Special Interest Tours, Another Name for Adventure TravelPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
"It was a lot easier twenty years ago," explained David Pryor of Astral Travel in Washington. D.C. "Clients would come in and say they wanted to take a vacation, maybe they'd even tell you where they wanted to go, and all you had to do was put them on a tour. Not today. Today they want something different, adventure in dozens of remote locales from the high Himalayas in Bhutan and the game reserves of Java to white-water rafting down a savage river in New Guinea."
What it means for travel agents like Dave Pryor is that agents must look for new things for their clients to do, like bungee cord jumping in New Zealand to diving for lost Manila Galleons in Philippine waters. "The fact that it's going to cost clients a bundle of money doesn't matter," Pryor said. "If it's different, and adventuresome, it's a sure deal--providing no one gets hurt."
Travel tastes and trends do change with the times. A dozen years ago I assisted a Singapore travel company to do a travel film on the Malay jungles. When the film was completed, the agent went off to Europe and America with the film tucked underarm. "I'll have clients flocking to the jungles," he said.
He returned with high hopes. All the foreign agents seemed interested. A month passed, and then another, and another. Not one person signed up for a Malaysian jungle safari. He did sell a lot of shopping and sight-seeing tours in Asia, but no jungle tours. It wasn't that people were against the jungle bashing and wild animal watching. They were contented to sit in Raffles Hotel in Singapore and listen to the bartender in the Author's Lounge tell them about the tiger that was shot under the billiard table. It didn't matter the tiger had escaped from the zoo. And tourists then felt comfortable enough just to sit in a Tudor-style hunting lodge (but no hunting) in the Cameron Highlands and hear it said that right out from their door exists one of the great rain forest of the world. They liked most to hear the bartender, as he served another round of drinks, say, "Jim Thompson disappeared here, and no one has ever seen or heard of him since."
All that has changed. It's more likely today's visitors would ask, "Where's the trail where Jim Thompson vanished––I'd like to hike it."
Travel agents have labelled their new game "special interest tours," which is another name for Adventure Travel According to Speciality Travel Index , a magazine devoted to action travel, the market has nearly doubled every year in the last five making it the fastest growing segment of the $260 billion-a-year in the travel industry in the U.S. alone.
Many of the industry leaders––Sobek Expeditions of Angels Camp, Berkley's Mountain Travel and Adventure Center in Oakland––are all based in California. Now agents in Southeast Asia are beginning to see the light, where the big bucks are. In Kota Kinabalu we now see SI (Special Interest) Tours and in Singapore Alpha Travel. With the new surge of interest, there's certain to be a dozen of other adventure travel agencies springing up in every city in Asia. As David Pryor explained, he can't organise tours in Asia from an office in Washington, but he can tie up with an agency here.
The well-planned trips offered by the dozens of tour operators can be as strenuous as climbing Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah or Mt. Agung on Bali--requiring clients to be in fit condition—or as sedate as cruising the South China Seas aboard a luxury yacht or checking into a hilltop resort in northern India or the Malaysian Highlands. The latter falls into the category of the newer "soft adventure" trips aimed at older, less fit or simply less ambitious travellers.
Special interest tours are not for everyone, especially for those who like to travel in luxury. Accommodations in the field may be anything from rugged tents to clapboard rest house without hot water. Even without water.
One very important fact to keep in mind as you make your plans is that money does not necessarily buy luxury in adventure travel. It buys the most comfortable accommodation available—but comfort in Papua New Guinea is not the same as comfort in Paris.
Most of today's adventure travellers are in their 30s and 40s, says John W. Hawks, president of Resort, Research and Marketing, a travel demographics firm in the U.S.
"They can afford these trips and don't want to play shuffleboard," Hawks said at a recent travel seminar in San Francisco. "They grew up in an age of great travel experiences. Rather than take an ocean liner from New York as their parents did, they go hot air ballooning. Just the place by itself isn't enough (of an attraction) anymore."
