The inaugural Varsity Summer Trip, a five-day trip for Oxford University and Cambridge University students to Malta in early July 2025, will be launching its first ticket release on Sunday, with ticket prices starting at £760. With recent speculation about its authenticity online, including from the Instagram account ‘Overheard at Oxford’, what do we really know about the initiative?
Co-founder Israr Khan, a DPhil Law student at Oxford and President of the Oxford Union in Hilary 2025, told Cherwell that the trip aims to fill the gap in “organised events catering specifically to Oxbridge students during the long summer break”. The event, which is unaffiliated with the more established winter Varsity Trip, promises “festival-style parties, themed summer balls, and iconic beach nights in historical locations”.
Concerns were raised over Varsity Summer Trip not being a registered company. As of 2nd April, it is a private limited company, incorporated some time after the Instagram account promoting it was established. An initial ‘coming soon’ post was published on 29th November 2024 in addition to a further ‘get ready’ post, including ticket information, on the 27th March.
The company’s directors are Oxford alumni Adnan Rafiq and Ayyaz Mallick. Khan told Cherwell that the company also has five permanent employees, including a “Student Engagement Officer” and a “Finance and Compliance Officer”, though he declined to provide specific names, citing data protection and privacy laws.
Cherwell can reveal that the Varsity Summer Trip Instagram page was repurposed from the Instagram page for the “#REVIVE” slate for Oxford Union elections during Khan’s unsuccessful campaign to be President in Hilary Term 2024. Prior to this, the same account was also used for Theo Sergiou’s campaign to be Sabbatical Officer of the Student Union in Hilary Term 2022. In addition, the account was briefly employed for the “Jan Royall for Oxford Chancellor” campaign in Michaelmas Term 2024.
Regarding the company’s funding sources, Khan said that it is “funded through a combination of startup loans, external funding, and personal investments from the founders”. When asked about concerns surrounding the event’s budget and capacity, he said that the trip “is designed for 300 participants” and in the event that this target is not met, the trip has a “comprehensive contingency plan in place, including a reserve fund to ensure financial security and an insurance policy to cover unforeseen circumstances”.
In response to concerns about insurance, Khan told Cherwell they have “applied for membership with both ABTA and Trusted Travel”, though they do not yet have such cover. Khan also provided Cherwell with Employers’ Liability and Public Liability Insurance documents.
Director Adnan Rafiq told Cherwell, in response to claims that they had sold tickets for the trip as early as December, that while an earlier timeframe for ticket sales was explored, “[n]o ticket sales were initiated, promoted, or posted on any of our official channels, and there has been no prior trip under this banner. More importantly, in December our website was live but in the testing phase.”
Rafiq added that criticism of the trip was related to “unfortunate political narratives (…) particularly in relation to past Oxford Union dynamics” and that “If [they] had launched this initiative without having people like Israr and Moosa as part of the initiative, there wouldn’t have been any reaction from those individuals.”
Cherwell contacted two of the Oxford college representatives listed on the website, but both claimed to have little knowledge of the plans. They declined to comment.
