BLACKSBURG -- Monday morning office hours were unexpectedly quiet for Richard Marchal.

By 8:45 a.m., the phone at University Travel in Blacksburg was ringing, but not off the hook -- not the way the travel agency's vice president had expected it to ring when he left the office Friday.

Of course on Friday, Marchal and most everyone here was expecting the Hokies to be preparing for a trip to the Bowl Championship Series and the Orange Bowl.

Several area travel agencies were so sure, they had set up fan travel packages to Miami, complete with chartered flights.

For a few hours Sunday, University Travel's $1,200 to $1,500 packages were even online.

But Saturday night's 27-22 loss to Florida State in the ACC championship game dropped the Hokies to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.

And travel agency officials said fans -- if they go -- are much more likely to drive the 553-mile trip than fly.

"Had it been the Orange Bowl, it would have been totally different," Marchal said of the morning's expected rush for bowl travel.

"It being a BCS bowl, it just demands a lot more attention from fans than the Gator Bowl. If it were the Orange Bowl, the phones would have been going off the hook."

When the Hokies instead face Louisville on Jan. 2, it will mark Tech's fifth trip to the Gator Bowl in 12 years.

And two days after a Hokie loss in Jacksonville, some of the fans logged onto Techsideline.com seemed unlikely to return.

"I love the Hokies and I have not missed a bowl game in three years," wrote jim80proof. "However, after two trips to the Gator Bowl in a city that should be stripped of its NFL team, I will not be attending."

Others, however, said they would support the Tech football team wherever they played.

These are the fans travel agents planned for Monday.

Somebody is going. Consider that the Virginia Tech Athletics Department sold out its Gator Bowl allotment of 12,750 tickets on Monday, school officials said. Those orders came from Hokie Club members and season ticket holders.

An additional 3,000 tickets will be made available to Virginia Tech students.

While their phones may have been quiet, agents were kept busy putting together hotel and transportation plans for Jacksonville.

"We're reconfiguring all our packages because we were betting on the Orange Bowl," Justin van Dyke, office manager at Omni Travel & Tours in Blacksburg, said Monday morning.

But by afternoon, van Dyke said Omni had decided not to offer its own bowl packages because of a lack of interest.

The agency would have needed at least 60 people to travel to Jacksonville to make such packages feasible.

By 3:20 p.m., only 15 had called.

Van Dyke said Omni will handle travel arrangements on a case-by-case basis, as well as offer packages from national company Premier Sports Travel.

Marchal said University Travel also has had to rethink its Jacksonville offerings, but he was hopeful fans would factor bowl travel into their holiday plans.

"We did have packages ready for the Orange Bowl," he said. "Those were three- to four-day packages with hotel and airfare from Roanoke and Richmond."

"With Jacksonville much closer, I don't know what the demand will be for air travel. A lot of people drove this past weekend."

That's what Chuck Gearhart of Botetourt County and his Roanoke-area buddies did.

Gearhart, who is vice president for events for the Roanoke Valley Hokie Club, had just arrived home from Jacksonville on Monday and was considering a trip back.

"Some people really don't want to go back to Jacksonville for a second time, but we have hard-core Hokies that will go to any bowl game we go to," Gearhart said.