5 November 2010

Dear friends

Here, for your delectation, is a copy of an email we have sent to GB Privilege in response to their recent email, copied below. GB Privilege organise convoys of motorhomes to visit various tourist hot spots. In addition to individuals being able to pay to be part of a convoy, they put together group tours for organisations such as Brownhills.

Here is the email

Dear GB Privilege

We work as Travel Consultants for the UK's MMM magazine for Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania and Balkan Routes to Greece. We can assure you that Albania is now regularly visited by UK motorhomes, for itself and as part of a journey to and from Greece. We have visited Albania three times in the last three years and accounts of our journeys and those of other motorhomers appear on our website.

We are all individual, independent travellers (not 'customers'), making our own way, interested in the country and its people, making contact and often reporting and sharing our experiences. The wording of your email is therefore quite misleading and, in more significant circumstances, would be reported to the appropriate standard-setting body. As it is, we will use our website and our contacts to draw attention to the absurdity of your proposition.

'Lonely Planet', interested only in sales and hype, as you are, doesn't seem to understand that few tourists visit Albania because it is by no means ready for western-style tourism of the kind that they proselytise. It doesn't have the infrastructure, the roads, the accommodation, the tourist 'attractions', etc and health, vehicle and breakdown insurance is hard or impossible to get. The mountains of the interior may be 'beautiful' but they are empty (and dangerous in the north-east bordering Kosovo), while much of the coastal region is still taken up with grotesque communist-era industrialisation.

There is also a strong irony inherent in tourists wanting to go where no tourist has gone before. This is encapsulated in the Irish Tourist Slogan from the old days: 'Come and Drive on our Empty Roads'. They did and now they aren't. And the irony of wanting to be a pioneering tourist, even if they aren't, in the safety, comfort and security of a convoy with a leader and every move pre-booked and paid for!

It is a country to be visited by serious students of Eastern European development and history, or those interested in helping the people of the country through very hard times. They don't want to be stared at through the windows of holiday convoys of expensive, carbon-footprinting motorhomes.

Tourism should be developed - but carefully and on an appropriate scale. Not the tourism of the free zoo, but tourism that brings in real money for the people of the country. Your commercially organised convoy will be of your customers with their own transport, their own beds, their own food and refreshments, their own entertainments. How much will they add to the economy of the country? The tourist group will have its own dynamic, greatly inhibiting contact with real people of the country, other than the professional tourist touts. You should be ashamed to be making your money this way!

By the way, we don't want to be the tour leader, so don't ask. But do keep us on your mailing list so that we can keep an eye on you and your exploitative practices. Exploiting the naive motorhomer and the impoverished people of the targeted country.

Barry and Margaret Williamson
www.magbaztravels.com

PS What we write of convoys to Albania is also true of convoys to other third world and developing countries. Individual travellers, in the true sense of that word, are in a different category altogether and begin to open contact and sharing between countries and cultures. Not just pushing a supposed superiority in their face.

See the following recent article on our website: Third World Travel by Motorhome?

Copy of the GB Privilege Email:

“The Lonely Planet organisation has just announced its recommendations for the best countries to visit. Their choice of the best country to visit is Albania as it is still unspoilt by mass tourism and has a fascinating culture and history.
GB Privilege went there last year to explore and set up a tour for our customers. This is your chance to experience something different and also to be among the first British motorhomers to visit this beautiful country.”