You, too, can race
GO! | New travel company lets people star in their own 'Amazing Race'
Millions of TVs will tune in to CBS-Channel 2 at 7 p.m. Sunday for the premiere of the 14th season of "The Amazing Race," where teams of two scour the globe doing wacky challenges along the way.
You can bet a good percentage of the show's viewers will turn to their couch potato partners and proclaim, "We could do that!"
(AP)
* Eight-day "budget" trips cost $1,995 a person; 24 teams maximum.
* 10-day "express" trips cost $2,550; 20 teams maximum.
* 14-day "standard" trips cost $2,950; 17 teams maximum.
* Payment isn't due until trip is finished.
Budget trips run June 8-15 and Aug. 10-17; express trips from June 22-July 1 and July 27-Aug. 5; standard trip is July 9-July 23. (Trips must be fully subscribed at least 60 days before departure.)
Competitours.com
A new company called Competitours agrees. It's selling team travel trips this summer, sending pairs of players through Europe on competitions lasting eight to 14 days.
Armed with a Eurail train pass and their own video cameras, teams will travel from one surprise destination to the next, completing about five offbeat challenges a day. They'll upload their videos each night to judges for scoring. The pair with the most points at the end of the trip wins the grand prize: more travel. They get a combination of airline tickets, 15-40 nights at Starwood hotels and a wad of spending money to customize their own whirlwind vacation.
"This is 'The Amazing Race' for regular people," said Steve Belkin, 45, Competitours' creator, president and janitor. "Anybody can do this."
Here are a few examples of what those anybodies might have to do:
• Visit a Viking ship museum in Oslo, Norway. After you tour the museum, shoot a 30-second mock commercial pitching a ninth century Viking vessel as a vacation option for today's families.
• Head to the top of the Eiffel Tower and convince tourists to do a 30-second rendition of the cancan.
• Choose three instruments at a torture museum in Prague and shoot a 60-second video explaining how each could be used as a non-lethal household item.
"It's not about speed and strength," Belkin said. "It's much more left-brained. It's more about, 'Show us what you're made of once you get to the site.' You can be clever. You can be silly. How you shoot your video is 100 percent up to you."
The father of three from Cleveland has spent much of his life working in radio and TV. In one of his projects, Belkin produced a comedy show called "Quick Witz" that aired after "Saturday Night Live" on WMAQ-Channel 5 from 1996 to 1999.
For Belkin, the past year has been devoted to getting Competitours off the ground.
"Luckily, my wife's an ophthalmologist so I could do it," he said.
When Belkin contacted me looking to get some ink about his new travel venture, I immediately thought of the first story I wrote for these pages nearly two years ago. The story was about a Chicago woman named Lisa Hunt, who won a similar travel competition called the Global Scavenger Hunt. This 'round-the-world travel adventure, about to be held this spring for the fifth time, sends teams to four continents to swim with baby elephants, lend a hand at a Tibetan refugee camp or take a cooking lesson from a Michelin-starred chef.
Turns out Belkin himself competed in the Global Scavenger Hunt in 2004. He and his teammate -- an L.A. real estate guy he'd never met before -- lost by 0.003 percent. Ouch.
Despite coming in second, Belkin had a good time. But he says he saw room for improvement.
"I started thinking, 'These guys have the world covered, but it costs $10,000 and takes three weeks,' " he said. "They inspired me to deconstruct what they did and see if I could build -- I don't want to say a better animal -- but a different one."
Competitours' trips range in price from $1,995 a person for an eight-day trip to $2,950 for a two-week sojourn. This covers international airfare, lodging in modest-but-clean hotels and a Eurail pass for train travel. Food and admission to sites are extra.
The routine is simple: Once teams upload their videos for judging around 5 p.m., they find out the following day's secret destination and get a look at the dozen or so challenges available for tackling the next day. Capping the number of challenges at five a day keeps the pace of the trip manageable. Teams also have their evenings free to do as they please.
"We want this trip to be a blast, not a blur," Belkin said.
The current economy is hardly an ideal environment for launching a travel business, but Belkin thinks there's plenty of demand for this type of vacation. He sees a big market made up of adventure travelers who've done the bungee jumping/whitewater rafting thing and now crave the excitement that comes along with "not knowing where the hell you'll be in 24 hours."
He also thinks the concept will appeal to college students and people in their early 20s looking for something more structured than backpacking but less restrictive than spoon-fed tours.
And don't forget the millions of "The Amazing Race" fans saying, "We could do that!"
"Think 'sightdoing' instead of 'sightseeing,' " Belkin said. "The game is fun and the grand prize is great. But really we're just trying to reorient people's whole concept of traveling beyond the tour bus, beyond the tour guide."