Hostel Tours Become Family Event : FamilyHostel’s trial run shows promise for educational trips that mix generations.

FamilyHostel, an offshoot of 10-year-old Interhostel, is expanding in 1993.

As with Interhostel, a nonprofit international education tour program for mature travelers age 50 and over, FamilyHostel is administered by the University of New Hampshire Continuing Education Department.

A trial FamilyHostel education tour earlier this year to the Netherlands was considered very successful. It brought together 21 adults--5 parents and 16 grandparents--plus 19 children in a study/ travel program consisting of classes, side tours and social programs.

Five more programs designed to allow families--a mix of children, parents and grandparents--to travel and learn together are being planned for next summer to Paris, Prague, Switzerland, Mexico and the Netherlands.

Prices have not yet been finalized. However, the 10-day FamilyHostel trip to the Netherlands this year cost $1,045 for adults, $975 for children, plus air fare. The price included almost everything--classes, side trips and other events, plus all meals and accommodations. Air travel is arranged by the FamilyHostel agency at the least expensive rate on regularly scheduled carriers.

For more information and a complete 1993 brochure, contact FamilyHostel, University of New Hampshire, 6 Garrison Ave., Durham, N.H. 03824, (800) 733-9751.

San Diego-based AFC Tours, which caters to senior groups and individual mature travelers, is offering two nine-day spring tours of the South next year.

“Spring in Dixie,” which starts in New Orleans and then circles by motor coach through Cajun country to Baton Rouge, La., and Natchez, Vicksburg and Jackson, Miss., then back to New Orleans via Biloxi, Miss., and Mobile, Ala., along the Gulf Coast.

Sightseeing includes Antebellum homes, Civil War battlefields, Bellingrath Gardens and a Gulf Coast cruise, in addition to New Orleans landmarks. Air fare from LAX, San Diego or Orange County, plus 15 meals, including a farewell dinner at Arnaud’s in New Orleans, are also included in the per-person, double-occupancy price of $1,375. There are two departure dates: March 16 and 24.

AFC’s second tour, “Spring in the South,” begins in Jacksonville, Fla., then heads up the Atlantic Coast to Jekyll Island and Savannah, Ga.; Hilton Head Island, S.C., and finishing up with three nights in Charleston, S.C.

Included in the price of $1,499 per person, double, is air fare from either LAX, San Diego or Orange County, plus motor-coach touring, 15 meals and top accommodations such as the Jekyll Island Club, once the retreat of some of America’s richest families. Single departure date is March 24.

For more information: AFC Tours, 11772 Sorrento Valley Road, No. 200, San Diego 82121, (619) 481-8188.

San Francisco’s Hotel California, a 243-room, European-style hotel two blocks from Union Square, now offers senior rates of $60 single, $65 double (normally $84 and $94).

There are even lower rates for senior groups, and a special two-for-one offer where groups that spend one or more nights at the hotel receive corresponding room nights free at the hotel’s sister properties in the wine country: the Sonoma Valley Inn in Sonoma and the Dry Creek Inn in Healdsburg. Both are Best Western Inns and, like the Hotel California, are owned by Krug Hotels.

The two-for-one offer is good through March 4.

For more information or reservations, call (800) 622-0961 in California or (800) 227-3346 outside the state.