30 OCTOBER 1964, Page 30

Consuming Interest

After the Fiasco

By LESLIE' ADRIAN

I AM glad to say that the British travel trade has not forgotten the fiesta affair. This week, while the holiday-making public are still reminiscing about the glorious summer of '64, the Association of British Travel Agents are down in Brighton trying to anticipate the villainies of '65. They are determ- ined to prevent a re- peat performance of the

Albemarle Street scandal—even if it means registration, which they have until now so

resolutely resisted. `Regulation and registration,' _ the President of the Board of Trade was pre-

vailed upon to declare to an acquiescent audience at an ABTA dinner only two years ago, `is not for us.' Happily the Fiesta fiasco has jolted them into thinking again—something which both Edward Milne, with his Private Member's Bill, and the Consumer Council failed to do.

We spend something like £100 million a year on travel, we literally put our lives (as well as our precious `two 'weeks with pay') in their hands and, what's more, we pay up weeks or months before they deliver the goods. If Fiesta has helped to regulate such a trade, it will have justified its wretched existence.

This said, it must be remembered that im- mediately after the debacle, ABTA, instead of playing the Levite (which they could well have done, Fiesta not being a member of the Asso- ciation), rustled up £14,000 to compensate the Fiesta tourists whose castles in Spain were destined to remain castles in the air.

More important in the long run is the recent decision giving the Association the right to scrutinise the accounts of all its members. This will not protect the public from out-and-out rogues like — (sorry, the lawyers blue- pencilled the last few words), but it should catch insolvent defaulters such as Fiesta. When it does not, there is to be a safety net in the form of a compensation fund. The decision to re- imburse any tourist diddle by one of their mem- bers was given their corporate blessing on Mon- day at Brighton.

* While the travel trade is in the mood to take stock of itself, might I mention another aspect• of tourism in need of re-appraisal?

Friends of mine have just returned from one of what Lord Mancroft called `tourist ghettoes,' those enclaves of British tourism which are turn- , ing beauty spots into eyesores all round the Medi- terranean. They had never bought a packaged holiday before, and they have come home de- termined never to buy one again. It is not that 'they were cheated, stranded or bitten by bugs in the night, but simply that they (like several other disgruntled members of the party) were not possessed of the three qualities essential to happiness on such a holiday—a total lack of interest in the customs of the country; an un- shakeable conviction that the sole object of travel is the acquisition of a sun-tan; a taste for fish .and chips, tomato ketchup, tea and buns.

They suspected they had made a ghastly mistake when, on their way in from the airport, they saw the signs enjoining the British holiday- maker to have a 'jolly good English breakfast' And `tea as mother makes it' and promising him `always chips.'

They knew they had when they got to the hotel and were served with boiled fish and butter beans for dinner and were told that lunch next day would be Irish stew. (Fellow guests from the previous package who were starting their second week had discovered that menus rotated on a weekly basis, each day's meals being a carbon copy of those served seven days earlier.) Repelled by bastard grub that was neither 'Anglo' nor 'Spanish,' most of the money they had theoretically saved by buying the packaged holiday went on dinners out, taxis (most of the restaurants with the courage to serve local food were outside the tourist belt) and snack lunches. What the hotel euphemistically described as a packed lunch, a picnic anglais, consisted of slabs of 'plastic' meat pressed between pieces of stale sliced bread, discoloured hard-boiled eggs, and tired apples.

My friends were unlucky. But having picked a bad package from the bran-tub of brochures, advertisements and tied editorials printed in certain newspapers, they were stuck with it. Having paid their money they had no choice.

Of course many tour operators offer superb foreign holidays that really are foreign (and not just little corners of `forever England') at prices with which no lone traveller could com- pete. Firms such as Erna Low, Harold Ingham, Harry Chandler's' Travel Club, the Ramblers and the Club Mediterrande pay their clients the compliment of assuming that they actually like `abroad.' But far too many of them still assume that if the British Islander goes 'packaged' all he wants on holiday is chips with everything—under the sun.

Both the colour and the taste of Madeira are autumnal, it seems to me. Which is why I shrank from going to a tasting in the heat of the summer. Now is the time to sing the praises of this versatile wine with the sour-cream after- taste. The sercials and verdelhos are my favour- ites, though the dessert buals and malmseys measure up to compatison at their best with anything but vintage port.

A recent arrival here is the island-bottled Hen- riques Ribeiro Seco (C. H. Tapp, 3-4. Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2), but Barbeito and the oddly- named Rainwater are two other sercials that have embellished many a Sunday morning's work for me. These four names of the Madeira types refer to the grapes from which they are made, another version of malmsey being malvasia, a classic vine that grows on many Mediterranean islands, and

from which some remarkably syrupy wines are made, but not, happily, exported.

There are a dozen Madeira shippers in London. Business has not been too brisk for their beauti- ful wine in recent years. Short of a flag day, I can only suggest that we celebrate the onset of winter by rediscovering what used to be a gentleman's elevenses in less sober times.