommodation and improved activity sites. Some of our clients challenged us to develop more meaningful enhanced community service options, and we responded with new service

Our 2023 “spring season” is now officially over, and it’s time to look back on how everything went. While we were all relieved by the official end of COVID protocols, we were underprepared for the surge in bookings, as old and new clients alike rushed to plan trips. We ran 51 programs for ~2400 students in more than 15 different locations. While we were excited to resume normal business operations, ramping back up to full capacity was challenging. Not only were we understaffed, but we hadn’t run many of our flagship programs since 2019. Most of the venues that we

The last few years have been challenging for everyone, especially for experiential education providers. On the one hand, I feel like we made the best of the situation. We developed new programs in new locations, closer to school campuses. We also used some of the unexpected downtime to improve our internal systems. We standardized our staff training programs, held at the beginning of each season. We upgraded both our internal IT system and the registration portal utilized by students and parents. Finally, we spent time enhancing our standard operating procedures, child protection guidelines, and health and safety protocols. Still, there

2021 had marked a return to quasi-normalcy for Keystone Adventures, and moving into 2022, we were hopeful that this trend would continue. Alas, it was not to be, as the pandemic gained a second wind, and government officials responded with new restrictions and rolling lockdowns. In short, spring 2022 was yet another challenging season for us. Our season officially began in March, with pre-season training in Yangshuo, for new and returning full-time staff. While other companies had cancelled their training activities, we decided to press ahead, so that we could resume running off-campus programs as soon as conditions allowed. Our

As our fall 2021 season comes to an end, I thought I would take the opportunity to summarize some new developments and lessons learned from the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. Compared to our most recent spring season, the fall 2021 season was significantly more challenging for us. First, a small outbreak in Jiangsu over the summer caused a spate of cancellations and a delay to the start of the season. By October, it appeared that things had settled down, only for new cases to crop up again, this time in North China. Fortunately, most of our remaining programs were in Central

We are proud to announce that Keystone Adventures has officially resumed normal business operations! 2020 was a challenging year for us, as the overwhelming majority of our clients decided not to run any trips, due to uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic. Without any programs to operate, we spent the year retooling and redeveloping. Specifically, we developed more than 20 new programs in sites close to our client schools, to eliminate the need for flights/trains. We redesigned and expanded our comprehensive training program for new staff. We upgraded all of our IT systems, including both our internal staff portal and the