TRAVEL LOG

Travel to Spain still strong

Travelers to Spain haven’t panicked in response to the devastating March 11 bombings in Madrid, although a few have canceled trips, tour operators and travel agents said.

As of the Travel section’s deadline Tuesday, the State Department was not warning visitors against travel to Spain, although it advised Americans there to “remain alert and avoid large crowds where possible.”

For more information, see www.travel.state.gov.

More than half the member agencies of Carlson Wagonlit Travel Associates that market trips to Spain, responding to an Internet poll March 12 to 16, said the bombings had not affected business.

A third of the respondents said staff members had fielded inquiries from concerned customers, but only 10% reported cancellations.

Tour operators reported a similarly mild reaction.

“It’s surprising,” Robin Tauck, president of Tauck World Discovery in Norwalk, Conn., said last week.

Three of her company’s 35 European tours and cruises include Madrid.

“Since March 11 we’ve taken 42 bookings on those three itineraries and two cancellations,” said Tauck, who describes her clientele as “senior, well-traveled.”

President John Severini of Trafalgar Tours in New York, which runs tours to Spain, said the firm had received “very few cancellations.”

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Gaining interest in going places

In another sign that Americans are ready to leave home again, an index used to measure interest in travel rose above 100% for the first time since early 2002, the Travel Industry Assn. of America said.

The “traveler sentiment index,” based on a 100% score in 2000, before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is drawn from a quarterly survey of 1,000 adults.

The latest jump, the survey indicates, comes mainly because Americans think they have more time and money and that travel is more affordable than it was a year ago.

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Thailand on

$25,000

per year

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Several hundred people so far have joined the club, which is run by a subsidiary of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

For information, visit www.thailandelite.com.

-- Compiled by

Jane Engle