Got a computer? Then you're virtually there

Soon we could all be booking our holidays over the Internet. Jeremy Atiyah takes his mouse on a trip around the web sites for tourists

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 30 March 1997

That great purveyor of information, the Internet, is much trumpeted as the precursor to the world of virtual travel. But is it about to revolutionise the way ordinary punters research or book their holidays?

There is certainly no shortage of travel-related entertainment on the Net. One way for first-time web-users to get started is to log on to something like the Rough Guides web site, which contains links to a whole range of entertaining travel-related sites. In minutes, you can be enjoying pictures of tennis courts at the Sana'a Sheraton (City.Net), consulting a database of people who accommodate tourists free in their homes (Hospex), arranging a house-swap (Homexchange), and reading travellers' bulletin boards (Lonely Planet).

Specialist information is one thing, but what about practical sites, which offer customers the possibility of actually booking and paying for airline tickets and hotel rooms?

TravelWeb is an example of a site giving lists of hotels around the world that can be reserved online. North America dominates the list, but random checking does turn up some impressive last-minute bargains, such as double rooms as the Atlanta Hyatt Regency for $69 (pounds 43) which were available when I checked last week.

Having booked a room, potential customers can then key in details of where they want to fly from and to. Clicking randomly, London to Rio, for example, generates possible flight-routes on scheduled airlines via Madrid, Paris and New York, each with associated prices.

Which is jolly good fun, but there are no bargains here, and it is not at all clear why holidaymakers would want to book flights through the uncertain medium of a keyboard rather than on the telephone.

Some sites do, however, offer the advantage of listing the cheapest available flights to any given destination. The website Cheapflights is excellent for this, carrying a huge list of all conceivable destinations - from Dnepropetrovsk to Denpasar - containing links to all current flight deals from the UK, with relevant contact numbers, and in some cases, the opportunity for e-mail booking. But is anybody actually booking their holidays through the Internet? Bargain Travel, whose flights are among the cheapest listed by Cheapflights, might expect to be beneficiaries of the Internet, given that they are a zero-frills outfit operating from home with very little time for even answering the telephone.

"In fact we are disappointed with the Internet response," said a spokesman. "Maybe 10 per cent of our inquiries come through the Net, but a lot of these are just people filling in the form for fun. Most of them are wasting our time."

The picture is confirmed by Rowan Stewart of Regent Holidays. "Our website does generate a lot of queries," she says' "though a lot of them are highly vague, such as 'I want a cheap flight to anywhere'. We send e-mails back to all queries, then phone them up. I wouldn't want anyone to book a whole holiday without our actually speaking to each other first."

One of the pioneers in the field of booking and paying on the Internet is British Midland, which puts its service online in February 1996. To date, though, the total number of bookings made online comes in at a rather paltry 100 per week, by comparison with the 7,000 bookings per weekit takes over the telephone. "The numbers are increasing, however," adds a spokesperson.

British Airways launched its online booking service in January, though at the moment it is limited to World Offers (and is available in the UK only). Julia Groves, who is in charge of the operation, admits that it is still at an experimental stage. "In February the site recorded 270,000 hits, but the actual number of bookings taken this way is still tiny," she says.

One developing aspect of BA's site - available to Java-compatible computers only - is interactive booking. Customers can key in the sum of money they wish to spend and the temperature they wish to experience. A map of the world comes up showing them which destinations match their specifications. "We are going to start actively promoting this in the summer," says Julia Groves, "and many more criteria will be introduced."

Market research suggests that travel agents and guidebooks will be indispensable for a few years yet. "People use the Internet to buy products that cannot be bought elsewhere, such as software," says market research consultant Simon Sylvester. "When making a big purchase like a holiday, customers want to speak to the people they are dealing with."

A cyber revolution? Or a false dawn? Time will tell.

