By The Associated Press

Panama City Beach, Fla., with its wall-to-wall motels, condos, bars, arcades, restaurants and shops attracts hordes of college students on spring break, as shown in this photo made last March. Students, however, are easy targets for unscrupulous tour operators working travel scams. (AP Photo/Bill Kaczor)

Attention all college students: If a spring break vacation package sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

That's the bottom-line advice Chris DeSessa gives his students and his clients when asked whether he thinks a tour operator's price is a good deal or a rip-off.

Mr. DeSessa, who is both a professor of travel-tourism management at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., and a travel agent at Church Travel, one of New England's oldest and most reputable travel agencies, says college students are easy targets for disreputable tour operators.

Seeking warm beach places

''Students have high hopes for an unforgettable spring break, and they yearn for warm beach destinations, like Florida and the Caribbean,'' Mr. DeSessa says.

''Combine that with the fact that most of them have limited budgets and very little experience in buying travel packages, and you can see why they are often the victims of spring break travel scams.''

Most bogus offers are marketed two ways -- through direct mail and over the telephone.

Many of the scam offers Mr. DeSessa has seen recently feature an offer of a cruise to Nassau in the Bahamas.

''Beware of any inexpensive-sounding trip that includes a Nassau cruise,'' he says. ''When you read the fine print, you'll see that it's really only a half-day cruise, and there are no cabins. Really, nothing more than a glorified ferry ride.''

Mr. DeSessa also recalls one bogus tour operator, now defunct, that used to extract more money from the passengers after they had boarded the plane.

''Someone from the tour company would come on board and tell everyone that they needed to pay more money, or the plane wouldn't take off,'' he says.

There are also several documented cases of travelers who were stranded at their destinations -- the chartered flights they took never came to bring them home, forcing them to pay for expensive one-way return flights on commercial airlines.

Awareness campaign started

The problem has become so prevalent that the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) and the National Tour Association (NTA) have launched public awareness campaigns that provide students and their parents with advice on how to avoid being victimized.

The good news is that, if you do your homework, your spring break vacation will earn high marks. ASTA and NTA offer the following ''primer'':

· Consult with your local travel agent. A reputable travel professional can help you evaluate tour offers and compare them with packages from respected tour companies.

· Talk with someone who can vouch for the tour operator and the trip. Ask the tour operator for the names and phone numbers of other customers.

Then call and confirm that they are indeed satisfied customers. If the company balks at your request, consider it a warning.

· Request all of the trip details in writing. These include total cost (taxes, fees and charges, too), restrictions, cancellation penalties, and the exact names of airlines and hotels (ASTA travel agents are required to provide this information).

If the tour uses a charter flight, get the charter operator's name and address, and check its registration with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Consumer Affairs, I-25, Washington, D.C. 20590.

· Never give credit card information over the phone to a company or person with whom you are not familiar.

· Ask if the tour operator belongs to a professional association, such as NTA, which offers a consumer protection plan.

· Avoid booking a trip with a company that sells directly through student representatives, rather than a reputable travel agent.

· Make sure your trip has a guaranteed departure and a guaranteed price.

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