A sea of multicolored fliers adorns every classroom on campus, advertising spring break packages galore. Incredible deals to exotic destinations offer everything from roundtrip airfare to free hotel-airport transfers.

Students usually turn to their travel agents to cash in on their favorite break packages, but the artists who create those masterpieces are often found behind the scenes.

Travel agents often buy prepackaged travel deals from vacation wholesalers. Companies such as Travel Turf, a wholesaler, arrange contracts with airlines and hotels in advance to make spring break excursions affordable for students, said Bruce Bevan, director of sales for Travel Turf.

Travel Turf tries to design trips "to make everything a good time and something (students) will remember as they get older," Bevan said.

Bevan said Travel Turf must guarantee a certain number of rooms at a particular hotel or airline and pay for reservations before they even see a dime of students' money. If the company fails to sell the trips, it loses the money, Bevan said.

Travel Turf arranges contracts with hotels such as the Wyndham Ambassador Beach Hotel in the Bahamas, the Oasis Beach Resort and the Tucan Cun Beach Resort in Cancun, Mexico, Bevan said.

In order to ensure that all its reservations are filled, Travel Turf sometimes tacks on incentive deals to make packages more alluring to prospective travelers.

Incentives run the gamut from free pizza parties to discounted side trips to waived cover charges at nighttime hot spots. The costs for these little extras are picked up by either Travel Turf or the place of business providing the deal, Bevan said. Often the cost is covered by the club or restaurant in the hopes that students will continue to patronize the businesses for the duration of their stay. But Travel Turf never passes the costs of these incentive deals on to students, Bevan said.

Local travel agents warn students that some of those beautifully crafted fliers hanging on campus corkboards may be fraudulent and to check carefully into the people from whom they purchase trips.

Nicole DeVitto (sophomore-psychology) pointed out that sometimes supposedly great deals fall through at the last minute.

"There's no guarantee that you're going," said DeVitto, who has traveled to Cancun, Mexico, in previous years.

"Students must be aware. They've got to think," said Shelia Green, travel consultant for Centre for Travel, 114 S. Hiester St.

Green said some people run false ads to rip students off, and students should be wary of sending their hard-earned money to an unfamiliar business.

"If it seems too good to be true, it is," Green said.

Brooke Rabold (junior-management), who will journey via automobile to Florida next week, said she has some reservations about her reservation.

"I'm not 100 percent sure that my room will be there when I get there," she said.