Travel > Columns > The Sensible Traveler

For participants, WBUR tour is like a gathering of friends

By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 05/18/2003

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Nancy Donahue and her husband like to travel the world in style, but they are not fond of planning trips and are wary of assembly-line tours.

The Lowell couple discovered the answer to their particular travel needs several years ago on the radio, in promotions on WBUR-FM for the station's Citizen of the World Tours.

Launched in 1996, the tours feature small groups and exotic destinations. They are designed to get like-minded travelers off the beaten track, in touch with local people, and involved in discussions with knowledgeable correspondents from WBUR, National Public Radio, or the British Broadcasting Corp.

"It feels just like a large group of friends going," said Donahue, who has taken tours to southern Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, and France. "You get different perspectives. It makes it really interesting without being too educational."

Tour organizer Roxana von Kraus of the Quo Vadis travel agency on Newbury Street in Boston recently returned from scouting next month's trip to Ireland, which features a visit to the Aran Islands, home to about 1,500 people who speak mostly Irish and live in stone cottages. On one of the islands is Dun Aengus, a 2,000-year-old stone cliff fortress.

"I never buy anything off the shelf," said von Kraus, who accompanies every tour group. "Everything is handled like we have a group of individual travelers who just happen to be together. Most of them hate groups."

Tour sizes have varied, from as small as eight on a trip to Vietnam to as many as 27 on trips to Cuba. The typical size is between 14 and 22.

Randy Newton of West Newbury was nervous about group dynamics on his first tour, a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. But Newton said his group included people of all ages who shared several key interests: They listened to public radio and were concerned about world events. Newton enjoyed himself so much in Vietnam he subsequently took tours to East Africa and Cuba.

Sometimes the emphasis on news and education leads to special moments. On a tour to Romania, the group visited the home of the man called king of the gypsies. During a trip to Cuba, a visit was arranged with the operators of Radio Havana.

Susan Jackson of Brookline has been on five trips with WBUR. In South Africa, the group took a tour of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, from one of the men who had been imprisoned there with him.

"It was just fascinating," Jackson said.

While the tours attempt to capture local flavor, they do so in a very high-end way, and there is time set aside for individual exploration and fun. Travelers tend to stay in luxury hotels and eat at some of the best restaurants.

The 14-day trip to Ireland costs $7,430, including air fare, hotels, land transportation, most meals, and a $1,000 contribution to WBUR. Bill Delaney, cohost of WBUR's "Here and Now" show and a former CNN European correspondent who covered Northern Ireland, is playing host. Sylvia Poggioli, senior European correspondent for National Public Radio, is going on a tour to Tuscany in August.

Mary Stohn, a spokeswoman for WBUR, said correspondents are technically working while on the tours. Their job is to interact with travelers and help them understand the local situation.

"WBUR benefits in many ways from these tours," Stohn said. "The contribution is important, of course. More than that, though, people become involved in the station and interested in how WBUR impacts the community. Citizens of the World participants become enthusiastic ambassadors for the station to the community at large."

On-time rates

With fewer planes flying during the economic slump, airlines are doing a relatively good job of taking off and landing on time.

According to the most recent Air Travel Consumer Report put out by the US Department of Transportation, the big airlines were on time an average of 82.6 percent of the time at the nation's leading airports in March and 82 percent for the 12 months ending in March.

Boston's Logan International Airport had 82.4 percent of its arrivals on time in March. The on-time rate was 83.3 percent at Manchester (N.H.) Airport and 84.7 percent at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I.

A flight is counted as on time if it lands less than 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival time. The federal data track only the number of delays, not what caused them.

New technology

Following the lead of several other airlines, United Airlines said it plans to give customers the option of checking in and obtaining boarding passes online by the end of June.

The carrier, which is struggling to emerge from bankruptcy protection, also said it plans to install more self-service check-in machines at a number of big airports around the country. The announcement indicated that no additional kiosks would be installed at Logan, where 22 are currently used.