For their honeymoon in 2019, Brian Sugrue and his wife took
a cycling trip in Portugal with
DuVine Cycling + Adventure Co., when they’d
been treated to farm lunches and dinner in the home of a winemaker. Last fall,
unable to travel abroad during the pandemic, Sugrue, who lives in Boston,
signed up for one of the company’s new American trips — in Vermont — with a
group of friends.
اضافة اعلان
“I’d never looked at paying to just do a trip in the United
States in part because we’re in the United States and I’m only two hours from
southern Vermont,” Sugrue said.
The four-day experience, roughly $3,800 a
person, including lunch on a farm and a dedicated chef who cooked outdoors at
their inn, exceeded his expectations.
“I’d been there two to three dozen times, and we barely touched
a road I’d been on before,” he said.
Americans taking luxury group tours of America is not the
norm; those are often designed for travelers going abroad. But with
international tourism stalled by travel restrictions and border closures, some
US operators are taking the opportunity to sell backyard travel to domestic
travelers based on their expertise, secured access to popular things like
national park lodges, and practical matters like flexible cancellation
policies.
“Our value proposition as a tour operator is strengthened at
a time like this,” said Terry Dale, president and chief executive of the United
States Tour Operators Association.
Based on where its members say they want to travel, the
outdoor retailer REI is shifting all of its adventure trips to domestic
destinations by June.
Abercrombie & Kent, well known for its African
safaris, will offer American safaris among its five new stateside itineraries.
Globe-trotting operator G Adventures created a “United States of Adventure”
collection of 15 domestic itineraries, including three new trips in the Western
national parks and Hawaii.
Luxury tour operator Classic Journeys has doubled
the regions in the United States that it visits. And after Intrepid Travel sold
out its early trips in Utah and Alaska, it added 29 domestic departures.
With increasing rates of vaccination in the country and
demand for travel rising, tour operators are anticipating a mostly American
restart this summer, offering new slates of guided or custom-planned
itineraries to see the national parks and states with wilderness to spare, such
as Alaska.
Baby steps and flexibility
Though the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to caution against discretionary travel for the unvaccinated, many
Americans, encouraged by the vaccine rollout, are making summer plans. The
latest tracking study of US travelers by Longwoods International, a market
research firm, found 88 percent have travel plans in the next six months, the
highest number in over a year.
“Some people are a bit
nervous about traveling and not ready to make the big step to Asia or Africa,”
said Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures. “Baby steps are first to start
local.”
To encourage them, companies have eased their cancellation
policies, subjects of the most frequently asked questions by travelers,
according to USTOA, the tour operators association.
At Intrepid Travel, guests can transfer their trip deposits
to another itinerary up to 21 days before departure. G Adventures allows
rebooking up to 30 days predeparture on 2021 trips booked through June 30. VBT
Bicycling Vacations offers refunds on trips canceled up to 91 days before
departure.
While planning your own trip is a thrill for some, it’s a
task for others, which is where tour operators step in, touting themselves as
time savers and destination experts.
Caroline Turenne, 17, of Seekonk, Massachusetts, booked a
July hiking trip in Utah with G Adventures, based on the company’s knowledge of
the area.
“When we were looking at Airbnb rates, we figured we’d be
better off traveling with a guide that would know the area, the best things to
do, and to walk us through it,” she said.
Health and safety protocols
Group departures will, of course, be different this year. As
the pandemic continues, operators are cutting group sizes to allow for social
distancing and ensuring that their guides are at least tested for COVID-19, if
not vaccinated.
Touring national parks, hard-to-book lodges included
Competition for the best accommodations or even a campsite
in a national park may also sway travelers to tour companies. At Yellowstone
National Park, for example, visitation in 2020 outpaced 2019 every month from
July through December.
“Last year was more spontaneous, but this year I’m seeing a
return to preplanning,” said Aaron Bailey, who offers his guiding services in
the Yellowstone region through ToursByLocals, including a three-day trip for up
to four people priced at $4,200.
“They’re going for a guide because they want a
good experience and don’t want to be caught up in the race.”
Although there’s a perennial summer rush on national park
accommodations, the difference this year “is that campgrounds and cabins are
going first versus hotel rooms,” said Betsy O’Rourke, chief marketing officer
for the Xanterra Travel Collection, which manages several national park
accommodations. Many lodges are already sold out for much of the summer.
One way to get a room in a park is to book with a tour
operator (though quickly, as many dates this summer are sold out). National
Geographic Expeditions, for example, has eight-day trips that visit Grand
Canyon, Bryce and Zion national parks from May into October and include coveted
stays in two of the three parks (from $4,995 a person).
Tauck’s eight-day itineraries in Yellowstone and Grand Teton
national parks include park lodging (from $4,390). From the Jackson Lake Lodge
in Grand Teton, travelers set out to raft the Snake River.
A stay at Old
Faithful Inn in Yellowstone gives guests unlimited access to the namesake
geyser. The trip works its way north with a night at the park’s Mammoth Hot
Springs Hotel before spending a day riding horses at a Wyoming ranch and
continuing east to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.
Alaska, the next frontier
For all the interest in wide-open spaces, one of the
widest-open states, Alaska, does not expect a return to prepandemic activity,
given that large ship cruises are unlikely to resume sailing this year (small
ship tours with companies like Lindblad, where ships carry no more than 100
passengers, will continue).
In 2019, before the pandemic, cruising accounted for 60
percent of summer visitors to Alaska.
“We are open even without large cruise travel,” said Sarah
Leonard, president and chief executive of the Alaska Travel Industry
Association, noting that some travel businesses are now pursuing small group
tours and independent travelers.
Tour company reported a more than 50 percent jump
in Alaska bookings this summer. Responding to demand, Backroads recently
increased its departures there, including a six-day, multisport tour in and
around Kenai Fjords National Park, with hiking, cycling and kayaking excursions
(from $3,949 a person).
Prepandemic land tours to Alaska were already booming at Off
the Beaten Path, a small-group and custom tour operator that specializes in
active and national park travel, and have grown since. Its 12-day “True Alaska”
tour starts in Katmai National Park looking for bears digging for razor clams
and fishing for salmon, and ends in the vast Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
and Preserve for flight-seeing and glacier hikes, with overnights in wilderness
lodges (from $9,300 a person).
“Before the pandemic, Alaska was seen as remote, clean,
wide-open spaces, so naturally that was one of the first blips to come back to
the radar screen,” said Cory Lawrence, president and chief executive of Off the
Beaten Path.
With the lack of big-ship cruises, John Hall’s Alaska
Cruises & Tours added a seven-day catamaran trip that uses Juneau and Sitka
as lodging bases, with day trips aboard a 24-passenger boat to visit Glacier
Bay National Park and Preserve, watch glaciers calving in Tracy Arm Fjord and
look for whales, bears and other wildlife (from $2,455 a person).
“It will never replace cruise ships in Alaska, but at least
we’re trying to operate and send some traffic to local mom-and-pop businesses,”
said Elizabeth Hall, the company’s chief operating officer.