For many affluent travelers, traditional escapes to Hawaiian resorts and European capitals are being nudged aside for more educational fare. Even private jet tours costing $45,000 or more for a few weeks learning about places like Easter Island and Mali are going out full, sometimes with waiting lists. Barbara Isenberg spoke with Amy Kotkin, director of Smithsonian Journeys, the largest museum-based educational travel program in the U.S., about what's going on.
Barbara Isenberg: While the Smithsonian's been offering educational tours for nearly 40
years, the marketplace seems to have expanded in the last few years. Any
thoughts on why?
Amy Kotkin: There are more boomers who are retiring, who value
their time and who have an unprecedented amount of wealth and education.
They're looking for accessthey want to go behind the scenes, where
people aren't generally allowed, and they're looking for insight from
experts. They want authentic experiences where they're truly
experiencing another culture, not a facsimile or re-creation, but they
want to be comfortable as they do it.
Isenberg:Let's start at the top with your around-the-world trips in private jets.
How did those exotic trips begin?
Kotkin: A few college alumni and museum
affinity groups were offering private jet trips in the mid-1990s, and we
began ours in 2001. At first, we didn't think our travelers would buy
this product. It was much more expensive that anything we had previously
offered to them. But they proved to be very popular.
Isenberg:The itineraries on these trips are inordinately far-reaching and
complicated. How do you decide where to go and then manage to pull it
off?
Kotkin:You have to work very closely with the jet tour provider. Our
current provider, Starquest, generally uses Boeing 757s specially
configured with 88 VIP-style seats instead of the standard 228, and they
have to know where those planes can land. They need to know what
destinations have the infrastructurehotels, guides, places to eatto
accommodate a group of 88 people comfortably. The hotel doesn't have to
be five-star but it has to be comfortable. You need buses. You need to
be able to serve 88 people good food all the time, all at once. When the
group arrives, somebody has usually been there for a day or two already,
walking things through.
Isenberg:You offer variations of these private jet trips every year, so I'm
assuming they sell well.
Kotkin:They sell reasonably well. Our "Extraordinary
Cultures" trip in March, '09 is almost full already. We usually start
selling those tours 16 months in advance, and while some people sign up
right away, others don't, and we have to remarket two or three times.
Our 34-person "Lands of the Great Buddha" trip, which sold out this
year, will go out again in Sept. '09 to China, Japan, Mongolia, Bhutan
and India to see how Buddhism evolved in those countries. We're also
looking at a private jet trip to Africa in 2010.
Isenberg:These trips are all priced at $45,000 or more. What about tours for the
rest of us?
Kotkin:We offer about 250 escorted educational tours a year. Our
Signature Tours, which are higher end, are accompanied throughout by an
academic, and our lower priced Travel Adventures have local lecturers
who meet up with you along the way. If you're going to the Great Barrier
Reef, for instance, you'll meet with a marine biologist, and if you go
to Iceland, we'll make sure there are talks by geologists.
Isenberg:In other words, the idea is to get travelers to places and people they
couldn't find so easily on their own?
Kotkin:Yes. We also do one-off trips
where we can provide special access to what is already an exciting
event, like a major golf match or the Toronto Film Festival. One of our
perennials is a "Mystery Lover's" tour of England and Scotland where
travelers meet mystery writers and visit places where mysteries take
place; we've had whole book clubs travel together on that trip.
Isenberg:Given how different these tours are from one another, what do they have
in common?
Kotkin:Our tour operators share our notion of good itinerary
planning for this market. Often that means slowing it down and spending
enough time in key places to let people truly understand and absorb what
they're seeing at a reasonable pace. We also find top experts you'd
really like to be with for 10 or 12 days and who are not admired just
for their knowledge in a formal lecture situation.
Isenberg:Have you noticed any commonalities among the people who travel with you?
Kotkin:Yes. When you decide to sign up for a learning vacation rather than
having fun in the sun, that's the first cut. When people unite around a
special interest and are willing to travel to far away places, the
likelihood of their being with other people who share that passion is
very high. The more specialized the trip, the more cohesive the group.
Isenberg:Since many people sign up for these trips so far in advance, you
probably can't really measure the impact of the current financial
crisis. Have outside events affected you in the past?
Kotkin:Our business
contracted after 9/11, but since 2004, we have been increasing the
number of trips and passengers. There's a little softness to the current
market, but I haven't sensed a real downturn. Frankly, I would have
thought there would be more softness, but we're holding up pretty well.
Isenberg:What does the Smithsonian Institution get out of being in the travel
business?
Kotkin:Revenue from the tours provides essential support for the
Smithsonian, which has 19 museums and nine research centers. Smithsonian
Journeys was designed to extend the Smithsonian's mission of "the
increase and diffusion of knowledge," and it's done that. Three
Smithsonian anthropologists will accompany the March '09 trip, for
example, and the trip not only allow travelers to go virtually around
the world looking at indigenous cultures but also highlights decades of
Smithsonian research in those same areas.