Business in the travel industry wasn’t looking so sunny six months ago, according to Tricia Boeken, a 24-year veteran of the industry.

However, spring break has made business brighter.

Tricia Boeken, a travel agent with Adventure Travel, says business has picked up since the Sept. 11 attacks. Boeken, who helped a client Friday in her office, said spring break business has been as strong as previous years.

Boeken, a travel agent with Adventure Travel, said spring break travel in the Lawrence area is just as strong as previous years and showing no ill-effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I was extremely worried about my own job after Sept. 11,” Boeken said. “We just didn’t know how it would impact people, but this is going much better than I ever thought it would.

“I really believed people would be afraid to fly, and it did hurt our business tremendously when the airports were closed. But I guess maybe as more time goes by, people just become more comfortable. When I tell my clients that I’m flying and lots of my other clients are flying, it seems to make them more comfortable.”

Other Lawrence travel-related businesses agreed that this spring break season, which officially begins Sunday for Kansas University and most area public schools on Monday, is a clear sign Lawrence travelers are ready to do business again.

“I think business is definitely starting to come back around,” said Beverly Falley, owner of the Lawrence Travel Center. “You’ve got to think people are still going to want to travel. It’s a big country, and you can’t drive everywhere you want to go and still get there when you want to get there. And people aren’t willing to stay home.”

Both Boeken and Falley said they anticipate their businesses will book spring break sales at least equal to those of one year ago.

At Hertz Car Rental, Ryan Blum said business is as strong as ever, with sales up approximately 300 percent over an average day. He said he thinks some of this year’s business is attributable to people who are wary of flying, but it doesn’t account for as much as some people may think.

“A couple of months ago we did hear quite a bit from our customers about how they would normally fly but decided to drive,” Blum said. “Now I think everybody is getting a little more comfortable.

“I think most of our business is still due to the fact that four or five college students can split the cost of a car for a lot less than they can buy airline tickets for,” Blum said.

Even with much publicity about the struggles of airline companies in the post Sept. 11 world, airfares are not necessarily cheap during this spring break, travel agents said.

“I had a client call me wanting a cheap ticket to Myrtle Beach,” Boeken said. “I had to tell her that it was going to be hard to even find a seat, and it wasn’t going to be cheap. The flights are really booked.”

Travel agents said the spring break period continues to be one of their busiest times of the year, but still lags behind the Christmas holiday season as the most popular time to travel.

“It is not our biggest time of the year, but it is still very big and getting bigger,” Boeken said. “More people have started to use this time of year to take extended trips. I don’t know why, but spring break seems to be a bigger deal to more people than it used to.”

Both agents said popular spring break destinations are similar to previous years, including Mexico, the Caribbean and Colorado.