Housing & Meals: Your Home Away from Home

• Tailored Matching: Using your Housing and Medical Background forms, we identify critical details like pet and food allergies, dietary restrictions, and personal interests to find your best match.

• Vetted Environments: Every housing provider—from homestays to lodges—is personally vetted by our onsite staff through interviews and home visits.

• Onsite Support: Your Arcos onsite director is available throughout the program to address any housing questions or cultural nuances as you settle in.

• Advance Preparation: Two weeks before your program begins, you will receive your specific housing details via email, including a description and contact information so you can introduce yourself.

The Homestay Experience

Living and sharing your experience abroad with a homestay is one of the important highlights of being abroad. In fact, this can be the most enriching and lasting aspect of spending time in a foreign country. Many of our participants maintain lasting friendships with their homestay long after the program ends. Typically, two to three students are placed per homestay. Our homestays make up an important part of our team; hosts are carefully selected and interviewed, and have extensive prior experience.

Meals & Local Flavors

Meals are a highlight of the journey. Most meals are included and are provided by your homestay or at curated local restaurants. We take great pride in our ability to accommodate special dietary requests and preferences with advanced notice, ensuring every student is well-nourished and ready for adventure.

Hotels, Guest Houses & Lodges

• Hotels: Almost all of our programs use some portion of a hotel stay, typically rated 3 stars. Hotel stays are mainly used on our excursions outside of the program city and on programs with a travel component. Rooms are doubles, triples, or quadruples.

• Guest Houses & Lodges: For many of our "Active Discovery & Wellness" programs that involve hiking or trekking, we utilize local guest houses or lodges (such as mountain or rainforest lodges). Sleeping arrangements in these locations are typically communal.

We maintain strict standards for our housing through a pragmatic, relationship-first approach. Most of our homestays have been working with us for many years and have extensive experience hosting international students.

To ensure the highest quality of care, every homestay family is personally vetted by our onsite staff through in-home inspections and detailed interviews. We rely on professional references and, most importantly, we continually monitor host performance through rigorous student and parent evaluations. This ongoing feedback loop ensures that our "structural foundation" is built on families who are truly dedicated to the student experience.