UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Inverness Invasion
ByJOHN FRIPP (Merton College, Oxford) INVERNESS has been monopolised by industrial England. Since the end of May, it has daily been invaded by the bus tourist, for, as it is situated so near to Loch Ness, no tour can succeed without entering the Highland capital. From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. the narrow flagged streets with their tortuous one-way traffic system are choked with charabancs from Birmingham and Leicester and Bradford and Leeds. Tourists throng the hotels, the bars and the cinemas, as determined to get their money's worth from Technicolor love and blood as from the elusive local monster and the withered heather on the radiators of the coaches, and descend in droves upon the chain-store tailors in quest of genuine tweeds and authentic tartans. The tobacconists and the haberdashers and even the gun- shops sell tartan novelties and stag-horn paper knives ; the eager Sassenach gulps her tepid coffee and mass-produced lunch to buy yet more reminders of Bonny Scotland and Auld Lang Syne.
No hotel is without its complement of coach tours unless it be unlicensed or the property of the Railway Executive. One indeed, the largest, refuses admission to the bus tourist at the front door, only to admit her in all her bustling vulgarity at the back, whence she has to find her way through back passages and the empty ball- room before being lodged in the second-best bedrooms. Others are more unashamed, being less well provided with back entrances and separate lounges. In these, in one of which I lived as under- porter for almost two months, at close quarters with the ever- changing crowds from Yorkshire and the Black Country, the whole hotel is surrendered ; and the occasional private guest—stranded traveller or itinerant " commercial "—is lost amid the brawling raucous throng in bar and lounge. Contempt for the usual clientele becomes exaggerated respect for anyone who in the least resembles the normal guest, so that even commercial travellers, normally treated with easy familiarity, bccomdt to their own embarrassment, recipients of hospitality once reserved for the American milord.
The tourist, however, is treated with scant respect. When she buys her ticket from the travel agency, she sacrifices her individuality. She becomes, forthwith, part of a tour. Her name becomes a number, and her identity is determined by her room requirements. Only on the day of her arrival at the hotel does " single room, Barton's Tour " become Mrs. Brashow. Her life is the rush of a cog in a complex machinery of travel. She is permitted little eccentricity and a minimum of delay. The average traveller is she who carries some hundreds of pounds of luggage, is always hungry and always thirsty, and who is always willing to flirt mildly and slightly revoltingly with the leader of the tour. She spends her holiday being hurried from coach to hotel and from dining-room to coach. She sees little of the countryside, although the purpose of the tour is to cover as much ground as possible. Every two hours she stops for a meal, and every third day she is permitted to renew contact with civilisation and the outsides of shops. She eats six meals per day, not counting morning tea ; her only exercise is to ascend the few steps between bus and bedroom. Consequently, while the coach is fulfilling the company's promise to take her to John o' Groats, she sees nothing of Sutherlandshire or Robbie Burns's birthplace, save in the troubled dreams caused by hurried meals, exhaust fumes and over-eating.
The passage of time is measured by arrivals and departures. Geography becomes a list of hotels, and countryside is appraised according to the quality of the food, tnc comfort of the beds and the swiftness of the service. On arrival at the hotel, she finds the entrance hall already blocked with the luggage of previous tours ; she has to queue to be given her room number while three perspiring porters crave gangway for her cheap but massive ttitcases, and a lazy and cunning head-porter chalks slow numbers on the luggage already before him. Her room, should she be lucky enough to be given one with only one bed (many rooms have been forced to accommodate three or even four persons, while the writing-
room, the flower-room and an erstwhile store-room have all been pressed into service), she will find permits only the most restricted movements. Dinner is due almost as soon as her suitcases arrive ; when she has hurried to the entrance hall to be first in the dining- room, she has to wait till the time is long past before the head waiter permits her tour to enter. Dinner over, she fills the lounge with her family's history over coffee, and the hall with anxious enquiries as to where to post her betartaned picture post-cards and souvenirs of Loch Ness (but no monster yet ; cheer oh, Elsie). She accompanies her companions to the Playhouse or the Empire, and on her return drinks tea and eats sandwiches and sings " Ilkley Moor " till mid- night. She rises at 7 in the morning, breakfasts at 8, and is away to the next hotel by 9. The staff settles down to its routine boredom, till the next tours arrive and their intense activity is resumed.
All this has meant prosperity for Inverness. The hotels have been booked up since the end of May, and when the bus tours slackened at the beginning of October, bookings were made up from all those coming for the M6d. During August some hotels were sleeping four or five guests to a room, yet still turned others away. However, Inverness is in this respect unique. Even in normal times hotel accommodation was not easy to find. Elsewhere in the High- lands the situation is different. The country hotels no longer pay their way unless they can attract the bus tourists. Even one tour can make the difference between bankruptcy and survival. There are no longer enough of the wealthy who will willingly spend a fortnight merely to fish, while sportsmen are finding such a holiday increasingly difficult to afford. The chief resorts of the wealthy are now the golfing hotels ; the remoter hotels in the Western and Central Highlands are becoming emptier, save for the occasional motorist with an income large enough to be able to afford the Black Market.
Although Highland hotel economy depends so largely on the bus tours, they are at best no more than a temporary phenomenon. Seventy-five per cent. of all bus tourists are women ; occasionally they are accompanied by resigned husbands, very seldom by their sons or daughters, who prefer holiday camps to charabancs. For the most part, they are having their first holiday since the war, apart from a few crowded hours at Scarborough or Blackpool. Mostly, too, they are drawn from the class of the small tradesman and factory foreman. The few Americans among the London tours seem to belong to the same class. The tours are expensive—charges arc 3os. per night for dinner, bed and breakfast, with afternoon and evening tea extra—and it is evident, from the extreme rarity of a tip, that money is short.
In such circumstances the popularity of the tours will last only so long as there are enough of the elderly and the footsore able to spend L30 upon ten days' holiday. Though the bus tour has this in common with the holiday camp, that the individual Is spared the necessity to think and to act save in the most primitive fashion, it is evident that it exerts none of the spell of its rival over the younger age-groups. With the rise in hotel costs and the inevit- able decrease in the numbers of those willing to embark upon a coach tour, it seems as if this section of the tourist trade will survive only by extensive American advertising. Meanwhile, those hotels conveniently situated are reaping the benefit of the savings and the insurance policies of hundreds of hardworking and elderly women from the Midlands and the North of England. To the hotel staffs, however, there are no such financial advantages, and all, from the Stornoway housemaids to the head waiter who has drunk himself out of every job he has had, from chef de rang at the Dorchester to wine-waiter at the Assembly Rooms round the corner, would far sooner return to the days when, though hours were long, the guests were gentlefolk, money was plentiful and tips were large.
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