Ten years ago, when oil sold for under $20 a barrel, Sun Holidays of Orlando, Fla., was able to offer round-trip airfare to Spain and a three-week stay at a beachfront resort hotel on its Mediterranean coast, in winter, for $999 per person.
That was then, and things have changed a bit. This coming winter, eight months from now, Sun Holidays will be offering a lesser two weeks on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, including round-trip airfare, for a higher $1,325 per person — still a remarkable value. Because the tour operator has only a limited number of seats on Delta’s nonstop flight from New York to Malaga (on that Mediterranean coast), it’s important for would-be winter vacationers to make their decisions soon. The Sun Holidays catalog for the upcoming winter of 2008-09 has just been issued and is available either in a print version or on the Internet at .
Winter on Spain’s suncoast (“La Costa del Sol”) is a substitute for winter vacationing in Miami Beach or Phoenix. It is available at the $1,325 price for departures in 2009 on Jan. 14, 21 or 28, Feb. 4, 11, 18 or 25, and March 4, 11 or 18. It is sold for even less ($1,295) for one departure on Jan. 7. And extra weeks, selling for an extraordinary $215 a week per person, enable the retirees booking this “extended stay” vacation to lengthen their vacation to between three and 12 weeks (I refer to prospects for this program as “retirees,” because who else is able to take off that much time in winter?).
Beachfront hotel
Accommodations? They’re at the big, beachfront apartment-hotel known as the Sol Timor (where participants receive a studio apartment with private bath, kitchenette and balcony), and included in the price are 14 buffet breakfasts, one farewell dinner on the last night of the stay, a nonalcoholic “open bar” every day from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and three sightseeing tours to communities in Andalucia. The airfare is from New York, but there are advantageous “add- on” fares (like $63 from Chicago) from 22 other U.S. cities.
A final lure is that there’s no single supplement for single people traveling on most departures, and even when a supplement is charged, it amounts to only $225 for the entire two weeks.
In describing the lure of this unique program, in various classroom discussions of travel, I used to say that low-income retirees had a choice in winter between an ancient, shabby, rusty motel in Miami Beach or Phoenix, eating in fast-food restaurants; or an exotic, good-quality stay in a high-rise on the Costa del Sol of Spain, eating off white tablecloths in a proper restaurant. I’m no longer confident that $1,325 per person is necessarily less than some Americans would pay to fly to Miami Beach or Phoenix and rent a motel there for two weeks. But $1,325 is still a major value, and mature people (your relatives or friends) will surely enjoy scanning the literature for this program, which has now been successfully operated for several decades. Tell them about an “extended stay” winter vacation on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, for which the contact is either . or 800-422-8000.
