Leaving for vacation, with no clue where you're headed
Mystery vacations are a growing niche in the travel industry, leaving travelers guessing where they're going until they head to the airport or they hop in the car
This article was published in The Charlotte Ledger e-newsletter on October 10, 2022. Find out more and sign up for free here.
Could you put planning an entire vacation — including the destination — in the hands of someone you’ve never met? Surprise travel companies take the decisions out of vacations.
This is the moment at the Charlotte airport in July when Audrey Nicholes and her mom, Jodie, learned where they were headed for a three-day vacation. The mother-daughter duo flew to Austin, Texas, with the help of Pack Up + Go, a national travel company that specializes in surprise trips.
by Cristina Bolling
Jodie Nicholes considers herself “as type A as they get,” but when she found herself hankering for a carefree weekend getaway for herself and her 16-year-old daughter Audrey this summer, she decided to try something new, and out of character: She hired a company to plan a surprise vacation, keeping her in the dark even about her destination until departure time.
Nicholes, who works in advertising, learned about the surprise vacations concept a few years ago when as a field producer for the Charlotte office of NBC News she researched the concept for a story about unusual types of travel.
In the market for a mother-daughter trip, she booked a long weekend with Pack Up + Go, a national company based out of Pittsburgh that specializes in surprise travel. They sent Nicholes a 25-question survey about her likes and dislikes, the dates she wanted to travel, her budget, and a list of places she visits frequently.
The result was a whirlwind 3-day trip to Austin, Texas, which Nicholes said was exactly what she and Audrey needed: a mix of fun activities, good food, off-the-beaten-path sightseeing an even a little extra time to squeeze in a quick college tour.
“I like schedules. I like itineraries. I like knowing my day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and everything in between,” Nicholes said. “To release some of that control was hard, but cathartic and exhilarating.”
How it works: Surprise travel is a small but growing segment of the vacation industry, and it speaks to what exhausts and frustrates many of us about our current hustle-bustle lives — we are decision fatigued.
So while the idea of putting one’s precious vacation time — and money — into the hands of total strangers may seem risky, taking off the planner hat and turning it over to someone else can seem like one way to get some sweet relief and adventurous fun.
Five days before their July departure date, Nicholes got an email from Pack Up + Go with the weather forecast for the mystery place she’d be traveling, as well as the types of clothes she and Audrey would want to pack. As (bad) luck would have it, the highs for their destination would be 100, 101 and 103.
“I laughed and said, ‘This is God’s way of punishing me for giving up control,’” Nicoles recalls.
Three days before departure, an envelope arrived via certified mail with flight and hotel information, restaurant gift cards, Uber cash, activity reservations and information on things they might want to do in their free time. They left it sealed, so they could be surprised on the day of the trip.
An email arrived the day before the trip telling Nicholes what time she and Audrey should arrive at the airport to check in for their flight.
Nicholes said she and Audrey were tempted to rip open the envelope before heading to the airport, but they stopped themselves. Once they got inside the terminal, though, Audrey did the honors.
Their $2,000 travel budget got them flights to Austin, two nights in a well-located Aloft hotel, a $100 Uber credit, a paid-for fancy dinner and two tours, including a bike-and-brew tour. (Nicholes wrote on her Pack Up + Go survey that she loves craft beer.)
Mother and daughter also checked out a few items on Pack Up + Go’s list of suggested things to do, including a ghost tour, an amphibious duck tour and a visit to Congress Bridge at sunset to watch thousands of bats fly out into the night sky.
Different types of trips: Pack Up + Go isn’t the only travel agency that offers surprise travel, but it’s one of the most popular.
CEO Lillian Rafson founded the company in 2016 when, as a 23-year-old, she realized that surprise travel had taken root in Europe but was a foreign concept in the United States.
The company only plans trips within the United States (Rafson is passionate about the economic benefits of tourism on U.S. cities), and they’re broken down into four categories: airplane trips, drives to a city, drives to an outdoorsy area or staycations. Trips are booked by professional travel advisors, not a computer algorithm, she said.
Rafson told The Ledger that her target audience has turned out to be broader than she originally anticipated.
“We see a lot of people who say, ‘I’m typically the planner in my friend group or my family, and I want to be surprised,’” she said.
“As adults, there are so few times in our lives when we’re genuinely surprised in a good way. It’s a fun way to treat yourself,” Rafson said. We see a lot of couples celebrating their anniversaries, engagements, birthday trips. Friends who live across the country, and it’s hard to figure out logistically when and where to go. So, we take that burden off of travelers.”
Mystery vacations aren’t for everyone. Giving up so much control can be tough for a lot of people, and frequent travelers can’t use airline miles or hotel points when they book with travel companies like Pack Up + Go.
But Nicholes said she’s game for another mystery trip.
“We saw things and we did things we wouldn’t normally have done,” she said. “And we didn’t have to think about it.”
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project