Travel Buddy: Anaheim Tour Company Teams With a Top Internet Trip Booker

Contiki Holidays, an Anaheim company that sent 80,000 young adults off on its guided bus tours last year, has a big new partner: Preview Travel, a leading Internet travel site that soon will grow even bigger by merging with competitor Travelocity.

Preview Travel is now listing 33 of Contiki’s tours to Africa, Canada, Europe, the South Pacific and the United States, and eventually will have all 100 of Contiki’s packages. The company books only people under 35; older folks are referred to Trafalgar Tours, an upscale sister company.

Marketing manager Lisa Wooldridge said Contiki hasn’t stopped using brick-and-mortar travel agents, “but we’ve found that the online marketing vehicle is ideal to reach the market we’re trying to cater to”--18- to 35-year-olds.

Contiki offers budget tours for the college-age crowd and more expensive packages aimed at young professionals who have graduated from hostels to hotels. A major source of business is parents who don’t want to spend a fortune but aren’t eager to have their offspring just wandering around foreign countries with backpacks.

Growing by more than 25% a year, Contiki recently moved to larger quarters in Anaheim. It began in 1961 when a young New Zealander, John Anderson, assembled a group of strangers to tour Europe in a 12-seat minibus. Until 1977, its clients pitched their own tents and cooked their own food.