With barely enough time to finish the endless amount of assignments and papers that come with attending university, throwing sightseeing into the mix can seem like just too much.
But En Route, a new travel tourism club on campus, is trying to make traveling in the Lower Mainland more affordable and convenient for UFV students.
“We wanted to start this travel tourism club in the school based out of campus,” Savannah Waite, the club’s secretary, said. “University is not just being on campus, it’s beyond that. This is our idea of taking everybody elsewhere with people who live here.”
The club, which has only recently been approved as a club with the Student Union Society, will host monthly day trips.
“We’re for domestic and international students,” Waite said. “We want to have that intercultural connection with all students. Not only are we going to Vancouver, for example, you can talk to people that live here and connect with them that way.”
The idea for the club came from En Route president Preet Sahota’s time working for UFV International, where she noticed a need for the group on campus.
“All the students said that they wanted to get the whole city experience, but they don’t have the transportation to get there and back,” she said. “We wanted to make that accessible for students.”
The group will operate independently from UFV International, which also hosts trips for international students to places such as Service Canada, but without the tourism aspect.
“We’re trying to bring in the whole tourist component of it,” Sahota said. “We have an entertainer, headsets, souvenirs, stuff like that.”
Along with providing transportation, Sahota and the rest of the En Route team is also working to keep all trip costs as low as possible.
“We want students to go at a very low cost so we’re trying to get all the funding that we can,” she said. “We really want to have students go at a low price.”
Although the club has only been in operation since the start of this semester, they’ve already garnered a lot of interest on campus.
“So many people have been signing up,” Waite said. “It’s really cool, they’ve been looking for something like this.”
En Route’s first trip will be on Sept. 30. For more information or to register email enrouteufv@gmail.com, or visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/enrouteufv.
