TIME’S RUNNING OUT

If you have daydreams about celebrating the millennium in Las Vegas, be advised that the reality could cost you $2,000 for three nights (at New York-New York), maybe even $2,000 per night (at Caesars Palace).

Or perhaps you’re mulling a three- or four-day millennium Mexican cruise instead. Forget it. Carnival and Royal Caribbean, which usually compete on those itineraries from Los Angeles every weekend, have instead dispatched those ships on longer, pricier routes.

If you’d rather go rustic and spend the grand click-over camping in a national park like Death Valley or Joshua Tree, you can relax for a few months: Those and most other national parks won’t take campsite reservations until 90 days before your arrival date. But by then, of course, if you don’t get what you want, it may be too late to make alternative plans.

Welcome to Battlefield Millennium, which only sounds like a new L. Ron Hubbard novel. Those who haven’t laid plans yet for Dec. 31 will find a travel marketplace teeming with uncertainty and chutzpah.

Insiders say there are more hotel rooms and tour-group slots still available than many industry experts expected, even a fair number of cruise-ship cabins. But when it comes to prices, especially in hotels, the planet seems encircled by sales directors reaching for the stars.

Current rates suggest your lodgings on land (excluding Asia) could cost you twice the usual price, maybe more, usually with mandatory minimum stays of three days or more. Further, some hotels are demanding 100% nonrefundable deposits when you reserve, which means they’ll be collecting interest on your money for the better part of a year.

At sea, the markups run 30% to 45%, and the sailings are longer than usual. Recent deadlines for cruise deposit payments have apparently scared many initial bookings away, especially on longer, costlier itineraries. Seven-day itineraries--the shortest and most affordable cruise option during the New Year’s period--are selling fastest, both in the Caribbean and along Mexico’s west coast.

But the weeks to come will be crucial for consumers because billions of dollars in millennial travel inventory will be placed on the market for the first time. If consumers don’t bite, rates will fall. And many industry veterans expect just that to happen.

Many lodgings have just announced millennium rates and began taking individual reservations Jan. 1. Similarly, most major airlines take bookings no more than 11 months in advance of flights--which means their phone lines will heat up heavily in the last days of this month. (Southwest, the big exception, books no more than six months ahead.)

Many tour operators have boosted prices too. But not all prices: Thanks to Asia’s economic woes, some millennial tours to Asia will actually cost less than tours that left last month. Cambridge-based Overseas Adventure Travel is selling a 15-day millennial Thailand trip for $2,390 per person--about $300 less than a comparable trip in the 1998-99 season. The tour operator Globus & Cosmos has reduced its 1998-99 rates by an average of 12% for millennial trips to the South Pacific, including a 14-day “G’Day Australia” trip (with the new year greeted in Melbourne with fireworks), whose price was cut from $2,109 to $1,559.

But don’t look to Globus & Cosmos for any European trips. Though the company had 26 groups scattered around Europe last week, Globus & Cosmos has abandoned that continent altogether for the coming New Year’s holiday. Why? A company spokeswoman says Globus, which specializes in mid-price and budget tours, couldn’t get reasonable rates from European hoteliers.

In Las Vegas, by mid-December reservations agents at New York-New York, tel. (888) 693-6763, were offering a three-night millennium package: three nights in a standard room for $2,000. At Caesars Palace, tel. (800) 634-6661, an agent over the phone quoted millennium rates of $2,000 per night (with a four-night minimum), then added that she only had 50 rooms at that rate. “Once we sell the first 50, it goes up another $500 a night,” she said. Rates will continue rising until 200 of the hotel’s 1,200 standard rooms are rented; the hotel will hold the other 1,000 back as freebies for high rollers.

At the Circus-Circus Hotel, Casino and Theme Park on the Strip, tel. (800) 444-2472, management started selling New Year’s Eve rooms in mid-September. In mid-November of this year, weekday room rates ran $29 (in the soon-to-be-renovated Manor area) and $39 (in the Tower). For New Year’s 1998-99, those numbers jumped to $200 and $220, with a three-day minimum. And for the millennium? Try $350 and $450 per night, with a four-night minimum.

Many other major Vegas hotels, including the Bellagio, tel. (888) 987-6667, and the Mirage, tel. (800) 627-6667, remained mum on millennium rates as of press time in December, saying they’d be announced in January. With the 1999 opening of three big new hotels--Venetian, Paris and Mandalay Bay--Las Vegas on Dec. 31 will have an inventory of about 120,000 hotel rooms.

