Our CoMpany
Values, vision, and a deep history.
It takes good people working together to make your travel experience perfect.
Our Values
Relationships. We create enduring connections rooted in authenticity, collaboration, proactivity and mutual respect.
Trust. We build strong bonds by keeping our promises, persevering through challenges, and acting with transparency, consistency and integrity.
Service. We apply our knowledge, empathy and creativity to make the world a better place for our educators, our students & their families, our communities and each other.
Responsibility. We own our attitudes, we hold our work to the highest standards, and we bring our best selves to all situations.
Our Mission
We make the student group leader’s vision for travel a reality by developing meaningful relationships with our clients & partners, providing industry-leading service and attention for every group, and combining substantial buying power with the personalized touch of a family-owned company.
Our Vision
Our vision is to be the group travel company that brings dreams to life – with clients who look to us first, employees who can’t imagine a better place to collaborate, and partners who share our dream for a perfect travel experience.
Our History
In the fall of 1981, Bob Rogers set out to fill a need. The resources weren’t plentiful, but the vision was grand: to create a group travel company that understood the unique needs of student groups and made it easy for educators to take their students on amazing trips. Bob, a former band director with 10 years of teaching experience, knew the impact that travel could have on a student’s life. So he withdrew his retirement, converted his son’s percussion room into an office, and went to work.
From the beginning, relationships were key to Bob’s success – many of the company’s first clients were Bob’s friends and colleagues. In its first year of operation, Bob Rogers Travel took performance and education groups to the Walt Disney World® Resort and the World’s Fair in Knoxville, TN. Bob traveled with every group, calling home to collect messages and returning phone calls from pay phones when time permitted.
With a year of trips behind him and a desire to continue building meaningful relationships with his clients, Bob typed up a single page newsletter and began mailing it to his friends so they could keep up with their colleagues. Bob’s son and daughter, Tami and Todd, made their first contribution to their father’s company by sitting on the family room floor, folding newsletters and preparing them for mailing.
Today, Bob’s vision for exceptional service and attention to detail is carried out by travel professionals in seven states, who help clients in over 30 states travel across the country and around the world. That single page newsletter has evolved to become the current TRAVELnotes magazine, which is distributed twice a year to over 9,000 group leaders. Tami and Todd now serve as the leaders of the company. Throughout this growth, Bob’s original vision for a company that cared about people, relationships and worry-free travel experiences hasn’t changed.
With Bob’s vision as our guide,
Bob Rogers Travel is making moments that matter.
The personal touches that BRT provides. Your company gets to know the people they work with. I have never felt like a "number" with BRT.
Leslie Schmidt
Class Trip, 2018 DC tour
Columbia Central Junior High School
I appreciated the flexibility Bob Rogers showed us with the billing and various payments we had to make. We thought we were adding more and ended up not but you were great about giving us extra time to work out what we needed to on our end.
Loraine Wistrom
Band, 2017 Chicago tour
Plum Grove Junior High School
BRT is always on top of all details. Even when something has slipped through the cracks, changed, or something unexpected comes up, BRT is flexible enough to make the changes needed to make everything right. We have always been so well taken care of and the personal attention is what makes your company special.
Dameon Place
Band, ’18-19 Orlando tour
Pella Community High School
This was my 5th trip with Bob Rogers, and I appreciate the professionalism and also the willingness to work with me and my students to make each trip the very best it can be.
Trey Jacobs
Choir, ’18- 19 Atlanta &Tuscaloosa Tour
Nashville School of the Arts
You make the process so easy - step-by-step of what needs to be done, guidance along the way, available (and quick) to respond to questions and making me feel like me and my students are your priority.
Beth Vaughn
Choir, ’17-18 New York City tour
Bowling Green High School
The quality of service that you provided us with was second to none. The organization and communication were exceptional and we always felt we were in “the loop” on things both before and during the trip.
Bob Mecozzi
Band, ‘17-18 Orlando Tour
Amos Alonzo Stagg High School
BRT hands down has been the absolute best travel company I have worked with in my 18 years in education. My interactions with BRT have always been so much more than just traveling from one destination to another...the focus has always been on people and providing them with experiences of a lifetime.
Barry Houser
Band, ’17-18, Ireland tour
University of Illinois
From the scheduling, to planning, to overseeing, to leading, to customer service, everyone involved was courteous, prompt, and hospitable. Everyone did their jobs well and turned the trip experience into something better than we had anticipated.
David Dvorak
Band, ’17-18 Nashville Tour
Lakewood Middle School
Very Organized - even when problems develop. We've gone on enough trips with Bob Rogers to know how BRT operates - always first class, always prepared.
Joe Carl
Band, ’17 Los Angeles Tour
Sumner High School
The whole BRT team was extremely attentive, accommodating and reliable. Every detail was attended to and my stress level the entire trip was at an all-time low.
Joel Vanderheyden
Band, ’17-18 New Orleans Tour
Jefferson College
