LI bus tour operators are ready to roll

If the jet hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center have been a financial disaster for airlines, they've had the opposite effect on local bus tours and cruises.
Motorcoach tour operators report a surge of interest in the last few weeks, in line with Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau President Michael Hollander's prediction that the next trend in tourism will be trips taken closer to home and on the ground.
Gayle Haines, who runs Light House Safaris, got a call shortly after the Sept. 11 disaster from a cruise ship company whose seven-day Hudson River-to-New England cruise suddenly needed an alternative to a scheduled stop in New York City.
She hastily arranged a series of half-day lighthouse and winery tours out of Greenport, which proved so pop╜ular with passengers that she expects it to become a regular feature of the cruise.
She has since gotten a call from another cruise line about organizing a similar tour, she said.
Since the WTC disaster, a surge of interest in local family vacations prompted her to put together "Birds and Beams," a family bus tour involving lighthouses and natural beauty on Suffolk's south shore. "Lighthouses are a symbol of hope," she said.
Christine Durkin, the LICVB's director of tourism and travel, said four tour operators put together pack-ages for Long Island only, and about a dozen more book tours here and else-where. The operators may contract the bus companies or may sell them the tour concepts and only make the ' arrangements with the attractions and accommodations.
In light of the surge in interest, Durkin is reviving a neglected initia╜tive called "Breaking the Sound Barrier," working with CVBs in Mystic

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