Go for the Experience

Sure, the relax-at-all-cost trips are perennial favorites, but the trend is for travelers to seek more activity, more involvement and more experience. The travel industry has even coined a term for such travel: experiential.

"Experiential travel is the hot ticket these days and 'authentic' is the prevailing buzzword," says Gary Mansour, who created the Boomer Project, a division of the Southeastern Institute of Research that studied travel among those 50 and older. These global wanderers demand "real" experiences.

Though some experiences can be adventurous-even daunting-experiential travelers are just as often involved in a broader sense with any activity that immerses them in learning or another culture-including private access to museums, events or celebrities not available in the average tour. Mansour terms this "luxury off the beaten path."

Experiential travel can encompass anything from an adventurous trek that tracks gorillas through an African rainforest to total immersion in a foreign culture or tamer experiences designed to perfect a sport or hobby.

"Instead of just going to Phoenix, they're going for a weeklong tennis academy to brush up on their skills," explains Jennifer Carnam, project development director for the Boomer Project.

The emphasis on active experience is not just for the young, says Lee McCarthy of Mad Travel in Naples. He sees the trend to experiential travel among people in their late 20s and early 30s as well as among retirees in their 60s. He also sees families planning such excursions.

"They're not just cruising; they're doing something more stimulating or cerebral. Experienced travelers don't want to be on the outskirts looking in. They get involved in the local culture," McCarthy says.

One factor driving the desire for experiential travel is noted by Jay Toberman, author of Don't Quit Your Day Job! Adventures for the Working Stiff. "Businesspeople often hit their 40s and 50s and begin to question why they're not trying something new. A nine-to-five job isn't inconsistent with adventure. It merely means that travelers need to find adventures that fit within whatever parameters they have."

It could be a cooking course in Tuscany, a film class in Paris, a safari in Africa or kayaking in Turkey. The experience is the reward and the secret is to avoid traveling in a pack and staying at Americanized hotels. Traci Lapai of Tailored Travel Inc. in Naples sets up cooking classes in Tuscany and private jet tours around the world through a variety of specialized firms, such as Abercrombie & Kent. "We set up a tour to Italy for a family that wanted to research art, shop for lace and find special Florentine tiles. The people meeting them there were not so much tour guides as experts in their fields," she says.

One of Lapai's clients was an architect who wanted to go to Prague, but "all he wanted to see was the architecture. We contacted a company, and he was met by an architect at the other end," she says. Another client wanted to travel with his son, a Harry Potter fan, so Lapai customized a tour of castles where they could stay in Ireland, England, France and Germany.

Volunteer programs are a benevolent form of experiential travel. Church groups often arrange such trips to help needy affiliates overseas, and several specialized tour groups incorporate volunteer aspects. VolunTourism International, for example, sets up trips for individuals, families and seniors to areas throughout the world where the traveler can participate in everything from English-language training to school construction.

McCarthy works with a group called Cross-Cultural Solutions. "It's like a mini Peace Corps. You fly to China, India, Morocco, Russia or any of tons of places and work in a community," he says. He set up a program in Costa Rica for clients who helped build a church. "Instead of getting on a bus and being taken around, you get immersed in the culture. It's probably the most fulfilling kind of trip."

Adventurous travelers look for opportunities to go off the beaten track. Peggy Bell of Geraci Travel, with offices in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, recently arranged a trip for clients to the Iditarod in Anchorage. She took that trip in 2002 "because I always admired the whole dogsledding thing-how hard the dogs work-and you get to know the dogsledders. The night before, you meet all the mushers at dinner and then have breakfast with them before they take off."

Mary Ann Ramsey of Betty Maclean Travel in Naples is one of only 45 accredited agents in the country for the Virgin Galactic program that ventures into suborbital space. She reports that she's already had several clients call about it. The $200,000 cost covers the preparation and launch into suborbital space, where the two pilots and six passengers experience weightlessness. Testing begins next year with the hope to initiate the first launch in early 2009.

For more earthbound clients, Ramsey recommends gorilla tracking in Uganda.

"I did it myself a few years ago, chartered a plane and flew into the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. They limit the permits to six a day so you don't interfere with the habitat. You go with the guide up the mountain and the guys in front of you are cutting the brush away," Ramsey says.

"On the first day I took a long telephoto lens, but I ended up being within arm's length of [the gorillas]. We watched the little ones play near the moms and the silverback-a religious experience," she reports.

Although there will always be those who connote "experience" with hiking the wilds with tents on their backs, 78 million baby boomers control the lion's share of discretionary income, and not all of them want to rough it.

Cruises will always be popular for their luxury, but aren't high in personal experience. That's why Wally and Joan Kain of Fort Myers chose a small ship cruise. Its size enables the ship to enter harbors closed to large, impersonal cruise ships. The Kains started in western Russia, leaving from a base that in Soviet Union days was an off-limits submarine base. For Wally, a World War II buff, a highlight was an island that had been occupied by Japanese during the war. "The remains of combat were still there, including old anti-aircraft guns, spent cartridges on the ground. It was just an electrifying experience," he says.

Whether the traveler is an intrepid adventurer to Africa or suborbital space, or a city slicker who simply wants to become deeply involved in opera, art or history, experiential travel lets each person follow his or her own dream.

A Few Dream Trips

The potential experiential trips are endless, ranging from walking or kayaking to study tours of all types, and costs go from basic to princely, proving that there's an experiential opportunity for every traveler. Here are just a few that intrigued us. Note that the prices given are based on the land tour. Tour operators will help you get air travel to and from the destination, or you can arrange your own.

Bike, Hike 'n' Elephant Ride in Thailand

Backroads was voted one of the world's top tour operators by Travel+Leisure readers in 2006. It offers biking, walking, rafting, sailing and many other multi-sport vacations throughout the United States and the world, even as far afield as Antarctica and Uganda. But one we particularly liked is the broad cultural and sports combination offered by its trip to Thailand's Golden Triangle. You can explore the traditions of the Buddhist culture while pedaling past rice paddies, hiking to tribal villages and venturing through the forests on an elephant. The trip ranges from $2,698 to $3,198 for seven days, six nights.

The Iditarod and Northern Lights

Knightly Tours arranges Alaskan adventures, including an up-close-and-personal view of the Iditarod and northern lights. Travelers don't actually do the daunting Iditarod, though that would be an ultimate experiential trip. They do, however, start in Anchorage, where they participate in private meetings and lectures with the Iditarod mushers and attend the Mushers Banquet and breakfast before they watch the dogsleds set off on their journey to Nome. The tour (without airfare to Alaska) costs about $3,000 for 10 days.

Whet Your Appetite in Paris

The typical tourist eats. The experiential traveler cooks the meal himself and takes the skills home to show off in his or her own kitchen. What more perfect experience than Le Cordon Bleu? The distinguished cooking school offers classes in several locations, but for the true bastion of haute cuisine, don't settle for less than Paris. Cooking sessions last from a half-day to four days, and courses include basic, intermediate and superior levels. Most are translated into English. Prices range from $178 for workshops to $1,084 and up for a four-day course.