Westminster Travel Agency Offers a Different Kind of 1-Stop Shopping : TOURISM / LEISURE TIME

When Ricci Siegel says, “You can’t get there from here,” she really means it.

Siegel owns To Hawaii Only. And “here” is her Westminster travel agency that arranges tours and travel to just one place--yep, you guessed it.

The idea is that a travel agent can’t be all things to all tourists. So Siegel set up a shop where the agents do one thing that most in any field won’t: make house calls.

Hawaii seemed like the ideal destination because it is the sort of laid-back locale that people want to say aloha to again and again.

To get travelers in the mood for mahi mahi and Don Ho, the shop has an eight-foot “volcano” that spews “lava” every 15 minutes. A huge tiki god sits silently alongside grass shacks, and Siegel sprays carnation scent every now and then to give it “the look, smell and feel of Hawaii,” she said.

And just as on Oahu, you can’t step two feet without seeing a souvenir stand. A bar is really a sales table for seashell jewelry and Hawaiian T-shirts. A hut disguises a counter stocked with chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. “I tell people to go and have a wonderful time, then buy their gifts here,” Siegel said.

But Siegel doesn’t have a monopoly on specialty travel in Orange County.

Red Rock Services in Newport Beach, for instance, works with Alpha Jet Charter of Long Beach to arrange skiing trips to Aspen. For $1,393 per person, you can be whisked away for a two-night package on the slopes.

The service, which started in January, “has been gathering momentum,” says Kenn Haas, Alpha Jet president, who is considering setting up specialty travel packages to Northern California and Cabo San Lucas.

Siegel, meanwhile, says that the agency has grossed $250,000 in the three months it has been open. In fact, she says, business has been so brisk that she plans to open a To Hawaii Only in Cerritos in about a month, with others in Tustin, Fullerton and Laguna by the end of the year.