Tired Of Snow, Many Opt For Warmer Climes
 Franco Ordonez, The Boston Globe
 After spending hours digging out her cars and driveway after Sunday's mammoth storm, Caroline Bay of Medfield said she called her travel agent Monday and asked casually about ideas for a vacation.
The next day, after spending six hours on snow-covered roads behind the wheel of a Medfield public school bus, shuttling children to and from school, she booked a seven-day trip to Jamaica for her and her husband, Bob.
"Enough is enough," she said Wednesday as yet another snowstorm blanketed the state. "I'm not asking for a lot. Just 85 degrees, a view of the ocean, a lounge chair, and a mixed drink."
Sick of snowstorms and arctic cold snaps, residents in the western suburbs are calling travel agents and booking flights to the tropics. Guidebooks to sultry places are flying off the shelves at local libraries.
Bookings for the Caribbean and other hot spots were running at twice the expected pace last week, several agents said. One agent said she had received four times as many bookings as expected.
"A lot of people have got this 'Get me out of Dodge' attitude," said Michael Byrne, manager of Horizons Unlimited, a Framingham travel agency. Byrne said he has been stopped in the street by people looking for getaway deals. "You name the destination and we're filling up the seats," he said.
Byrne said his clients, exhausted from hours of shoveling and driving on slick roads, are gobbling up tickets to Aruba, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.
"When it snows, when the temperature dips, people are thinking warm weather," said Renee Ross, president of the New England chapter of the American Society of Travel Agents. "And it doesn't matter where it is. They just want to go."
Bay's travel agent, Carmen Tetrault, said she has heard from several fed-up customers.
"It's frigid cold out there," said Tetrault, who works at Woburn-based Vacation Outlet. "Your body can take only so much. A trip to a warmer climate, even if it's just four or five days, gets you through the winter. It lets your body get a little rejuvenation."
"The more snow we see, the more we'll see people getting up and going somewhere warm," said Amy Ziff, a spokeswoman for online travel company Travelocity.
Good luck tracking down a guide to one of these paradises. Copies of some of the most popular travel books cannot be found at your local library.
All four copies of the Wayland Public Library's Fodor's guide, "Exploring the Caribbean," are out. And copies of the Let's Go guides to Puerto Rico are out or on hold in Lincoln, Needham, and Weston.
Some people who can't afford to head south have found a local alternative at the tanning salon.
"People are definitely coming in for an escape," said Lindsey Murdock, manager of Solar System, a tanning salon in Framingham.
Susan Langley, manager of the Newton Center office of Liberty Travel, said Wednesday that she had already booked more than 80 trips -- about a third of them cruises -- last week. Usually, she said, she would have booked about 20.
"People start getting anxious to get something planned," said Marti Eisele, owner of Marathon Travel Center in Hopkinton. "It's not necessarily important where. They just need something warm set up for the near future to get them through these tough temperatures."
Langley said the bad weather is wonderful for stirring up business.
"Now we just need it to stop snowing so our clients can get to where they want to go," she said. |
Vallarta Weddings
Travel & Outdoors | Destinations | January 2005 
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