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For easy trips, join the club
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November 4, 1999: 6:05 a.m. ET
Travel clubs offer vacations without headaches for the planning-averse
By Staff Writer Alex Frew McMillan
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - When Sally Brown's travel club takes a trip to Mazatlan, the members step on the plane and jet down to Mexico in their own 727. No waiting around the airport, and nothing to worry about once they get there.
They leave Indianapolis in the morning and aim to check in by noon. The club sets up snorkeling or sightseeing trips, golf or discos, or people can just hit the beach.
"It's kind of like a country club feeling, but when you get off the plane you have four or five different options," said Brown, director of Ambassadair Travel Club. The club has 41,000 member families, with around 120,000 members in all, making it the biggest air travel club in the country. "I truly believe it's addictive," she said.
No planning needed
The flight to Mazatlan runs $399, with the whole trip costing $828 a head for four days and three nights, or $678 per person for a couple.
That's not a steal. But for people who find logistics a logistical nightmare, a travel club takes any struggle out of traveling. The club takes care of meals, tips, transfers to the airport, all those pesky details you have to think about when you fly commercial and make your own plans.
Travel clubs aren't for the backpacker or budget traveler. "It's for people who like to be with other people, and like to be taken care of," said Carolyn Dodek, executive director of Vienna, Va.-based Shillelagh Travel Club. The level of accommodation stretches from a moderately priced trip to high-end luxury in a small trip heading up the Amazon or a barge vacation in the Burgundy wine region of France.
What the clubs offer is convenience at a relatively reasonable price. All members have to worry about is whether or not they need a bathing suit and a passport. Seniors particularly like having the hassle removed and enjoy the camaraderie that comes with traveling with a group of friends.
What you give up in freedom, you make up in getting a bulk rate and having everything taken care of. And clubs try to cater to different tastes, making sure not everyone pays for endless sightseeing and bus hopping if they'd rather be mountain biking and hiking instead.
Ambassadair runs around 450 trips a year, jetting in and out of Nassau for a $249 day trip, for instance. Or it goes farther afield with humanitarian trips to Haiti and adventure tours to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Active members average around two trips a year, Brown said.
Clubs used to be all the rage
Travel clubs were all the rage at the dawn of the jet era in the late '60s. Shillelagh, which started in 1964, was the first U.S. travel club to own its own plane. Many more clubs sprang up over the next few years, enough to prompt the Federal Aviation Administration to create a separate licensing category for them.
The high price of conventional air travel fueled their popularity. At their peak in the early '70s, around 30 travel clubs owned their own planes nationwide. But cheaper commercial airfares brought on by airline deregulation, coupled with the skyrocketing price of fuel in the energy crisis, decimated their ranks. Now travel clubs are few and far between.
Nomads Inc. in Detroit expects to run 77 trips this year for its 12,000 members. They pay first-year dues of $400 to join as a single person or $800 for a family, and then $120 a year no matter how many people in a family belong. The club owns a 727 that it bought from the now-defunct Pan American World Airways and has modified it, ripping out the first-class section and reducing the number of seats from 176 to 145 to give passengers more room.
Trips range from high-end, such as a $6,000 to $9,000 charter on an Air France Concorde to Paris London and then back on the Queen Elizabeth II, to quick trips such as a weekend jaunt on the club's plane to Martha's Vineyard or to North Carolina for furniture shopping. For special events, particularly the smaller trips farther afield, it charters a plane or buys in bulk on a commercial flight rather than take its own plane.
Only two clubs still have an interest in their own planes. The Nomads owns its 727, and Ambassadair charters the 727 it uses year-round and the wide-body L-1011s it uses for big trips a few times a year from its parent company, Amtran Inc. (AMTR), through its charter and commercial airline American Trans Air.
The Shillelagh Travel Club now runs 71 trips a year for its 1,900 members, but it works mainly through commercial flights and a few charters. The only other survivor of the earlier travel club boom is Denver-based Ports of Call, which went out of business but was restarted in February 1995.
It has 2,300 members, and operates like Shillelagh, with around 50 trips a year on commercial flights and charter planes, as well as land-based trips. It once had as many as 12 planes. It's considering returning to its roots by buying a smaller plane, up to a 50-seater, according to executive vice president Nancy Waite.
You can save money and -- most important -- time by having your own plane, according to Nomads President Jim Heckman. For the Martha's Vineyard flights, "we leave at 9, you can be on the island at 10:15 and be at the hotel at 11. So you can start enjoying your weekend right away."
Main advantages: service, convenience
Competing on domestic U.S. fares is hard for the travel clubs, and the main attraction they add is convenience and extra service, such as having a concierge-like travel organizer to sort out your stay once you get to your destination. For international fares, particularly to the Caribbean and Mexico, the clubs try to undercut commercial flights.
Clubs are also good at organizing travel to out-of- the-way spots. The Shillelaghs have trips planned to Canada to watch the beluga whales in Hudson Bay and to see polar bears in Churchill, and to see the turtles in the Galapagos. "Wildlife is a very popular subject," Dodek said.
Another particularly popular type of trip is the "mystery tour," which is often the best-seller. That's true for Ports of Call, which organizes one each year, telling members just the cost, the average temperatures, how many dressy items they'll need, and how many meals are included.
Members seem to like the randomness of not knowing where they're going, Waite said. This year, the trip went to Jordan and the Dead Sea for $3,789. Last year, they went to Dubai. Ports of Call tries to make the high-end trips special with events such as a farewell evening in the Dubai desert, complete with bellydancers, henna painters, calligraphers and a falconer.
Both Shillelagh Travel Club and Ports of Call specialize in trips for seniors. Nomads skews to a similar, though slightly younger audience -- the median age is 60. For Ambassadair, 42 percent of its members are over 55. But all the clubs try and target some trips to a younger audience, and Ambassadair in particular offers a number of adventure and activity vacations, such as skiing trips and snowmobiling in Yellowstone.
Tips on picking a travel club
There are many other manifestations of travel clubs that are often little more than discount travel agencies. But other than the air-travel clubs, AAA and American Express both offer popular travel-discount programs for members, for instance.
Do your research before you join a travel club, suggested Laurie Berger, editor of the Consumer Reports Travel Letter. "Travel clubs may be a good thing, offer you some really good savings, but make sure you do your homework," she suggested.
The U.S. Department of Transportation licenses charter-aircraft carriers, so you can make sure an air travel club is in good standing, she suggested. And make sure the charter company or club does the maintenance on planes it owns rather than outsourcing it to a third-party company that doesn't have a public face and doesn't have the same incentive to do a good job.
Other concerns really just amount to whether you're getting a good deal. Travel clubs often do have good prices, she thinks, especially for seniors.
Watch for restrictions on deals and add-ons such as car rental, she said. Even if you're offered a 20-percent-off deal through a club, choice may be restricted and the cheapest company may not be available. If you're offered special airline discounts, you may not get the cheapest fare if you're limited to certain airlines that a club deals with or owns.
Look at the sponsoring organization of any club. They're likely to offer the best deals connected with their main line of business. And for any travel package, realize you're paying for the whole thing whether you use it or not.
"I believe there's a lot of great marketers out there who know how to package things," Berger said. "Are these goodies that you want and need to pay for. Or is it bells and whistles that you don't need?"
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