January Snows Mean Travel Sales

NY Times

FOR years, Linda Graef Jones planned the family ski vacation over Christmas or during Presidents’ Day week, to coincide with her children’s school vacation. That meant paying the usual holiday premiums for airfare and lodging, and dealing with throngs of skiers and snowboarders on the mountain. This year, with both her children in colleges that have longer winter breaks, she is going in January instead.

“January is currently the softest-looking month for cruise pricing of the year,”

“It was a no-brainer,” said Ms. Graef Jones, a sales executive for an insurance brokerage firm in New York. She had a variety of less expensive flights to choose from, she said, and estimates she is saving more than $500 a night on the cost of the condominium. “Lodging was relatively inexpensive,” she said, and without the crowds, “you can ski and get a lot out of your expensive pass.”

Also, she added, “it’s nice to get out of the holiday craziness.”

January may be the best time of year to take a vacation, as passenger traffic drops and resorts, airlines and cruise companies all roll out deals. Yet the start of the year is often overlooked when it comes to vacation planning: families return to school schedules and New Year’s reveling is traded for resolutions of eating in, working out and spending less. And it’s no wonder. People are tired, or broke, or dreading the thought of getting on another plane.

“You could call it vacation fatigue,” said Evan Eggers, president of the cruise vacation site SureCruise.com. But a lot of travelers are missing out. It’s a great time to travel, Mr. Eggers said, “since you’re escaping the cold and getting a killer deal.”

Just how killer? Discounts range from 30 to 50 percent compared with the holidays and other busy travel periods. Hilton Hotels just introduced a January Sale with weekend rates 33 percent off hotels in North and South America. The average domestic airfare for a weeklong trip departing Saturdays in January is $274 round trip, according to Bing Travel, the Microsoft search engine that predicts airfare prices. That’s down from about $447 on average for Christmas week.

January and February also have the fewest airline passengers, according to the Department of Transportation, easing the airport experience. And with fewer crowds, you could have that beach or fresh powder trail all to yourself.

So it’s time to shake off that holiday hangover and plan a trip. But don’t just jump at the first cheap fare that comes your way. Think about what you want to do once you get there in order to find the best destination for your budget. Though Florida beckons with bargains, the water can be chilly in the winter, and temperatures, while warm, tend to hover in the 70s or even lower. So you may want to look farther south to Caribbean cruises. But if pub crawls and hot springs are your thing, Reykjavik may be just the place, with two-night packages, including flights from New York or Boston, from $499 a person at Icelandair.com.

To help you plan your post-holiday escape, here are some of the best bargains for popular winter getaways, whether you’re seeking, sun, snow or a cruise vacation.

Sun lovers: It’s high-season for cold-weather getaways like Hawaii cruises and the Caribbean, where warm sands beckon sun worshipers, and discounts tend to be scarce. But it’s still a heck of a lot cheaper than it was over Christmas. And some resorts are offering extra incentives to fill rooms in January. The Reef Resort on Grand Cayman has Summer in January rates from $230 a night, down from $325. On Nevis, Nisbet Plantation Beach Club is offering seven nights for the price of six with its January Thaw package. The deal starts at $3,750 based on double occupancy — $630 less than a similar package over the holidays — and includes daily breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner.

Hawaii’s deals may soon dry up as Alaska, Continental, Delta and Hawaiian Airlines add flights next year, bringing more visitors. So strike now to nab a bargain like $135 a night with breakfast at the Hotel Renew, half a block from Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. On the Kohala Coast, Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, normally $600 a night, has rooms from $450 with a fourth night free.

Deal seekers may get the most bang for their buck from Mexico cruises, which are still offering discounts to win back visitors scared off by reports of Mexican gang and drug violence and the H1N1 outbreak earlier this year. Fares are about 40 percent less to Cancún in January on average compared with the December holidays, 34 percent less to Puerto Vallarta and 30 percent less to San Jose del Cabo, according to Kayak.com.

Occidental Hotels & Resorts, which has six all-inclusive properties in Mexico, is running a winter sale with rates starting at $81 a person a night at the Allegro Nuevo Vallarta, north of Puerto Vallarta, for travel beginning Jan. 4.

