Early most February mornings, cabs and cars disgorge bundled and baggage- laden Chicagoans on the departure ramps at O`Hare International Airport clutching their tickets, travelers checks and passports, looking for the only sure cure for bone-chilling, marrow-jelling, toe-numbing winter.
Escape.
In summer Chicagoans hit the road for a hundred different reasons. But in winter there is only one: the weather. When the snow piles up in sullen black heaps on city streets and the sky is gray all day, Chicagoans yearn to go where they can see blue skies, green plants and people in bathing suits instead of parkas.
Though the yearning to replace snow with sun remains a constant, a lot about the way we travel has changed in the last 30 years. Jets have made the world smaller and turned tourism into a significant international industry. Superhighways snaked over the mountains, and airports opened the jungles. More time and more money meant we could flock to places we once only read about.
To look at the way Chicagoans traveled in the winters of 1955-56, 1965-66, 1975-76 and last winter is to look at how far this country`s middle class has come. For one thing, winter travel is no longer the province of the well-to-do. Detailed figures on where Chicagoans went 30 years ago are hard to come by, but longtime Chicago travel agents agree that travelers then were an older, wealthier lot who spent their money at a more leisurely pace. ”They would go to an island and sit on it. They took big, two- to four-week trips. A half-dozen ships did six- to eight-week cruises,” says Rex Fritschi, president of the Rex Travel Organization Inc., who has been in the business for more than 40 years. ”Now we have a completely different picture. A young secretary goes on a winter vacation for a one-week trip.” And she goes where the air connections are quick and the price is right.
In 1956 the secretary stayed home while the boss went on vacation. If he was a fisherman, he went to Bimini for the black marlin. If he sailed, he cruised the Caribbean. If he gambled, he lost his money in Havana and consoled himself at the big shows at the Hotel Nacional. Great Exuma might as well have been a skin disease. To Chicagoans, San Juan was exotic. ”I remember one of my teachers telling us she was going to Puerto Rico for a vacation,” says one travel agent. ”Puerto Rico! She might as well have been going to the dark side of the Moon.”
In 1956 about 588,000 adventurous American vacationers visited a Mexico much different from what tourists see today. The Mexican government had not yet started turning drowsy hamlets into resort communities. Barely more than 100 people lived in Cancun. Puerto Vallarta was a fishing village that had not yet heard of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton or Tennessee Williams. Ixtapa wouldn`t exist until 1976, when a computer picked it as an ideal spot for development. ”If you went to Mexico, it was Acapulco,” recalls Francis Goranin, chairman of the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) and owner of Vega International Travel Service Inc. ”You had to take the bus down from Mexico City. There was no air conditioning, and the trip was rather hot and tedious.”
Hawaii? At an eight-hour flight from California, it was too far. ”The steamer-trunk travelers went to Hawaii, but it was still a heck of a distance,” says Voit Gilmore, a travel agent in Pinehurst, N.C., who is ASTA`s national director for the Southeast.
Judging from The Tribune Travelers` Guide (”Trips-Vacations-Tours-Cruises- Airlines-Buses-Steamships-Trains”) that winter, airlines needed to reassure nervous travelers that their propeller planes were vibration-free, radar-equipped and affordable. BOAC (now British Airways) offered Bermuda for $129 first class with ”delicious meals, including wines and liquors,” or for $99 coach, with ”hearty meals.” Pan Am whispered those magic words, ”Fly now–pay later.”
Air travel was relatively slow and expensive–and destined to stay that way for another three years until airlines introduced jets. That lowered prices, halved travel time and literally brought rays of sunshine into Chicagoans` lives by making weeklong winter vacations possible.
For those with the wherewithal to leave town for a month or two, 1956 was a time of leisurely shipboard travel. The Cunard Lines crowed that the biggest increase in reservations for West Indies cruises came from Chicago. You could take a 58-day Mediterranean cruise on the S.S. Constitution or go to Trinidad on a 17-day Caribbean cruise on the Ile de France. Those with the time to be coddled and the money to pay for it traveled in grand style. ”A very fine cabin cost $10,000 for two, and I sold a lot of that,” says former Chicago travel agent Dorothy Kamin, who entered the business in 1956.
