Go, Team!

Squeezing in a few long weekends a year is often the closest entrepreneurs get to a vacation. But can these miniholidays relieve business stress? Yes, say the experts-especially if they are fantasy vacations.

It's for that reason, perhaps, that entrepreneurs are turning to sports weekends, says Steven Wilson, vice president of Sports Tours Inc., a Hatfield, Massachusetts, company that books spectator sporting event trips (including air fare, hotel, rental car and great tickets to the game) for passionate sports fans with no time to plan vacations themselves.

Ron Ferron, owner of Center Machine Inc., a 12-person Ludlow, Massachusetts, company that makes machinery parts, is just such a person. An avid fan of the University of Massachusetts basketball team, Ferron would follow them just about anywhere-if he had the time. Last December when the Minutemen were playing in the Hawaiian Classic, Ferron called Sports Tours a week before the tournament, asking if they could book a trip for him and his wife to Hawaii and get them tickets for the team's three games. "They took care of everything in a couple of days," says Ferron.

While people are now interested in baseball road trips to watch the boys of summer do their stuff at some of the nation's greatest ballparks, Wilson says, attention will soon shift to professional and college football weekends and the January 27 Super Bowl in New Orleans. For more information, call Sports Tours at (800) 722-7701.

This article was originally published in the July 1996 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Go, Team!.