In San Francisco, Jill Gustavson, owner of hotel broker San Francisco Reservations, tel. (800) 677-1500, reported in mid-December that “we only have a handful of reservations” and that many hotels still haven’t decided on rates.

On a typical New Year’s Eve, Gustavson said, San Francisco hotel rooms are priced at “off-the-rack” rates--roughly 25% higher than what most rooms go for most of the time. For the millennium, Gustavson’s best guess is that hotels will bump usual rates by 75% to 100%. She suggests that travelers comparison-shop in mid-January and book before April.

Bob Diener, president of the Hotel Reservations Network, tel. (800) 96HOTEL, suggests that consumers wait longer.

“We’re not selling a lot yet,” says Diener, whose company brokers hotel rooms in 26 U.S. cities. Like others, Diener forecasts that demand will be highest in Las Vegas and New York, followed by Orlando and Chicago. He also expects special-event organizers to grab up big blocks of rooms in big-city hotels. But with so many places charging twice and three times their regular rates, Diener counsels watching and waiting.

“A lot of the hotels, we don’t feel they’re a good value,” Diener says. “And a lot of hotels are saying ‘Sold out,’ but they’re not really sold out. They don’t want to price their inventory yet.

“We’re advising consumers to wait a little bit,” Diener adds. “It’s unlikely that rates are going to get higher than they are right now . . . I would say there’s no problem waiting until at least April, and probably early summer.” Further, adds Diener, “if we head into even a mild recession, it’s going to be a very different situation.”

Throughout the travel industry, this superheated marketplace is annoying consumer advocates and forcing some cautious veterans to muse about the risks of overhype and the benefits of staying home on such a night.

“My personal opinion is this thing is going to be a bust. There’s too much hype out there,” says David Herbert, president of the U.S. Tour Operators Assn. and owner of Glendale-based African Travel Inc. “I don’t think the average traveler is prepared to pay twice the amount of money they would spend to go the same place two or three weeks later.”

Herbert and several other industry veterans mentioned the “Olympic syndrome,” when hotels set high rates expecting a captive audience, then find the hordes are scared away.

Then there’s the fickleness factor. As over-optimistic hoteliers, tour operators and others release their holds on big blocks of rooms, and would-be cruisers back away from tentative reservations, many in the travel industry could find themselves suddenly burdened with a lot of perishable inventory. The deposit “drop-dead” dates vary from hotel to hotel and cruise line to cruise line, so if a traveler has a particular vacation in mind it’s wise to ask when those deposit-due dates fall. Also, seasoned travel agents should be alert to such possibilities.

At Consumer Reports Travel Letter, editor Laurie Berger says flatly, “We’re calling it price-gouging. . . . It’s the big night of your lifetime, and you can expect vendors to jack up those prices as high as the sky.”

When travelers arrive at their destinations and find that their premium-priced accommodations aren’t much different than they are on a normal trip, Berger adds, “there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers out there.”

Ed Perkins, a veteran consumer advocate and ombudsman for the American Society of Travel Agents, predicts that “for anybody who really wants it, there will be availability. Don’t tie your money up and pay top dollar early. I would advise people to wait it out.”

But many are too excited to hold back, not even worrying that airlines could be vulnerable to Y2K computer foul-ups. (The airlines pledge that planes won’t crash, though some have suggested they could ground some flights.) And 99% of the party-planning public is ignoring the calendar wonks who say the true beginning of the next millennium AD will be Jan. 1, 2001, not Jan. 1, 2000. A sampling of the marketplace follows.

U.S. Hotels, Parks, Other Options

On the banks of scenic Lake Washington in Kirkland, Wash., the upscale Woodmark Hotel, tel. (800) 822-3700, has an offer for you and about 200 of your closest friends and family. General manager Tom Waithe is offering the entire 100-room hotel for two nights--with guests arriving on Friday, Dec. 31, enjoying a four-course dinner, dancing, fireworks, midnight champagne breakfast, Rose Bowl brunch and New Year’s Day evening buffet, then departing on Sunday, Jan. 2. The tab: $199,900. But before you bite, consider that’s more than quadruple the hotel’s rates this week. More than three-fourths of the Woodmark’s rooms were offered Dec. 31, 1998, for $240 or less.

Santa Barbara’s San Ysidro Ranch ($200,000, 38 rooms, two nights; tel. [800] 368-6788) and Manhattan’s Fitzpatrick Grand Central Hotel ($1.5 million, 155 rooms, three nights; tel. [800] 367-7701) have similar offers.

