How We Price Our Trips
Image Credit: Ben Banet
One of the core values of Peaks is accessibility to everyone in the USC community, which is why it's so important to us to make sure our trips are affordable so anyone can participate, regardless of socioeconomic status.
How do you price trips? What does that money go towards?
To make this possible, all trips are priced according to the approximate cost of the upcoming trip. Before each trip release, our Finance and Operations teams use current gas, parking, or park entry fee prices to calculate costs for every individual trip, following a basic formula to ensure the lowest price possible.
The fees you pay mostly go towards the logistics of the trips you go on, like driver reimbursements or entry fees, and the general overhead expenses of running our organization, like keeping our website functioning.
Any additional profits go directly towards enriching the club, so that money is cycled back around to you. By using that money to purchase critical items like first aid kits, camping gear, and stickers for our participants, we can then provide better value to you because we're able to improve the Peaks experience for your future trips.
Are your trip leads paid for leading trips?
Our trips leads are not paid or compensated in any way beyond the amazing experiences they get to make by connecting with all of the lovely people who come on their trips. They plan and lead all of our trips strictly on a volunteer basis.
Why are there different prices for every trip? What's the difference between standard & driver prices?
You might have noticed that we have two separate prices for each trip - a price for drivers and a price for standard (non-driving) participants. As we're completely student-run, we rely on a team of individuals to make our trips work. Among the most important of these individuals are our drivers. They ensure that we get to where we want to go, and are rewarded with a discounted rate in return for making it possible for standard participants to come on our trips too. If you want to read more about what driving for Peaks involves and the benefits of being a driver for us, including the reimbursement system, you can check out our post about it.
Can you provide discounts or scholarship funds for your overnights?
Our trips are priced as low as absolutely possible and our overnights are actually already subsidized to be even more affordable, so unfortunately we can't provide scholarship funds for any trips at this time.