More Tour Operators Face the Sober Truth : Tourism: Recovering alcoholics and addicts are voting with their pocketbooks for so-called “recovery travel.”

Hotel business may be slack and California’s economic slump may be enduring, but at least one corner of the travel industry is humming happily. Drawing on the millions of Americans involved in 12-step programs and other efforts aimed at maintaining sobriety, an entire sub-industry of alcohol-free tours and destinations is burgeoning.

Should he or she choose, a recovering alcoholic these days can remain in virtually constant motion among groups of his or her peers: this week, yachting in the Caribbean; next week, tanning in Mexico; the following week, touring Europe.

At Sober Times, a 6-year-old, San Diego-based monthly magazine (P.O. Box 40259, San Diego 92164; 800-882-3303 or 619-295- 5377), last month’s advertisements included a Caribbean cruise line, a New Mexico bed-and-breakfast and resorts in Hawaii, Maine, Pennsylvania and El Centro.

“We appreciate where you’ve been,” offer the proprietors of Wolf’s Camping Resort in Knox, northwest Pennsylvania, in their advertisement. To take advantage of such interest, Sober Times now publishes issues with travel themes each April and September.

On the West Coast, one of the best-known sober tour operators is Sober Vacations International (2365 Westwood Blvd., Suite 21, Los Angeles 90064; 310-470-0606). The company was born in 1987 when Steve Abrams and his brother Guy Grand, one a recovering alcoholic, the other a recovering heroin addict, hit upon an intriguing question: What if they rented out a Club Med resort as a “sober village” for all their recovering friends?

In May of the following year, the two delivered 185 paying, but not drinking, customers to Club Med Ixtapa.

“It seemed like an unusual match in the beginning, but it’s really not,” says Abrams. “Club Med is about participation, and so is sobriety.”

Since 1988 the business has grown into a company that many say is the largest of its kind in the U.S. Last year, Sober Vacations sent 450 travelers to Club Med Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, 250 travelers to Club Med Sonora Bay on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, 45 skiers to Club Med Copper Mountain in Colorado, and 40 scuba divers to Club Med Turkoise in the Caribbean. Another 150 travelers signed on for a weekend in the Berkshire Mountains of New England.

This year, Abrams predicts, the numbers will be 25% higher or more. (The company’s next trip is to Eleuthera in the Caribbean, June 19-29, and carries a price tag of $1,490, including air fare from Los Angeles. Some 130 travelers had signed up by late April, and the company is aiming for 300.)

All this comes despite the fact that, as Abrams notes, “there is no mailing list” of potential clients, as there are in other areas of specialized travel. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which would be a logical target, forbid marketing by outside organizations.

So what is driving business? One factor could be the much-publicized emergence of the culture of recovery, from recovering alcoholics to overeaters and sex addicts and beyond. Targeted by publishers, and organized into thousands of support groups, 12-step consumers are a more clearly defined part of American demographics than ever before. But another factor in the rise of sober trips may be merely human nature.

“Traveling is a challenging thing if you’re a sobering alcoholic,” explains Abrams. “People are always trying to get you to loosen up. What we offer is support and identification. People seek out their own--that’s the way it goes.”

Jack Wilbur of Connecticut has been drawing on that inclination for 12 years now. Wilbur, who quit drinking 17 years ago, owns Celebrate Life Tours (P.O. Box 8201 Buckland Station, Manchester, Conn. 06040; 800-825-4782 or 203-246-1614), a company that arranges about a dozen weekend trips yearly for rafting, canoeing and skiing in New England and New York state. Celebrate Life Tours also sends busloads of baseball fans to sit in alcohol-free sections at Yankee Stadium, and organizes group travel to A.A. conventions overseas. Overseas convention-going, it turns out, is a growing micro-market within the micro-market of recovery tours.

This year, Wilbur says, he is sending groups to A.A. gatherings in Ireland, Scotland, Bermuda, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands. Already, he is building package tours around the 1995 convention of A.A. in San Diego. (So are many sobriety-oriented tour operators and travel agents. Such large-scale conventions are only staged in the U.S. every five years, and some say attendance at the San Diego gathering could reach 60,000.)

Wilbur estimates that he booked 800 domestic travelers and another 800 foreign travelers in 1992. He predicts that these figures will be a third higher.

“It’s really unbelievable,” he says. “I started doing these low-key, because of the traditions of the program. But now the competition is getting out with their stuff, so I figured I’d better start doing the same thing here. . . . It’s just going to keep building and building.”

The companies noted in this column are only a sampling of those arising in the sober-travel market. More can be found through Sober Times or other recovery-related publications. As any traveler should with any new tour operator or hotelier, prospective clients should ask a lot of questions: How long has the company been in business? How much deposit money is required and how it is held? How much time have tour guides spent in the destination area?

Travelers should also expect a strong personal element in the answers: More than most entrepreneurs, sober-travel specialists tend to have prologues to their business stories.

Ron Hardin, a 13-year travel agent now working for All Around Travel in San Diego (9050 Friars Road, Suite 101, San Diego 92108; 619-282-3030), last May flew across the Atlantic for the first time since quitting drinking two years before. He drank a lot of tea, and when he got nervous, relied on the wide reach of A.A. (To calm a nervous former drinker, flight attendants will sometimes take the microphone to page “friends of Bill W.” and mention a seat number--thereby cluing in other A.A. members that a fellow traveler needs help. Bill Wilson was the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and his name is a widely recognized code phrase.) Hardin got where he was going without a problem--his destination was an A.A. gathering in Ireland--and had a great time there. Now he’s developing a specialty, and working on 1993 sober-travel package arrangements for a long fall weekend in Palm Springs and a Christmas cruise. (Many cruise ships now feature daily A.A. meetings.)

Fountain Valley tour operator Bill Koelzer, who arranges tours of China for special-interest groups from Mensa members to diabetics, is yet another recent entry into the specialty. Last fall he took his 23 sober tourists to China, leaving the karaoke bar off the itinerary and directing restaurants not to automatically deliver beer to the table at lunch and dinner, as is customary in many places. Knowing that demand for caffeine is often fierce in such groups, Koelzer also brought extra instant coffee just in case.

Koelzer agrees that recovery travel seems to be hot right now, but warns that it’s not a sure thing for travel professionals. He had hoped for more than 23 on last year’s trip, but found that only so many people are: a) in recovery, b) affluent enough for overseas travel, and c) interested in China. Next time, he says, he may look for a broader clientele.