But most Chicagoans saw the U.S.A. because going beyond its borders was too exasperating and too time-consuming. The railroads heavily promoted domestic travel. The Chesapeake & Ohio advertised White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and its old, moneyed resorts. The Union Pacific railway pitched vacations in Sun Valley, Idaho. The Rock Island gave free hors d`oeuvres to Pullman passengers on the Southern California and Arizona runs. ”The railroads were having their last big song. It was the last of the Pullman era, and the railroads were still enticing Midwesterners to Florida,” Gilmore says.
In 1956 some 180,000 Chicagoans flew, took the train or drove to Florida, which counted 5 million burnt tourist noses that year. If you were Jewish, you went to Miami Beach. If you were checking out a retirement area, you looked at St. Petersburg. Everyone else went to Ft. Lauderdale, Boca Raton or the sleepy little resort towns on the Gulf Coast.
The Tribune travel sections were filled with advertisements for Miami Beach hotels with names like the Saxony, the Sans Souci, the Algiers and the Seville, which stuffed guests with enormous meals and gave them a chance to put on 10-gallon hats or grass skirts to whoop it up at theme-night parties. They recuperated during the day at the pool, usually with someone they met from Chicago. ”Everybody who was anybody went to Midway Airport and got on the plane to Miami Beach,” recalls Phoebe Medow, president of Way-to-Go Travel in Chicago.
Everybody else drove, a four-day, 1,500-mile-long trek over two- and four-lane roads, half of it in snow, ice and fog. ”Before they built the expressways, just getting out of Chicago was a major effort,” says Dick Evans, auto-travel manager for the Chicago Motor Club, who has been telling people how to get from here to there for 40 years. ”There was no interstate system, no bypasses. You drove through Nashville and Chattanooga and Atlanta, and if you made 400 miles a day, you were getting up early to do it.”
In the `60s the travel business grew with America`s middle class. People had more leisure time, more money, more sophistication and a yearning to get away from repetitive jobs. And because an increasing number of people worked for someone else, they could take a week off, unlike earlier members of the middle class who owned businesses and had to stay home to mind the store.
With nonstop flights opening the world, Chicagoans ventured a bit farther afield in search of the winter sun, particularly if it could be had conveniently. In 1966 about 160,000 Illinoisans went to Mexico. Bermuda, a two-flight trip, had less than 500 Illinois visitors. Jamaican tourism, which had started at the turn of the century as a way to fill United Fruit freighters steaming from Boston, New York and Philadelphia to Port Antonio, was expanding. That year 11,776 Illinois tourists went to Jamaica. Montego Bay and Ocho Rios were up and running as tourist centers. ”I remember when I was a kid and we would go to Ocho Rios,” says Marcella Martinez, spokesman for the Jamaica Tourist Board. ”There were Chicago visitors there, and certain hotels made a thing of Midwestern business.”
Flying was still special. In 1966 an estimated 80 percent of all Americans had never been on a plane, which may explain why travel writers gee- whizzed about enclosed airplane gangways, marveled that you could eat breakfast in Chicago and lunch in Phoenix, oohed over adjustable seats and aahed over free magazines, overhead lights and revolving baggage carousels.
Cruising was still for the rich and retired. If you had the time and the scratch, you could take a 62-day Pacific cruise that stopped at 19 ports, including Honolulu; Yokohama, Japan; Hong Kong; Milford Sound, New Zealand;
Zamboanga in the Philippines; and Papeete, Pago Pago and Bora-Bora in the South Pacific. Prices started at $1,840, which averaged out to just under $30 a day, not counting booze, tips and dockside shopping tours.
On a less exotic plane, an estimated 400,000 Chicagoans packed their bathing suits and headed for Florida on the new interstates. Peggy Lee, Buddy Hackett, Arthur Godfrey, Tony Bennett and Connie Francis entertained at one hotel, Henny Youngman and Sam Levenson at another. ”The biggest thing you could do if your parents had the money was to go to Florida for Christmas. It was status-y,” says Vivian Duschl, former spokesman for the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration.
Florida was the sun spot because Hawaii was still a bit far. ”Hawaii was the dream. Florida was the reality,” Duschl says. All the same, 21,185 dreamers from the Chicago metropolitan region went to Hawaii in 1966, according to the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. Hawaii was advertising undiscovered Maui, and Chicago travel agents sold 10-day charter packages of one plane ticket, one hotel room and one orchid for $424.