WEB SITES

Rough Guides

http://roughguides.com

Home Exchange

http://www.homexchange.com

City.Net

http://www.city.net

British Airways

http://www.british-airways.com

British Midland

http://www.iflybritishmidland.com

Regent Holidays, Bargain Travel

http://www.cheapflights.co.uk

FCO Travel Advisory Service

http://www.fco.gov.uk

TravelWeb

http://www.travelweb.com

Lonely Planet

http://www.lonelyplanet.com

Norway: trolls, trains (and stress-free skiing)

The last time Jeremy Atiyah tried his luck on the slopes he was a neurotic teenager easily put off by his smarter European counterparts, but in Norway he discovered friendly people, and lots and lots of space

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 23 March 1997

Even as a nervous non-skier, I couldn't imagine anyone hurting themselves in Norway. The environment was far too healthy. This was the place that gave meaning to the words "fresh" and "bracing". Even if there ever had been effluent-spilling factories around those pristine fjords, surely they would have been moved over to Humberside long ago.

And it seemed so empty. Four million people sprinkling a country that occupied seventeen degrees of latitude (Britain takes about eight). The only previous time I had dared skiing had been for a few hours as a neurotic teenager in Switzerland. On that occasion I had been emotionally tormented by the massed, posing ranks of Italo-French youth in search of apres ski.

Western Norway, on the other hand, labouring under all the social pressure of a trolls' tea-party, seemed an ideal place to have another discreet try at skiing. With this in mind, I set off for a four-day break, two days of which would be spent on the slopes in the resort of Voss.

It turned out that getting to Norway was exciting enough, never mind the skiing. This is the country that always appears in the top right hand corner of your TV weather map. If you set out from the British east coast at a right angle you'll wash up here. The ferry from Newcastle to Bergen for example is only twice as long as Portsmouth to St Malo (but more exciting).

Flying to Bergen feels like making an assault on an unknown land mass, a Viking invasion in reverse. You fly away from the unassuming flatness of East Anglia, aiming for the first shred of land you can find. A hour or two later you hit the great drama of western Norway. Suddenly there are cliffs, forests, lakes, inlets, houses on impossibly small islands. And you are landing on them.

"Is it raining?" asked a foreigner. Of course it was. But in Bergen, where it rains 275 days a year, I could not have asked for better quality rain - a heavy, icy downpour mixed with snow. The drive from the airport revealed black earth, wet boulders, big wooden houses. A huge troll of a man occupying several seats to my left was smiling benignly at life (Norwegians always do this, I later discovered).

Alas, time was short. Much though I wanted to explore Norway's second city, I barely had time to smell the fish, stroll the cobbles and take a snap-shot of the gabled row of houses on the water-front. It was Thursday night and I was heading for Voss, an hour from Bergen by train.

Peer Gynt's "Hall of the Mountain King" was inspired somewhere round here. On the Bergen to Voss train, tidily dressed passengers sat quietly reading evening newspapers and office memos, while the train careered in and out of tunnels, zoomed past fjords, glowering cliff-faces, tiny secluded valleys, torrential flowing rivers, waterfalls, glaciers. The commuters didn't look up.

This was only mid-March, but there was already a suggestion of late evening brightness in the sky. Patches of dull green pasture flashed past, along with black trees, driving snow, houses balanced on the edge of fjords. I arrived at Voss just in time for an excellent dinner of smoked salmon and reindeer steaks. Apres ski? Well I saw a couple of supermarkets open late and a child on a bicycle (that was enough).

Waking up the next morning was even better than falling asleep. Pink sun-rays were catching the tops of a bowl of snowy peaks surrounding Norwegian woods and an icy lake. Beauty in all directions. Ready for skiing?

Well, it had been snowing. But there was only an inch of snow on the ground outside my hotel. Did this matter? It was the moment for all that teenage angst to come flooding back. Should I put on my highly flashy (borrowed) orange ski-suit now for example? And where would I get my skis? How was it that hotels in ski resorts weren't buried in snowdrifts?

And this was before I had even hit the slopes. Not that I should have worried. I soon learned about ski passes, those expensive little cards that allow people to travel on a resorts' cable cars and ski lifts for an allotted period of time. I took a casual stroll through Voss, past lawns and brightly painted wooden house fronts to the cable car station. Happy locals crowded into the car, and off we went up the mountain side.