Snowhounds: The snow is falling and so are prices at ski resorts this January. Four nights and three-day lift tickets at the Village at Squaw Valley near Truckee, Calif., start at $828 a person, according to Ski.com, down from $1,115 a person last January and $1,383 a person in December. Bachelor Gulch Village in Beaver Creek, Colo., is offering 25 percent off lodging, a $50 resort credit and three-day lift tickets for the price of two, bringing four nights in a two-bedroom with three days on the mountain to $642 a person when four people share a room. Last January a similar package was $868 and didn’t include resort credits or the lift-ticket special.

Vancouver may seem out of reach as it readies itself for the 2010 Winter Olympics in February. But it’s cheap if you go now. “Visitors assume the host city is busy in the months leading up to the Olympics,” said Emily Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Tourism Vancouver. “We’re not.”

For less than $400 a person, skiers can fly round trip to Vancouver from San Francisco or Denver and stay two nights at the Fairmont Hotel with United Vacations, Jan. 11 to 28, according to Travelzoo.com, and hit the local ski slopes at Grouse Mountain, Cypress and Mount Seymour.

Cruisers: “January is currently the softest-looking month for cruise pricing of the year,” said Evan Eggers of SureCruise.com. The average price of a seven-night cruise on major lines such as Princess Cruises is about $600 a person, he said, compared with $900 in December.

Some cruise lines have adopted airline-style yield-management strategies and are now changing prices multiple times a day, according to Mr. Eggers. Travelers can check for such rate cuts by clicking on Price Cut Tattletale at SureCruise.com and sorting by date, line or region. There was a 7-night Western Caribbean cruise from Galveston, Tex., starting at $420 a person (down from $2,033) on Royal Caribbean Cruises, for example, in a recent search for January; a $650 a person (down from $2,464) 14-night Amazon River cruise from Manaus Brazil to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Princess; and a $300 (down from $2,599) seven-night Hawaii cruise on Norwegian.

Another site for spotting deals is CruiseMarketplace.com. And if all you want is a diversion, consider Norwegian’s one-night sail to nowhere on the Norwegian Gem, from just $159 a person. It departs New York on Jan. 2 and 23, cruising about seven miles out to sea so it can open the casino and duty-free shops, and then returns to its starting point.

Huge Savings on Mexico Cruises - Lock In The Lowest Prices on Mexico Cruises

Reeling Mexico hopes travel deals bring back the tourists

USA Today

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico — During a visit to San Diego in April, Pratik and Priti Chavda thought they'd slip over the border into Tijuana just to do a little shopping, have a quick meal and say they had made it to Mexico. But upon hearing the plan, staffers at their hotel sounded the alarm.

"Swine flu! Drug cartels! Don't go!" Pratik Chavda, 32, recalls them warning of his Mexico cruises.

Six months later, the Chicago couple have finally made it south of the border, where they're enjoying a meal of grilled shrimp with a panoramic view of a golden sunset. And they didn't even have to wait for a table.

What started out as a gangbuster year, with international tourist arrivals up about 6% in the first quarter, came to a screeching halt in late April when Mexico became the first to report an outbreak of the H1N1 virus. The flu scare, coupled with news accounts of gruesome drug-related violence, caused visitors to stay away in droves. From April to June, tourist arrivals plummeted by more than 19% over the previous year.

Discounts are also recession-driven

Now, flu furor has quelled somewhat. The State Department lifted its virus-related travel alert in May, by which time Mexican officials were being lauded for their efforts to contain the outbreak. The drug wars still rage, but they've always been primarily confined to select areas, far from where mainstream tourists tread. (However, the State Department in August updated a travel alert advising Americans to avoid unnecessary travel to the states of Chihuahua and Michoacan.)

At this point, many believe, it's the lingering global recession that may be casting the greatest pall over Mexico's desires for a robust winter tourist season. In Cancun, the nation's No. 1 vacation destination, arrivals are down 12% over last October.

Travel wholesalers "are telling us we're in the same (booking) range as the rest of the Caribbean," says Jesus Almaguer, head of Cancun's Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Of course, we'd love to be better, but given the situation, it's not that bad."