Although our roots in adventure travel lie in the early exploits of others, like the mountaineering expeditions of people like Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir Arthur Hunt, and hunting safaris in East Africa made popular by writers Ernest Hemingway and Robert Ruark, we lived then vicariously, through the experience of others. We had to. Not everyone could be a National Geographicer or a professor with a university grant to go chasing for the rainbow's end. Now with the ease of travel the way it is, and with communications as sophisticated, the ends of the world are within everyone's reach. A business executive can paddle up a wild river in Borneo and be no further away from his office than the lap top computer and portable fax that he carries with him. He can conduct his business from a tent as well as from his Madison Avenue office.
"Safety is a major consideration," one travel agent at the San Francisco seminar emphasised. "If you can guarantee a client that it's safe, that he or she won't get hurt, then his business is yours."
In the early days many outings were offered without indication of the physical skills required and some early adventurers got more than they bargained for.
Virtually every tour operator today grades the physical demands of each trip he has to offer from least to most strenuous. While the rating scales are not uniform from operator to operator, something similar to an "easy," "moderate," "average," "difficult" and "strenuous" ranking can usually be found in brochures and booklets provided by operators.
According to Insight Guides publisher, Hans Hoefer, sophisticated travellers today want to know more now than they did before about the regions where they are going. Hoefer, whose travel titles number 160 volumes, has come out with such specialised guides as Indian Wildlife and Waterways of Europe. "We sell guides to travellers who want to specialise nowadays," he said.
Operators are obliged to carry liability insurance, but they still insist that travelers must sign waivers that relieve the companies of the threat of suits. Your own private travel accident insurance is recommended.
One last note about special tours: you can never be exactly sure it will turn out the way the brochures say. It's not necessarily the fault of the operators. You can spend night after night in a tree hide in the Taman Nagara National Park in Malaysia and never see tiger and wild buffalo, but that doesn't mean they are not there.
Likewise, few tours are strapped to rigid itineraries. Instead, while you may know generally where you'll be on a given day, it's no guarantee. That's part of the excitement of adventure travel.
Before you join a special tour, first, find out everything you can about the different companies and tours. Read all brochures and magazines you can get your hands on; talk to people who have taken adventure trips before; talk to the client service people at the companies themselves; and ask the companies for the names and phone numbers of people in the area who have travelled with that company before—they can give you valuable inside perspectives on and information about the company's style and service.
If companies don't want to put you in touch with people who have had taken the tour before, then beware. Find another company.
Another fact you should be aware of is that even after you reserve a place on a tour, the tour company may cancel your trip if it doesn't sign up enough clients. Not all companies operate this way. One exception is Thai International's Royal Orchid Holidays. Even if there are as little as two people, the tour is still on. And also with ROH there are no hidden prices.
We are living in a back-to-nature era of environmental concern. Today's operations often begin as small groups of adventurers sharing their experiences and expertise with others. Often leading the way are trekkers and campers with objectives in mind such as river rafting, mountain climbing, scuba diving for sight-seeing (World War ll wrecks, as an example) and safari participants with cameras, not guns.
Indeed, a whole new world out there has opened up. It can be exciting and as adventuresome as we want to make it. Check with Royal Orchid Holidays for these special tours.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERSQ. Hi there, I’m approaching my retirement years and have for many years wondered what it must be like to sail around the South Asian seas on one of those exotic Chinese or Siamese junks. I’m guessing that Thailand would have trips like that. Do you know any websites or companies I could enquire to? I’d love to take my wife somewhere special when my working days draw to an end. Many thanks, Ren Weiscoff. Detroit, Michigan.
A. Dear Ren, You are in luck. A company called Thai Marine Leisure operates a fleet of authentic junks in Phuket. The other good news is that you can book a junk cruise through Royal Orchid Holidays. There’s a four days, three nights that departs Saturday (ROHA4A) and Tuesdays (ROHA4B). Marine Leisure also has a one-day trip aboard the Bahtra. I haven’t made the junk trip but I am looking forward to it one day. I wrote in detail about junk trips in my book TAKE CHINA that you may enjoy. I did take a photo of Suwan Macha, the junk for the four-day voyage, when I was in Phuket last. It looks like a fun trip and I know you will enjoy it. Happy retirement. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
