At Son Tours, we are passionate about providing safe, immersive, once-in-a-lifetime educational travel experiences through our customizable student tours.
TRAVEL. TOUR. LEARN.
Founded in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, Son Tours is a student travel agency that has been providing high-quality, full-service school tours for over 20 years. Since then, it has been our passion to organize domestic and international school trips customized to fit a variety of curricula. Our experienced and licensed educational travel operators know that the key to a successful school trip is a balance of accommodation of educational needs and the utilization of only highly experienced tour guides. Our goal is to create experiences that educate students while keeping both our clients and their students happy, and our efforts don’t stop with our tours. We believe every child can succeed when given the proper resources, which is why we’re also a proud Children International sponsor. Learn more about our partnership, and how you can donate as well.
Why Customers Trust Us as Their Educational Travel Company
We maintain a 95% client retention rate and an A+ Better Business Bureau rating. Plus, we are certified by the Student Youth Travel Association (SYTA). Why? Because we put our clients and their students’’ needs first. Our team of trained and knowledgeable student travel operators understands how to organize and carry out a worry-free and highly engaging school trip.
Our Team
John Nelson
President
Our founder and president, John Nelson, has over 25 years of experience in developing, managing, and leading both foreign and domestic educational tours. He has over 35 years of experience in management and travel, and he has worked and lived for more than six years in Europe, namely in Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. He served honorably in the 82nd Airborne Division in the Army and has a working proficiency in both Russian and Italian. He also holds an MBA from the Business School Lausanne in Switzerland.
Mr. Nelson founded Son Tours due to his love of travel, and he truly believes that visiting the locations where history happened and experiencing these places firsthand promotes students’ cognitive retention and self-improvement, leading to an overall more engaging educational experience that lasts a lifetime.
Dana Nelson
Vice President
Dana Nelson graduated with an MBA from the Business School Lausanne in Switzerland and lived in Switzerland and Italy for over six years. She has also lived in Washington, D.C., and in New York City, and has extensive travel experience throughout North, Central, and Eastern Europe. She has working proficiency in both Italian and French. Ms. Nelson has over 25 years of experience in finance and accounting with both Son Tours and the CIA.
Ms. Nelson currently heads the Son Tours financial department, and she thoroughly enjoys interacting with the teachers and principals in charge of the school tours to help create a low-stress, rewarding experience.
Chuck Keller
Director of Operations
Mr. Keller has been the Director of Operations for Son Tours for over 14 years and has more than 30 years of experience with business management and travel. He served honorably in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army and lived in Italy, particularly in Vicenza, for over 15 years, leading to fluency in Italian.
Mr. Keller believes that learning about history, both the history of the country in which you live and history of nations abroad, is one of the key cornerstones of developing into a good citizen, and therefore he loves working with these historical tours. He also enjoys watching the students’ enthusiastic interaction with the Son Tours’ guides as they learn from them and the landmarks they explore.
James Rogers
Executive Director of Operations and Administration
James Rogers spent 26 years honorably serving in the U.S. Air Force. He has worked and traveled in over 30 countries and is a retired Atlanta area pastor. For the last 15 years, he has been working with Son Tours to help prepare itineraries to ensure students have the maximum opportunities to see and learn about historic landmarks, and he truly enjoys helping students learn about the history surrounding them.
Karen L. Weyandt
Director of Sales
Karen Weyandt has a B.S. in Marketing from the University of South Carolina and over 35 years of sales management experience in Information Technology and Human Resources industries, including 10 years of student group leader experience in upward of 15 foreign countries, in addition to Washington, D.C. and New York City tours. This has enabled her to be well-versed in the processes of both sales and educational travel. Ms. Weyandt joined Son Tours five years ago to fulfill her passion for the value of student travel, having been with her own three children for many student trips and still reliving those cherished memories. She and her husband enjoy traveling in their free time, too, so travel has become a major part of her life.
Joni Goldin
Senior Tour Coordinator
Joni Goldin graduated with a B.S. degree from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and has over 20 years of experience traveling in both the United States and in Europe and has more than ten years of experience in travel coordination for others. Over the last two years with Son Tours, she has organized thousands of students’ travel excursions.