On top, there was plenty of snow all right. On one side was a precipitous drop to the town of Voss far below. The lake twinkled blue, mighty white mountains shouldered into the blue sky. Any activity requiring scenery like this had to be promising. And of Italo-French poseurs was there not a sign. All I could see were amiable Norwegians with woolly hats and welcoming smiles. The only stress anywhere was in the head of the boy who worked in the ski equipment shop beside the cable-car station. "God, when those British tour groups arrive," he was complaining, "I have to get out skis for ten people all at once."

I met a few English people over on the boat from North Yorkshire and Northumberland - visiting their Viking relatives perhaps. A happy old couple was looking for a slope to toboggan down on a plastic bag. I kept bumping into friendly locals too. "Hello, you are from London?" they would say. "This is your first time skiing? We envy you. We learned when we were two-and-a-half."

In the equipment shop, I began getting kitted out for the action in hand. I was already the height of fashion in my ski-suit and goggles, which were attracting comment. But what about boots? Putting on these monstrous, glistening contraptions, I could hardly walk, let alone ski. Like Darth Vader on a cat-walk, I slipped and hobbled with my instructor, the friendly Einor, in the direction of the chair-lift.

Getting on the chair-lift felt like reaching for Jesus. A still, monastic silence broke out. A warm sun shone through sub-zero air. Beneath my feet, snowboarding children slid silently round trees and protruding rocks like bear cubs. "Jump off now!" ordered Einor two minutes later, as I hit the snow.

We were as high as heaven. And with skis attached, I was soon sliding tentatively around. The instructor didn't give me poles - "beginners don't need them" - but he was ready to send me down a semi-serious slope as soon as I had learned two small lessons: how to (a) stop and (b) turn.

"Put your body out. Keep your hip in. Yes. Push down your right heel. No." Einor could get confusing as he skied backwards in front of me holding my skis together. "Please learn to accept that you will not always feel in control," he shouted, as I careered away sideways into a tree. But to my own amazement, come the afternoon, I was more or less able to get round the beginners' circuit without dying.

And by the end of the second day I had become hysterical with joy at the never ending cycle of downhill exhilaration followed by spiritual retreats in the chair lift. I had just become the world's latest skier, and no one had laughed. I put all the credit down to those healthy, happy, friendly Norwegians.

FACT FILE

Travel Flights with Norwegian Flag Carrier Braathens (0191 214 0991) who fly daily from London and Newcastle. From London Gatwick to Bergen costs from pounds 190 return. Trains Bergen to Voss: several times daily, the trip takes one hour.

Currency

10Kr equals approximately one pound.

Others

Alpine equipment can be rented at Voss on the slopes. Reckon on about pounds 60 per person for equipment and ski-pass for two days skiing; about pounds 130 for a week. Group instruction (minimum five persons) costs 100Kr per day.

Equipment

Ski suits and equipment in the UK can be rented or purchased from specialists Ellis Brigham, 30-32 Southampton St, London WC2 (tel: 0171-240 9577)

Operators

For package trips, various operators feature skiing in Norway, including: Crystal Holidays (0181 3995144), Ski Scandinavia (0116 2752750) Headwater (01606 48699), InnTravel (01653 628811), Mountain & Wildlife (015394 33285), Waymark Holidays (01753 516477). Breaks to Bergen are available through Scandinavian Travel Service 0171 559 6666, or Color Line 0191-296 1313.

Outing from Voss

"Norway in a Nutshell" tour, via the Flam railway followed by ferry through the magnificent Nroy Fjord to Gudvangen, and then back to Voss (280Kr).

The author travelled as a guest of the Norwegian Tourist Board, Charles House, 5 Lower Regent St, London SW1Y 4LR. (Tel: 0171-321 0666). Reading: The Lonely Planet Guide to Scandinavian & Baltic Europe.

London to Madrid in seven hours. By train

Well, not quite yet. But over the next 20 years, new rail networks will revolutionise travel to Europe's major cities.