Charters–package deals where travel companies buy airplane space and hotel rooms, then set their own rates–lowered prices even further. Tours, depending on your point of view, gave you your dollar`s worth or a bellyful. Thomas Cook Travel, which kicked off modern tourism in 1840 with the first organized trip, was offering Chicagoans winter tours of the Greek Islands, the Iberian peninsula and the Middle East. Ten days in Hawaii was $358. A weeklong Mexico tour package was $247 and a week in Puerto Rico cost about $245. ”In the `60s everybody had a buck in their pocket, and everyone was traveling on charters,” says Kamin. ”I did charters for churches. I did charters for temples. I did charters for golfers and charters for apartment janitors who went back home to see the folks.”
Though the Bicentennial threw a long shadow over the tourist industry in 1976, Chicagoans didn`t change their winter plans dramatically. Florida started the year with a crush of tourists. Vacationers from `56 had become retirees by `76, so a visit to Grandma became a factor in Florida travel. So was a trip to Walt Disney World, whose turnstiles turned more than 12 million times that year. The entertainment park made Orlando the biggest tourist area in the United States, says Charles Ridgway, a Disney World spokesman. The company will not release figures showing from where visitors come, but the park`s overall impact can be measured in other ways. In 1971, when Disney World opened, the Orlando area had 5,000 hotel rooms. Ten years later there were at least 23,000 rooms. Ridgway says that by the end of this year that will increase to 62,000 hotel rooms, second only to New York.
In 1976, 93,180 vacationers went to Hawaii from the Chicago area and northern Indiana, four times as many as had gone in 1966. Nonstop flights made the trip easier and faster, and charters lowered prices. ”Charter flights really knocked the heck out of any concept of what it cost to fly. They were so prominent in `76 that they really spurred airline deregulation,” says Gilmore. Fly/cruise packages would become popular a few years later, but in the mid-`70s cruise ships were in the doldrums. ”They were in retreat by `76. They couldn`t adapt the ships from the transatlantic crossings to Caribbean cruises because of the cost of air-conditioning the ship,” Gilmore says.
”And you couldn`t get Caribbean travelers to adapt to three classes of travel. They resented it.”
Factors that aren`t set by a market, like location, also dictated where Chicagoans went. East Coast tourists were more likely to go to Florida or the Caribbean because they were closest. Californians went to Hawaii and Mexico. Chicagoans chose Mexico and Florida. ”Every Midwestern city had a problem of transportation to the Caribbean. The Caribbean requires a big plane and poses other technical problems that Mexico doesn`t,” says Ricky Carrick, Club Med`s northeast sales vice president, who ran the resort company`s Chicago office in the `70s.
Politics also came into play in the `70s. In 1975 Mexico voted in favor of a United Nations resolution equating Zionism and racism; about 100,000 Jewish tourists canceled reservations by the end of the year. In some Caribbean resort towns the men and women who waited tables and drove cabs resented the tourists who spent more in a week than they earned in a year. It showed in high prices and grudging service. By 1976 tourism was in a slide in the Bahamas. American tourists avoided Bermuda after a 1977 riot and a 1979 hotel strike. As for Jamaica, well-publicized robberies, a Socialist government and the ending of direct flights from Chicago clipped its tourism. ”It went down like a lead balloon,” says Martinez, who adds that it began picking up when the pro-American government of Edward Seaga took office in 1981.
By 1976 Club Med had introduced a practice that was to have widespread influence in the `80s. It had nothing to do with singles, everything to do with spending. Travel agents say its flat-fee pricing policy had a greater impact on travel than the allure of a fling in faraway places. The upfront, no-additions, all-inclusive price took the worry out of travel. It reassured newer travelers, allowing them to know exactly what a vacation would cost, and relieved those who didn`t want to be hassled. ”You could go to some resorts without a nickel in your pocket, it`s that easy,” says Fritschi. ”There`s no tipping, and you`re not being nickeled or dimed to death for beach chairs and pillows.”
In 1978 airline deregulation entered the picture and brought about the end of monopoly routes and fixed prices. No-frills airlines offered such low overseas airfares that major airlines had to cut prices. Deregulation meant greater competition on popular routes and more domestic flights in and out of O`Hare. That, in turn, meant more passengers, and more passengers lured more international airlines. ”That`s why you have all those international carriers sitting at the milk barn waiting to get their pails filled,” says Gilmore.
