Two company-visit mornings, both inside the city, with the coach and the guide held for the cohort all day.
A meeting-room morning with the audio-visual tested beforehand, for case work between the visits.
A health and safety orientation on the arrival evening, before the group goes anywhere.
The Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in one afternoon, all of them within a few hundred metres of each other. Topkapı and the Basilica Cistern on the second afternoon, which is cool and underground after a working morning.
A private boat up the Bosphorus on the last afternoon, crossing between two continents before dinner on the water.
Why the programme is built this way
Nothing moves. Six blocks of programme across four days, every one of them inside the same city. On a longer trip a transfer day costs a day; on a four-day trip it costs a quarter of the whole thing. Keeping the cohort in one city is not a limitation of this programme, it is the reason it works.
Mornings work, afternoons look. The company visits and the case work are in the mornings, when a cohort is sharp and when companies want to receive people. The city is in the afternoons. Nobody is asked to sit in a boardroom after four hours of monuments, and the one underground afternoon is placed after the meeting-room morning on purpose.
The density is the product. Istanbul is unusual: a Byzantine cathedral, an Ottoman palace and a sixth-century cistern sit within a few hundred metres of one another, and the business districts are a short drive from the same hotel. Very few cities let a cohort do serious company visits and see three empires in the same four days. That is why this programme exists rather than a four-day version of something longer.
Feature
Details
Days
5 days, 4 nights; also runs at four days and at three
Working blocks
3 — two company-visit mornings and a meeting-room morning
Intercity transfers
none
Continents
2 — the Bosphorus afternoon crosses to Asia and back
UNESCO World Heritage Site
1 — Historic Areas of Istanbul
Free evenings
2
Itinerary
Day 1 | Istanbul — Arrival and orientation
The cohort is met at the airport and transferred to the hotel. Before anyone leaves the building there is a health and safety orientation — ground rules, local numbers, what to do and who to call. Then the welcome dinner, out in the city rather than in a function room. On a four-day programme the first evening is the one that sets the tone, and a hotel buffet is a waste of it.
Day 2 | Istanbul — Company visits, then the historic centre
Company visits through the morning, inside the city so nothing goes on transfer. After lunch the historic peninsula: the Hippodrome, where the chariot track still shapes the square and the Egyptian obelisk stands where the Byzantines put it; the Blue Mosque, six minarets and twenty thousand İznik tiles, visited around prayer times; then Hagia Sophia, which was a cathedral and then a mosque and carries both. All three are within a few hundred metres of each other, which is why they fit in one afternoon.
Day 3 | Istanbul — the meeting room, then Topkapı
The morning is the meeting room with the audio-visual in place, for case work between the two company days. In the afternoon Topkapı: four courtyards, the imperial collections, and the view down to where the Bosphorus meets the Golden Horn. Then the Basilica Cistern, a sixth-century Byzantine reservoir carried on three hundred and thirty-six marble columns, two of them standing on Medusa heads laid on their sides. Cool and underground, which after a working morning is deliberate. Evening free.
Day 4 | Istanbul — Company visits, then the Bosphorus
A second morning of company visits, the vehicle and guide again held all day. In the afternoon a private boat up the Bosphorus — private matters here, because the cohort sits together, hears the guide and stops where it wants. Ottoman palaces, wooden yalıs, two fortresses that once closed the strait with cannon, and a crossing to the Asian shore and back. The farewell dinner is on the water.
Day 5 | Istanbul — Departure
Transfer to the airport on the common departure flights. For anyone with a late flight, the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar are both short of an hour from the hotel and neither needs longer than that.
How we work with a university programme
The academic content is yours. We make it physically possible, and that is a different job from designing a tour.
Company visits, either way round. Some groups send us the sectors and ask us to open the doors. Others arrive with their own contacts and need only the logistics, the timing and a guide. Both are normal. Send the request as early as you have it, not because there is a deadline but because the more notice there is, the better the doors that open.
The vehicle and the guide stay with the group. On both company-visit days the coach and the guide are held for the cohort all day rather than released between movements. On a four-day programme a vehicle waiting is a great deal cheaper than a cohort waiting.
Meeting space. Booked with the audio-visual tested beforehand. Rooms, breakout space, catering or no catering, a set-up for a closing presentation — arranged to whatever the sessions need, and sometimes it sits inside the hotel's group package. Either way it is our problem rather than yours.
The guide brief. An educational group needs a guide who knows what the cohort is studying, not only what the building is, and who knows which parts of the programme belong to the faculty. We brief ours beforehand.
Yes, and only because nothing moves. Six blocks of programme fit across four days when every one of them is in the same city: two company-visit mornings, a case-work morning and three afternoons out. The thing that makes short programmes fail is the half-day lost to a transfer, and there is no transfer in this one. What four days will not give you is depth in a second region, which is what the longer programmes are for.
It matters more than anything else on a short programme. A hotel on the historic peninsula puts the cohort walking distance from Hagia Sophia and a long drive from the business districts; a hotel on the Levent and Maslak side does the reverse. We choose according to where the programme's weight sits, which on this itinerary means close enough to the companies that two mornings do not start with traffic. Tell us which half of the programme matters more and the hotel follows from that.
Yes, and it works either way: some groups send us the sectors and ask us to open the doors, others have their own contacts and need only the ground handled. On notice, earlier is better and there is no cut-off we would turn you away at. The more lead time there is, the better the companies and the more senior the people in the room.
Yes, and a fair number of cohorts do. The afternoons are the flexible half. Some groups keep only the historic centre and spend the rest in the meeting room or at companies, which makes this a working trip with a city attached rather than the other way round. Tell us the balance you want rather than asking us to guess from the day count.
Any size, and there is no minimum. A large cohort is divided among guides, with the company visits either split into separate tracks or run as one group with the entrances staggered. A small party runs privately. The sites and the sequence stay the same.
The rooming list, dietary and medical notes, the flight details, and the sectors or company names if the visits are on us. Flights matter most on a programme this short: the arrival time decides whether the first evening works, and a late landing costs a meaningful fraction of a four-day trip. Tell us the flights as soon as they are booked and we will say whether the first day needs rebuilding.
Mornings work, afternoons look
A cohort around the meeting-room table, a question across the desk on a company visit, the towers at Levent, and the Bosphorus on the last afternoon.
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