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 23 March 1997

Last Sunday, for the first time, a train ran from central London direct to the French Alps. Although this was only a trial run, the journey from Waterloo to Bourg St Maurice will enter the regular Eurostar schedules from early December, to coincide with the start of the next skiing season.

Passengers leaving London just before 8am will be in Bourg St Maurice by 5pm local time, after an uninterrupted journey of only eight hours. With return fares starting from pounds 199, the trip will certainly be competitive with equivalent flights.

It is easy to forget how far rail travel has come on in the last 20 years. While the speed of air travel has remained static, high-speed European trains have slashed journey times.

In 1980, a trip to the French Alps from London would normally have involved an eight-hour trip to Paris by train and boat, followed by a tiresome trek across the French capital to the Gare de Lyon, followed by another gruelling seven or eight hours to the mountains. As for countries such as Spain, scheduled train services felt more like crossing continents than countries, with journey times from Barcelona to Granada running to an absurd 18 hours. Rail seemed like a dying means of transport.

But things have changed. The renaissance of European rail travel began in 1981, with the introduction of TGV services from Paris to Lyons. Today a network of fast trains is spreading across western Europe.

Forthcoming developments for British travellers include the much delayed arrival of straight-through services from Scotland and the north of England to the Continent. "We are not yet setting a date," says Roger Harrison of Eurostar, "but Eurostar is definitely committed to running trains from Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester to Paris some time this summer, cutting journey times between the French and Scottish capitals to eight hours."

When the high-speed line into central London (St Pancras) is finally completed in 2003, allowing TGV-style speeds into the UK for the first time, a further half hour will be chopped off all channel tunnel services.

Before this, though - certainly by the end of the century - it is expected that Eurostar will commence direct services from London to Amsterdam, cutting the journey time there to around five hours.

Within France, part of the programmed extension of the high-speed track network includes the completion of the Paris to Marseilles line. "When the TGV track is in place, allowing trains to run at their maximum speed, you will be able to get from London to the Mediterranean by train in just six hours, or five and a half after 2003," says Peter Mills of French Railways. "That project is concrete and has been approved by the French government."

Another concrete development is the approval of the TGV-Est, the high- speed line from Paris to Strasbourg, aimed at cutting the journey time to eastern France to two hours. This will also slash times to Germany: Paris to Berlin for example will take just six and a half hours. Already, trains are running from Paris to Turin in just over five hours. Spain and Germany already have their own high-speed trains, though technical problems will delay a seamless tying together of the various national networks for a decade or two.

When the networks are finally connected, however, at speeds of between 300 and 350 km per hour - say, 20 years from now - European trains will be a fantastic pleasure. Barcelona and Madrid will be six or seven hours away from London, Rome perhaps 10, and Munich and Berlin about seven or eight.

Looking into the more distant future - if one dare postulate a world with TGV tracks extending into Russia and Asia - it is possible to foresee trains linking London with destinations such as Moscow or Istanbul in around 15 hours. The age of the train is definitely back.

HOW TO ENJOY A SPANISH EASTER

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 23 March 1997

This Coming week is the best time in the whole year to see the Spanish mania for religious festivals in action. A few years ago I was hitch-hiking around Andalucia in early spring when I stumbled across Easter in Cordoba almost by accident.

The evening had suddenly turned warm, as if for my benefit, and I walked down the narrow streets under balconies overflowing with flowers. The Mezquita, its great courtyard full of sweet-smelling orange trees, was taking in the late evening sun.

But when I turned round, I noticed something afoot. Huge crowds sprang up, of children, courting couples and grandmothers eating ice-creams. Then the slow steady sound of a beating drum began, sombre, a funereal note. The first conical hats appeared round a corner, and ghastly, faceless figures, dressed from head to toe in white satin, came marching.

What the hell was this? The Ku Klux Klan? In fact it was a band in uniform joining the dirge, and paving the way for Christ on his cross, mounted on a great sarcophagus of engraved wood, covered by red carnations.

The whole city of Cordoba was out, to see the wobbly carriage of their Lord inching past, supported from beneath by a crew of pallbearers who were being advised on directions by the Guardia Civil, whispering through chinks in the sarcophagus.