And now? In 1986 travelers are warier about where they go but more adventurous when they get there. European travel has been hardest hit by the fear of terrorism, with American business falling off by as much as 50 percent in some countries. American travel to the Caribbean, which was up 6 percent last year, is expected to continue growing if more Americans decide to stay closer to home.
Those who watch travel trends say travelers may no longer be content to sit under a palm tree with a good book. ”They look for tennis or golf or snorkeling vacations in the Caribbean,” Duschl says. ”People want to get away from tourist traps, and that means not lying elbow-to-elbow with anyone else,” says Jennifer Lau, a research assistant with the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre on Barbados. While first-timers may opt for tours and packaged vacations to well-known islands, experienced, wealthier travelers want to get away from it all. ”They want a hideaway destination, some less-developed island like Tobago or Anguilla,” she says. This fall two airlines will begin nonstop flights from Chicago to San Juan, Puerto Rico, which will become the jumping-off point for flights to smaller Caribbean islands like Anguilla, St. Barthelemy, St. Kitts, Dominica, St. John and Tortola.
Though American vacation areas (including Alaska, a popular cruise destination) may benefit from the reluctance to travel abroad, that is offset by the need for domestic sunspots like Arizona, Florida, California and Hawaii to compete with both traditional rivals like the Caribbean and Mexico and a growing cruise industry. This year 2 million Americans will go on a cruise, the majority to the Caribbean. The industry was revitalized by fly/sail packages and stimulated by the success of Club Med`s prepaid, no-fuss travel. In the decade since 1976, Mexico opened and promoted big resort areas like Cancun (which tripled the number of hotel rooms in the decade), Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. Travel from Illinois increased from 158,000 visitors in 1976 to 183,000 last year. In winter direct flights link Chicago to Acapulco, Cancun, Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City, an important consideration for someone with only a week`s time and no patience for spending two full days of it in airports.
According to the U.S. Transportation Department, during a seven-month period from September, 1985, through last February, 100,269 people flew from Chicago to Mexico, though not all of them were Chicagoans. (Washington`s number-crunchers look at where people fly from–O`Hare, for example–but not where they live–Palatine? Milwaukee? Benton Harbor?–so there are more than just Chicagoans in the count.) Nevertheless, Mexico is far and away the city`s most popular winter-sun destination. Last January 6,730 people flew from Chicago to Cancun alone–nearly 1,800 more sun worshipers than flew from here to the Caribbean islands.
Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Bahamas, which together drew about 19,000 fliers from Chicago last winter, are the only Caribbean spots with significant numbers of tourists from this area. In Jamaica tourists from the East Coast still outnumber Midwesterners there 2 to 1. Jean Mourgues, sales vice president of Club Med`s Midwest region, has a theory why–besides the scarcity of direct flights–the Caribbean doesn`t draw as many Chicagoans as Mexico.
”They don`t like to be with too many people from the East Coast, particularly New York,” he says.
The Miami area, no longer a mecca, has in-state competition from the Gulf Coast resorts and the central Florida area. Half its visitors come to Miami on business and, according to Bill Anderson, a statistician for the Greater Miami Visitors Bureau, that means fewer people. On business, one person comes to Miami. For a vacation, he says, there are usually three or four. Thompson Tours sends about 60 percent of its Florida-bound Chicagoans to Orlando and nearly 40 percent to either the Tampa, Ft. Myers or Ft. Lauderdale areas.
California, Arizona and Hawaii chase the Chicago tourist dollar, too. In the first three months of this year 38,970 Chicagoans fried themselves on Hawaiian sands. About 35,700 Illinoisans went to Palm Springs last year.
”During peak seasons we get a lot of people out here from Chicago. The planes are almost filled to capacity,” says Gary Sherwin, news bureau manager for the Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau. ”Women from Lake Shore Drive arrive in their minks whenever there`s a bad snowstorm. You can see them ripping off their coats as they walk off the plane.”
Do you blame them? Chicago is a city that calls the winter wind the Hawk, a grudging acknowledgment of its primitive force and relentlessness. If at all possible, we exit laughing in January or February, not necessarily because we are rich or sophisticated or have itchy feet, but because we are chilled to the marrow. Thirty years have brought changes in how and where we travel, but not why.