Maybe not. But with a hotel building spree in many sun-drenched spots, competition among Mexican resorts has heated up. And that's likely to spark more rate reductions and value-added cheap Mexico cruises in the coming season.

"There are some really good deals out there," says Laura Del Rosso, the Mexico contributing editor for the trade publication Travel Weekly. "Even last year, they were worried about overcapacity because of the number of big resorts that opened. This year, it's the economy that's the bigger issue."

From the small office of her 11-unit Casa Andrea in Puerto Vallarta's historic "Romantic Zone," Andrea Edelstein directs employees preparing to reopen the hotel after a four-month shutdown. Her guests are mostly loyal regulars who come for weeks at a time. Not this year. Occupancy dropped to 40% in April, and by June she decided to temporarily close.

"It's not even that people are looking for discount Mexico cruises," she says. "They're just not coming."

At Barcelona, a popular tapas restaurant, business appears relatively brisk.

"I'm not as busy as people think," says owner Bill Carballo, whose business dropped by about a third over the summer. "Everyone is suffering."

And along popular Playa de Los Muertos — Beach of the Dead — Pablo Celestino, wearing the patient demeanor of a man who has been trudging these sands for 21 years hawking jewelry to tourists, shrugs and says: "Business is quiet. But times have been worse. Maybe next month, people will come."

Beach resorts massage their prices

As in other beach resorts, early fall is typically slow in Puerto Vallarta. But after April's flu alert, cruise ship calls were suspended. Flights were cut back by 20%. And local officials ramped up marketing efforts (and discounts) aimed at domestic tourists.

Now, even with cruise ships returning to short Mexico cruises and more international tourists trickling in, "I think you're going to see a lot of creative packaging," says Dennis Whitelaw, general manager of the CasaMagna Marriott and president of the local CVB, which has issued a first-time discount booklet.

Local purveyors are offering their own incentives. A small beachfront hotel spa in the city's Old Town offers $23 50-minute massages — down from $35. Nearby, a lunch of freshly grilled fish and a cold beer at seaside stands goes for less than $4.

Tourists to other Mexican beach resorts report similar deals. Tyler Daugherty, 27, of Las Vegas, on two bargain-priced back-to-back Mexican cruises, has enjoyed a $54 3½-hour massage and salt scrub in one port of call and a $2 snorkeling trip in another. Now he's careening over the jungle and rappelling over waterfalls on a zip-line tour. (His cost for the six-hour outing: $93 vs. $140 if he had booked it on the ship.)

"The second I heard about swine flu in Mexico, I booked the cruises. I knew the flu (scare) would be something stupid, and the cruises would be cheap," he says.

'Wonderful and safe and comfortable'

But perceptions die hard. Americans' often-shaky grasp of geography, coupled with long memories for bad news, could prolong Mexico's tourism slump. When Amy Weirick, an Ohio publicist for Experience Columbus, announced plans to attend a professional meeting in Guadalajara earlier this month, she had to quell her family's fears.

"My son was frightened, and my husband was even a little paranoid," she says. "But I found Mexico to be wonderful and safe and comfortable. I had a terrific trip."

Meanwhile, Puerto Vallarta, which possesses an artistic soul and a culinary heart not found in many beach resorts, is banking on events such as the International Gourmet Festival (Nov. 12-22) and the Puerto Vallarta Film Festival (Dec. 2-6) to draw visitors from beyond the mainstream.

Its historic center, hugged on one side by the sweeping palm-fringed Banderas Bay and the verdant bulk of the Sierra Madre Mountains on the other, retains a truly local ambience that might be less apparent in more lucrative times when it's crawling with foreign tourists.

In the main plaza, a folkloric dance troupe has ample space to practice. Across the way on the malecon, or seaside promenade, a mostly Mexican crowd gathers to cheer on comic buskers. Vendors circulate, hawking cups of egg custard, paper sacks of oily potato chips and drinks ladled from gourds.

Some locals say they'd welcome this less crowded, more relaxed time, if it weren't at such a cost.

"We've been hard hit by the swine flu propaganda and the narco-trafficker rumors," says Liv Boughn, 35, a transplanted Californian. "But we have paradise to ourselves. That's the irony of it. If it weren't affecting the economy, I'd love it."