(MONEY Magazine) – Stroll through charming Cape Cod villages. Picnic on St. Croix. Or discover the mysteries of Hong Kong. Sound enticing? You bet it does -- especially to the financial planner or broker who sells you load fund shares partly in hopes of winning an ad hoc contest and the vacation bonanzas that go with it. Promotions like the current John Hancock pitch outlined above are nothing new. But they are relatively novel in mutual funds. If you are not brazen enough to ask your broker or planner if the load fund he or she recommends involves a sales bonus, one good tip-off is that the fund may have a so-so performance record (or such a short one as to be meaningless). Also, funds must disclose the fact that they can offer such incentives in the prospectus. In defense of his campaign, R. Bruce Oliver, chairman of John Hancock's fund group, argues: ''We're doing this to promote name recognition through methods that have proved successful for our competitors.'' Among them, Integrated Resources, a New York City fund group, is currently sponsoring a promotion called Fund Tasia. The big prize is a trip to Switzerland for the top 50 brokers selling more than $500,000 worth of shares in a new group of seven load funds by Dec. 31. Lucky brokers for AMEV Investors, a St. Paul group of six funds, will spend five days on Maui if they peddle $1 million of fund shares by year-end. Salesmen for Kemper and IDS, the big Minneapolis group that is owned by American Express, can also get to Hawaii by meeting certain prescribed goals. Oh, yes, exotic vacations aren't the only freebies. Oppenheimer Management last year promised a Corvette, a Porsche 944 Turbo or a Jaguar XJ-S to the person who sold the most over $5 million of its three newest funds through January 1987 (no car was claimed). And Putnam extended what it called ''a timely invitation'' of a his-or-hers Tiffany watch on a black lizard strap to those who moved $250,000 worth of the firm's GNMA Plus funds by Aug. 1, 1986. Makes you wonder, doesn't it, what some planners have up their sleeves.