The hooded marchers came on and on, carrying candles. But the supreme moment was yet to come: the arrival of the Virgin Mother herself. Heralded by trumpets and horns reedily lifting their tone, the crowds literally gasped in stupefaction at the sight of her trolley as it crept into view.

Like a huge four-poster bed, with canopies held aloft by uprights in the form of silver candelabra, blankets and bolsters of white carnations, and amid it all, the Virgin herself, the whole colossal edifice trundled into view.

Suddenly, the crowd looked nervous: how would their Queen get round this particularly tight corner? The upright supports swayed and swung with growing violence. The older generation crossed themselves with fear.

They needn't have worried. The ship steadied. And then in the Virgin's train come a dozen straight-backed women in black, wearing high lace mantillas. Expressionless - authentically sorrowful - they stepped forward, to be followed by more hoods, more candles.

And so it went on through the night; the marchers and their loads rumbling through the main streets, now standing still, now moving on, ever accompanied by the beating of drums and the solemn devotion of the people of Cordoba.

Jeremy Atiyah

The train at platform four is for Moscow, Peking and Grand Central

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 23 March 1997

As Mentioned on the front page of this section, train travel is indeed making a determined fightback against the pre-eminence of the jet plane. This may sound unlikely given the current plight of various bits of our own rail network, but in continental Europe at least, it happens to be true.

No doubt when George Stephenson launched his first locomotive back in the 1830s, people found the idea of it as fake and artificial as the aeroplane seems today. But all the same, cruising along at ground level does seem to have the edge on air travel in so many ways. Not only is it less alarming when a train stops in mid-track for no reason, but the view is a hell of a lot more interesting.

On a journey from London to Marseilles, for example, you can actually watch the sky clear and the landscape turn dry and rocky, as London slowly disappears, to be replaced by Kent, Picardy, the Isle de France, the Rhone Valley and Provence. Unlike flight - where you disappear into unseasonal sunshine within seconds of leaving Heathrow - train travel is basically just a speeded up version of walking.

With all this in mind, I have been speculating on the future of train travel not just in Europe, but around the whole world. On the suppostion that TGV trains will soon be built to travel at 350km per hour, the possibilities quickly become mind-boggling.

Consider cross-Asia travel, for example. Given that Peking is about 8000 km from here, a TGV version of the already existing Trans Siberian Express from London to the Great Wall of China would take just 24 hours. You could watch Europe merge into Russia, the Mongolian steppe and the Gobi Desert over the course of a day. For Hong Kong, add on another four or five hours; for Ho Chi Minh in southern Vietnam, another 10.

From chilly London to jungly Ho Chi Minh (via Peking) in under 36 hours? The sad side to such a fantasy is that this would actually be several hours faster than it currently takes to get from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh on the "North South Re-unification Express".

If we move on to as yet non-existent stretches of rail track however, the fantasy becomes more outlandish still. Projects which have at least been mooted include a tunnel - which would not need to be as long as the Channel tunnel - under the Straits of Gibraltar linking Spain and Morocco.

Suddenly, direct trains to Marrakesh and Tunis would be on the cards. And given that Cape Town is roughly equidistant from the UK with Peking, a straight version of the rail line to South Africa that Cecil Rhodes once dreamt of could also be crossed by a hypothetical TGV train in 24 hours.

Even allowing for signalling problems somewhere along the way, that train would be so amazing that I think all African governments should unite in order to build it. But one other mooted rail project that would put even this one in the shade is a futuristic plan to link Asia with Japan and the Americas by a series of tunnels.

One of these tunnels would link South Korea with the Japanese island of Honshu. Another would wend its way north from Hokkaido along the Kurile Islands, a string of dots leading up to the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia (the fact that ownership of these Kurile Islands is a subject of dispute between Russia and Japan will not matter much in the 22nd century).

From eastern Siberia it would then be a relatively simple matter to complete the final stage of this grand project, namely to build another tunnel under the Baring Straits to Alaska.

