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FOREVER YOUNG: TRAVEL
Girlfriend getaways & mancations
Boomers are big on vacations without the opposite sex.
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BY BARRY GOLSON
WHEN MY GROWN SON and I went
to Pinehurst, N.C., last year to play
golf and indulge in “guy things”
drink beer, smoke cigars I wasn’t
aware there was a word for our trip. It turns out
that we, and other fathers and sons like us, were on
a “mancation,” a goofy-sounding word coined sev
eral years ago. It describes men-only packages, part
of a trend in the travel industry toward “themed”
trips eco-vacations, culinary tours, voluntourism,
even don’t-leave-home staycations.
For generations, the family vacation was an an
nual trek to the beach, mountains, lake or national
park. But Baby Boomers want to travel their way
to dictate where, when and with whom they
travel. And they like to work their interests into it,
whether it’s sports vacations, volunteer vacations,
baseball stadium tours and so on.
Mancations and “girlfriend getaways” are just
one way that Boomers are doing this.
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USA WEEKEND ■ Nov. 14-16.2008
Some examples of mancations:
a rafting and hunting trip with les
sons in dressing meat; a beach-and
poker vacation (aka “Dudes on the
Dunes”); a gambling tour with a stint
at a Porsche driving school. Movies
such as City Slickers and Vince
Vaughn’s use of the word in The
Break-Up have helped make these
trips cool; there are now Entourage
trips and James Bond-themed adventures. Man
cations have been called “bachelor parties without
the wedding.”
What they all have in common: no girls allowed,
and a full roster of manly grunt! activities.
Memphis travel agent Leigh Sullivan, of Regency
Travel, a member of the high-end Virtuoso net
work, has sent groups off to Pebble Beach on a pri
vate jet, greens fees included. (How does she get
tee times at Pebble? “If I told you, it wouldn’t be
special, now would it?”) Also increasingly popular,
she says, are all-inclusive trips to watch Ultimate
Fighting matches. Double grunt!
Women-only trips, aka “girlfriend getaways,”
are just as trendy and were on the scene first.
(There’s even a Girlfriend Getaways magazine at
girlgetaways.com.) Women friends can mix fancy
spas and yoga retreats with other activities. For
example, they can go on a gambling trip to Las
Vegas and relax at the Canyon Ranch Spa Club in
the Venetian. Rock Resorts has packages of ski, spa
and golf outings.
It’s not all pampering, though. Outfits such as
Adventures in Good Company, Adventure Women
and Gutsy Women Travel specialize in hardier out
ings for “alpha females.” One group left the guys
behind and made the climb up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Call of the Wild, which has been arranging group
travel for women since 1978, offers hikes up Machu
| Picchu and into the Amazon rain forest.
How big a business is this kind of travel? It’s
difficult to pin down, but one website, I’m in!
■ (imin.com), which bills itself as a place to “coor
” dinate and create gender-specific group trips
and events,” claims that men alone spend $lO bil
lion to sl2 billion a year, and that more than 20 mil-
The trend
actually
started not
with the guys,
but women.
Plainview, N.Y. Men tend to be more rough-and
tumble. A member of Risky Skiers, a group of guys
who have been hitting the slopes together for more
than a decade, put it this way: “We bring along
‘jungle juice,’ play cards, gamble, consume unhealthy
food, suffer sleep deprivation, exchange jokes, and,
at the end, we swear to the ‘code of silence’ when
we return home.” a
Barry Golson is the editor of ForbesTraveler.com and
author of Gringos in Paradise and the forthcoming
Retirement Without Borders.
lion men have taken a guys-only trip (no
figures are available for women’s trips).
Speaking very generally, men and
women describe their satisfactions with
these trips differently. Women tend to
talk about the connections with their
friends. “The idea is to send the women
back to their college days, where you
laugh so hard you’re crying,” says travel
agent Lisa Mazzillo, of Power Travel in
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