In Colorado Springs, the venerable Broadmoor resort, tel. (800) 634-7711, plans a three-day millennium package--fireworks around Cheyenne Lake, performances by Bernadette Peters and the Temptations, big-band music--that will run $2,500 per person, double occupancy, including all meals and drinks. To keep service up, a hotel spokeswoman says, management intends to rent no more than 500 of the resort’s 700 rooms. The hotel said 60 millennium packages had been sold as of mid-December.

In Beverly Hills, the Peninsula hotel, tel. (800) 462-7899 or (310) 551-2888, is offering its prime suites for rates of $1,999 for New Year’s Eve 1999, and $2,000 for the following night (guests must stay at least two nights, but the hotel will throw in a third night “free”). Price includes Rolls Royce airport pickup, dinner on New Year’s Eve and other extras. Standard room rates for the occasion are $999 nightly (two-night minimum, with a dinner and brunch included).

At the Peninsula Hong Kong, tel. (800) 223-6800 or 011-852-2366-6251, a tally showed 35 of 300 rooms were booked for the millennium by mid-December. Those booked are paying about $740 nightly (three nights minimum, breakfasts and Rolls Royce airport transfer included).

At Ritz-Carlton hotels, tel. (800) 241-3333, most rooms will carry a three-night minimum, with rates up to $3,000 (in Laguna Niguel). By mid-November, the 35-location luxury hotel chain had taken 2,238 bookings for various special packages offered that night, leaving most rooms still unclaimed. The most special package of all, offered at 33 Ritz-Carltons worldwide, is the “Ultimate Experience” (the best suite in the hotel for three nights, complete with chauffeur-driven Jaguar, complimentary Bulgari watches, Baccarat champagne flutes and so on). Price is a cool $100,000.

In Hawaii, at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, tel. (800) 334-6284, “we’ve been taking a wait list for three years,” a telephone reservations agent reported. It’s long. . . . And we only have 380 rooms. It’s going to be hard to get in.” Yet as of late December, the hotel still hadn’t set a price for those much-coveted nights. Management last fall set an eight-day minimum millennium stay, with a nonrefundable deposit for the full amount due to lock in a reservation. Using rates from 1998’s New Year’s Eve (when the hotel’s minimum was six nights), that would mean a $2,880 payment up front ($360 nightly before taxes) for eight nights in one of the resort’s most modest rooms. But of course the 1999 millennium rates, which may not be known until April, are likely to be higher.

Hilton, Hyatt and Four Seasons hotels take reservations up to one year in advance, although Four Seasons and Hyatt reservationists say New Year’s Eve 1999 may be made available several weeks early because of extraordinary demand.

In Yosemite National Park, the Yosemite Lodge and Curry Village will take bookings on 60% of their millennium lodgings starting 366 days before guests’ arrival dates. The Wawona Hotel will use the 366-day policy on bookings for all of its rooms. Thus, if you wantedto make New Year’s Eve 1999 part of a five-night holiday beginning Dec. 30, your first opportunity to call for reservations would have been Dec. 29, 1998.

Meanwhile, the other 40% of the Yosemite Lodge and Curry Village rooms will go into a lottery, as will all 123 rooms at the much-sought Ahwahnee Hotel (where regular rates run $246 nightly) and tickets to the Ahwahnee’s annual New Year’s Eve dinner and dance ($150 in 1998). Under the lottery plan, would-be guests can request a lottery application, then hope their number comes up in the drawing, which will probably be held in February. Room rates have not yet been set, but because of Yosemite’s national park status, millennial rates are likely to rise only a modest amount above current levels. For more information on Yosemite lodging, call (559) 252-4848. For Yosemite camping, call (800) 436-7275.

Campsite bookings at most national parks (including the Grand Canyon and Death Valley) are handled by concessionaire Biospherics of Beltsville, Md., tel. (800) 365-2267, which takes reservations no more than three months in advance.

Meanwhile, at scattered sites in the rural U.S., about 1,000 volunteers will be celebrating the new millennium by giving their time to team projects aimed at helping at-risk children in rural multiracial communities. The sponsor is Global Volunteers, tel. (800) 487-1074, a 15-year-old nonprofit group based in St. Paul and dedicated to charitable efforts in the developing world and rural North America. The group’s MilleniuM Service Project--its largest one-time mobilization effort ever--asks for a week of volunteers’ time, from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, 2000, and a contribution of $450 per adult. It offers meals and accommodations, which might range from a room in a host family’s home to a residence on church grounds. Air fare is separate. Sites so far include Texas, Mississippi, West Virginia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico. “I think we have about 300 people signed up so far,” said Nancy Groves, the group’s communications coordinator, on Dec. 15. “But we’re getting there, and it’s exciting.”