Having made the link with the North American rail network, trains from London would soon be steaming into Los Angeles and New York City, not to mention Bogota, Rio and Tierra del Fuego. London to Tierra del Fuego? Even at 350 km per hour, that would be a longish trip, of perhaps three or four days, though presumably the train will have comfy couchettes and plenty of hot water. I hesitate to guess on the price of a return ticket but I think we had better start saving soon.

Read the book, see the film, do the holiday

The unacknowledged star of 'The English Patient' is the Sahara desert. Jeremy Atiyah charts the well-trodden route from movie set to booming tourist mecca

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 16 March 1997

From the moment of its release last Friday, the film version of The English Patient is certain to produce one important spin-off among its British audiences. After viewers have dried their tears, thoughts will inevitably turn to the possibility of visiting the location itself.

Originally shot in Tuscany, Rome and the Tunisian Sahara, the film is a visual feast. But following in the honourable footsteps of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Bernardo Bertolucci's Sheltering Sky, both of which draw on the magnificence of the desert, it is the lethally colossal panoramas of the Sahara that linger in the memory.

Desert resorts will undoubtedly see a jump in tourism this year. The area around the oasis city of Tozeur in southern Tunisia, and particularly the small mountain town of Tamerza close to the border with Algeria, was the main location for the desert scenes of The English Patient. David Lean aficionados have already been visiting the towering cliff-faces of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan for years. Bertolucci fans on the other hand prefer the oasis towns of Morocco, with their red sand, palmeries and fabulous turreted kasbahs of mud.

The connection between cinema and tourism is well-established, with tourist boards in some cases falling over themselves to attract producers to shoot films in their area. Indeed the Tunisian tourist board, keen to cash in on the popularity of The English Patient, sponsored the UK premier of the film.

And with good reason. After Mel Gibson's Braveheart won the Oscar for best film last year, the whole area in and around Stirling in Scotland leapt to the forefront of world attention (even though the film had not actually been shot there, but in Ireland). "The number of visitors rose dramatically after the film," says Christine Brownlee of the Wallace Monument in Stirling. "Last year at Easter we had queues outside the monument for the first time ever. And the figures are still up." The contribution of Braveheart to the growth of tourism in Scotland compounded the success of Rob Roy, which had been a big hit the year before.

In fact there are numerous examples of cinema-enhanced tourist destinations in the UK. The image of a windswept Meryl Streep (The French Lieutenant's Woman) has become one of Lyme Regis's biggest attractions; the Disney cartoon Pocahontas resulted in a sudden rush of visitors to Gravesend (which contains an obscure statue of the heroine); and Merchant Ivory have single-handedly added whole percentage points on to the total number of American visitors in the UK. Even Trainspotting may end up having a positive effect on Edinburgh's tourist image, despite hostility to the film from the city local authorities.

Films (or television programmes) that might just as well have been made by the local tourist authorities abroad include Out of Africa (Kenya), Jewel in the Crown (India), Ryan's Daughter (Dingle bay in the Republic of Ireland) and virtually anything made by Woody Allen (Manhattan).

The potential pay-off in increased tourism from an Oscar-winning film is clearly huge. Sadly, though, the oases of Tunisia where The English Patient was actually shot will not see as many of the anticipated new tourists as it perhaps deserves. Many of the desert-seekers - too many of them - are likely to end up in Egypt instead, where the film is supposed to be set (but where the scenery had been judged insufficiently authentic).

Egypt Flights to Cairo from pounds 230 plus pounds 20 tax throughout March and April; call ITC Travel 0181-514 5400

Tunisia Flights to Tunis for pounds 189 plus pounds 13.50 tax can be booked through Trailfinders (Tel: 0171-938 3939). For the add-on to Tozeur, reckon on about pounds 50.

Morocco Flights to Tangier for pounds 229 plus tax; call Flightbookers (0171- 757 2444).

Jordan Flights to Amman, until end October, for pounds 242 plus pounds 10 tax. Call Trailfinders on 0171-938 3939.

Dubai Flights on Swiss Air can be booked for pounds 299 (incl tax) to the end of April. Call Air Tickets Direct 0990 320321.