•   CUCRA
• April 2022 Meeting
• Meeting Documents

CUCRA/CUCEA Meeting, April 27/28, 2022, via Zoom

Introduction
UC Retirees Travel is back in business with two successful trips in March and a third trip April 20-May1. The program continues to be impacted by COVID and world conflict, but registration numbers for our remaining 2022 trips are encouraging. We have begun adding 2023 trips, and interest has been strong for those excursions as well.

Publicity

• Continued the monthly Travel Talk e-newsletter; started in May 2019 with 689 subscribers; during the last six months, the list has grown from 1,611 subscribers to 1,731 subscribers.
• Continued sending publicity to retiree center directors and CUCRA reps on a monthly basis.
• Continued submitting articles to New Dimensions.
• Continued working with Bob Daly to list and update information on the CUCRA Travel website.
• Offered four webinars: two by Collette and two by OAT.

Management

• Continued working with Dolores Dyer, assistant coordinator, on trip planning and publicity.
• Recruited two new UC Retirees Travel trip escorts: Vickie Leow from UCSF and Frank Trueba from UCSC.
• OAT has been struggling with pandemic-related customer service issues much more than Collette. OAT is aware of the issues and is working to correct them, so we hope that things will improve soon.

Trip Planning

• Continued planning for 2022 trips and began adding 2023 trips. The first 2022 trip to New Orleans was cancelled due to low registration. Registration numbers dropped from at total of 34 to 27 for the two Spain and Portugal departures, the Netherlands/Belgium/France trip dropped from 26 to 9 participants at the last minute, and the Baltic capitals trip was cancelled because of the war in Ukraine.
• With the CUCRA executive committee's permission, I allocated $235 of travel funds to partially cover the cost of the escort's trip for the Netherlands/Belgium/Holland tour. Normally we would not send an escort with fewer than 12 participants, but this trip experienced an unexpected last-minute drop in registrations, and I felt that it was important to still send an escort, especially with the current world uncertainties.
• Even with the current uncertainties, the majority of our 2022 trips have encouraging registration totals (cancelled trips in red). With these totals, CUCRA will realized at least $25,000 in revenue for 2022.

*CUCRA earns 10% commission on each traveler. Commission on the first 10 people covers the escort's trip; if fewer than 12 register, we will typically not send an escort.

Submitted by Sue Barnes, UC Retirees Travel program coordinator

View/Download a PDF version of the CUCRA Retiress Travel Report