Some of the best educational travel experiences don’t begin with a finished itinerary. They begin with a conversation, a question, or a school looking for something a little different.
That was exactly the case during one of our recent trips to Athens.
When a group from MFR IFACOM, a French college with students studying sports management and related subjects, first approached CAS Trips, they were looking for something specific. They wanted a program that would allow students to explore sports not only through athletics itself, but through leadership, sustainability, community engagement, and the social structures surrounding sport.
At the same time, CAS Trips Athens Destination Manager Sabina had already been building ideas around Athens as a destination uniquely suited to these conversations.
“The inquiry actually came at the perfect time,” she explains. “I already had partnerships and ideas I wanted to explore further. Athens naturally inspires themes around movement, wellness, philosophy, and sport.”
Long before this specific program existed, Sabina had been thinking about the city through the lens of the Olympic Games, the Marathon route, and the Ancient Greek idea of kalokagathia, the balance between physical excellence and intellectual or moral development. Even small moments while working in the destination helped shape the vision. While shadowing one of her first trips in Athens, she picked up a book called How to Stay Fit Like the Ancient Greeks, which only deepened her curiosity about the relationship between athletics, philosophy, and daily life in Ancient Greece.
Rather than simply adapting a pre-existing itinerary, Sabina immediately reached out to her team on the ground in Athens, local partners, workshop leaders, educators, and CAS Trips Trip Leader Alexandros, whose background and interests made him the ideal person to help bring the experience to life.
Building an Itinerary Through Relationships
One of the things often overlooked in educational travel is how much relationship-building happens behind the scenes long before students ever arrive at a destination. For Sabina, creating this program meant weeks of conversations, outreach, brainstorming, and problem-solving.
Some activities already existed in smaller forms within previous Athens itineraries. But once the school shared its goals, she began developing the sports theme much more intentionally. She reached out to existing community partners, searched for new collaborators, and worked to connect every piece of the itinerary back to the students’ interests.
“I was really excited when this inquiry came,” she says. “It allowed me to create something from scratch together with our community partners and trip leaders.”
That collaboration became central to the experience.
Sabina worked particularly closely with CAS Trips Trip Leader Alexandros, who ultimately led the group on the ground in Athens. Half Greek and half French, he brought a unique perspective to the program. Not only did he understand both cultures and speak the students’ language, but he was also personally passionate about sports and athletics himself.
“When you’re designing a thematic itinerary, the trip leader becomes a huge part of how students experience it,” she explains. “Alex immediately understood the vision.”
She also leaned heavily on her network in Athens, connecting with sports professionals, local educators, workshop facilitators, sustainability experts, and community organizations. Some partnerships took significant time to organize, especially experiences involving interviews and conversations with sports clubs and managers.
“Sports structures in Greece are very different,” Sabina explains. “Many are state-owned, so organizing interviews and access was challenging. There were a lot of conversations behind the scenes.”
Still, those efforts created opportunities that students would not normally encounter as tourists, including getting to interview a local sports educator on the grounds of the Panathenaic Stadium itself.
Exploring Athens Through Sport, Wellness, and Community
The final program combined historical learning, physical activity, social impact, and cultural immersion in a way that felt uniquely tied to Athens itself.
Students explored the Panathenaic Stadium, learned about the origins of the Olympic Games, and traced the history of the Marathon. Each of these was unpacked through the lens of cultural and political ideas deeply woven into Greek identity.
Sabina also developed worksheets, reflection activities, and interactive elements to help students engage more actively with their experiences. “There’s obviously something very powerful about learning about the Marathon while standing in the place where that story began,” she says.
In addition to the ancient history element that Athens naturally lends itself to, the focus was very much on the role of sport and community in the city today.
One of the most meaningful partnerships came through Yoga and Sport with Refugees, an organization using movement and sport to support and employ refugee communities in Greece. Through workshops focused on inclusion, injury prevention, and accessibility in sports, students explored how athletics can create belonging and connection during difficult periods of life.
The instructors themselves came from refugee backgrounds, and students were encouraged to think critically about the role sport can play beyond competition or entertainment. “For me, it was important that the trip wasn’t only about sports performance or management,” Sabina explains. “I wanted students to see how sport connects to community, inclusion, and well-being, too.”
Sustainability also became part of the conversation.
At one point during the planning process, Sabina reached out to local hiking and sustainability organizations, hoping to incorporate environmental themes into the itinerary. One conversation led her to a university sustainability lecturer and a passionate local hiker who eventually became part of the experience.
“It’s one of the reasons local partnerships matter so much,” Sabina says. “People genuinely wanted to support the students and help make the experience meaningful.”
Why Cities Like Athens Work So Well for Thematic Educational Travel
Cities like Athens lend themselves to the successful realization of diverse themes because so many ideas can overlap naturally: movement, democracy, philosophy, wellness, sustainability, leadership, public life, and community. Rather than forcing a theme onto a destination, the strongest programs often grow from the stories, history, people, and partnerships already rooted within it.
For younger students, those themes can become hands-on and experiential. Older students can take the hands-on experiences and connect them directly to academic subjects such as sports management, sociology, history, or leadership studies.
And importantly, the destinations continue to evolve.
One of the biggest outcomes of this trip was that the itinerary did not stop developing once the students returned home. Instead, the experience encouraged our team to continue refining and expanding Athens as a destination for sports-themed educational travel.
“That’s really how these programs grow,” Sabina says. “You learn from each group, every conversation, every activity.”
Today, CAS Trips feels confident offering Athens as a destination capable of supporting a wide range of thematic experiences, including sports management and wellness, sustainability, leadership, and social impact.
More Than “Customization”
At CAS Trips, customization is not simply about changing activities on a spreadsheet.
The real work happens through immersion in a destination, close relationships with local partners, and collaboration between destination managers, educators, and trip leaders who understand how students learn best through experience.
This Athens program became a strong example of that philosophy in action.
A school arrived with a specific interest to integrate into their trip abroad, and our destination manager brought years of local knowledge, curiosity, and community connections. A Trip Leader helped translate the vision into an experience students could genuinely connect with, and local partners added perspectives that students could never gain through sightseeing alone.
Together, those pieces created something much more meaningful than a standard itinerary. And, as with all of our destinations, our offering in Athens will continue evolving, shaped by the city, the people within it, and every future group that arrives with new questions to explore.