Cruises

The high-end cruise line Holland America, tel. (800) 426-0327, was reporting sellouts on five of its nine millennium cruises by mid-December, with those on seven-day itineraries (most in the Caribbean) selling fastest. One of the itineraries with the most unsold cabins was a 16-day Hawaiian Islands cruise on the Statendam, beginning and ending in San Diego. Rates start at $350 per day.

On the Mississippi River, the Delta Queen Steamboat was grabbed up in 1997 by a travel agency in Rochester, N.Y., which has packaged a five-night cruise from New Orleans beginning Dec. 29. Berths went on sale in January 1998. Before Christmas, said a spokeswoman for the AAA Rochester Travel Agency, tel. (716) 461-5000, 78 of the ship’s 85 cabins had been reserved. The seven remaining cabins were priced at $2,690 per person (double occupancy), air fare excluded.

Farther from these shores, in the South Pacific near the international date line and the Tonga island of Nuku’Alofa, the 940-passenger luxury ship Crystal Symphony, tel. (800) 446-6620, will be in the middle of a 17-day cruise (minimum price, $8,975) when the millennium arrives. As of late December, a Crystal spokeswoman said the ship was full, with a waiting list (as was the Crystal Harmony, which will greet the new millennium off Rio de Janeiro). The cost of these cruises: about $525 per day and up. (Aspiring millennial Crystal cruisers, by the way, may still have hope: On Jan. 2, the line’s millennium passengers were required to bump their 20% deposit payments up to 50% of the total cruise tab, a “drop dead” date that may have reopened a few cabins.)

Throughout the cruise business, “you hear two different stories,” says Mike Driscoll, editor of Cruise Week. “You hear from the travel agents that there are so many cancellations on millennium bookings--due to shock over the prices--that they don’t know if it is going to be a hit or not. But the cruise lines say that prices will go up because demand is so high.”

Carnival Cruises, tel. (800) 327-9501, which usually has two ships offering three- and four-day Mexico cruises from Los Angeles, instead will have the Elation on a seven-day millennium itinerary (fares $2,832 and up, with a $1,200 deposit due upon booking) and the Holiday on an 11-day itinerary ($2,652 and up, with $1,500 up front.) By mid-December there was good availability on both.

Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz reports that two of the company’s 14 millennium sailings had sold out by Dec. 16--one ship chartered by a private party, the other a five-day itinerary from Tampa. Most of the company’s seven-day cruises are 75% full or more, de la Cruz said, and “the shorter voyages are selling faster.” Prices, she said, are “about 30% to 40% higher than typical Christmas/New Year’s pricing.”

Tours

Globus & Cosmos, tel. (800) 221-0090, one of the world’s largest tour operators, has scheduled 58 millennium tours, from a five-day San Francisco trip ($739 excluding air fare) to a 27-day Pacific Rim odyssey ($2,849, excluding air fare). By December, the company had taken about 250 reservations, “far beyond where we typically are” so long before departure, a spokeswoman said.

Glendale-based African Travel Inc., tel. (800) 722-7755 or (818) 507-7893, trumpets safaris in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, with “tribal entertainment” on the big night and sunrise game viewing on the first dawn of 2000. Prices, reflecting the rates set by hoteliers and the company’s own interest in making a fair profit, will be 30% to 50% higher than the year before, said President David Herbert. But so far, he added, “bookings have actually been slow.” The company’s three South African itineraries range from 11 to 13 days. Rates, including air fare, start at $6,795 per person, based on double occupancy. Overseas Adventure Travel, tel. (800) 873-5628, operator of upscale outdoorsy trips, operated four tours during the New Year’s Eve just past. Their average cost was $2,615 for 16 days, including international air fare. For next New Year’s Eve, the company has 12 trips, with 60% of available spots already filled. The company’s average millennial tour cost is $3,873 for 15 days. The two biggest sellers so far: a “Discover Thailand” trip (including Bangkok, Chiang Mai, elephant treks, rice barge rides) for $2,390 per person, including meals and air fare; and “Four Worlds of the Andes,” a $2,490 trip to Peru and Bolivia that includes Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and an Amazon hike.

Party 2000

* More millennium-themed trips are listed in the Tours & Cruises column today on L6.

* Electronic Explorer surveys a World Wide Web of millennium--related sites on L14.