San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Local tour company finds ways for people to safely ‘travel’ together
RETAIL TRENDS
For more than 34 years, local tour operator Daytripper Tours has provided San Diegans with deluxe motorcoach excursions to the Getty Center, Reagan Library, Rose Parade, Los Angeles museums and other destinations throughout the Southwest and beyond.
That all changed last March when the coronavirus pandemic forced bus tours to cease operations. Since then, Daytripper has found new ways to offer travel experiences: live, online and interactive virtual road trips led by the same tour guides who’ve led the company’s bus tours for decades.
“People are jumping onboard these online experiences by the dozens,” said Myron Stam, who founded Daytripper Tours in 1987. “Virtual road trips allow them to ‘travel’ on a 60- to 90-minute real-time tour or experience with their friends and families stuck at home across the country.”
The company offers a variety of travel experiences including virtual road trips, unusual attractions, live-broadcast walking tours, fascinating historical journeys and even periodic socially distanced in-person walking tours around San Diego.
Upcoming virtual tours include a journey through the past, present and future of downtown Los Angeles along Wilshire Boulevard; a road trip and excursion aboard the historic Fillmore & Western Railroad; Ireland’s music, culture and lore; Palm Springs; and others.
Daytrippers also maintains a re-watch library of dozens of past online adventures, including Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, Pageant of the Masters, Pismo Beach Monarch butterfly grove and the Getty Villa Museum.
At $10 per household, the tours and experiences are affordable, and the registration process is simple. Participants are emailed a Zoom link and periodic reminders as the tour date approaches. Live technical support is available.
For information, visit daytrippertours.com or call (619) 3343394