An expert guide is the selling point for some tours. It is sometimes dicey: The expert may fall ill or otherwise be unable to go.
When this happens, what is the responsibility of the travel company selling the trip? And what are the rights of travelers?
Dr. Sonia Russell of Halifax, Nova Scotia, got into a dispute on this subject with Cox and Kings, a London operator that sells tours to India. Dr. Russell and her husband, Donald Brewer, signed on with the company’s New York office for Jungle Odyssey, billed as “a special guest lecturer tour,” last December. This 21-day trip visits game parks, hunting preserves and wild areas. The price was $3,525 a person, plus air fair; the group was limited to 16.
The brochure listed three guest lecturers for seven departures in 1992: James Hancock, a wildlife author and lecturer who had been involved with Cox and Kings since 1988; Richard Waller, a natural-history tour leader since 1972; and Tony Soper, a writer and producer of film and videos.
According to Russell, when the group arrived in New Delhi, it learned that the lecturer would instead be Dharmendra Sharma, holder of a diploma in nature and wildlife interpretation from the Indian Department of Tourism and Wildlife as well as a master’s degree in economics from Rajasthan University; he had also worked as a wildlife guide for 10 years.
Russell wrote that Sharma said he had known in advance that he would lead the tour, a point Cox and Kings does not dispute. Russell said Sharma gave no lectures during the trip, but simply identified creatures as they appeared.
After the tour, the Nova Scotians wrote to accuse the company of breach of contract, but without specifying a remedy.
Nathaniel Waring, Cox and Kings vice president, who is in charge of the New York office, agreed that Sharma did not have the status of Hancock, the initial choice for the December tour, who was prevented from taking the trip by heart surgery.
Nevertheless, Waring wrote to the couple, “We feel he was an adequate substitute for Mr. Hancock.” In an interview, he said the change did not “alter the integrity of the tour,” and thus did not bring into play a provision in the catalog under “alterations” that says the company will, if possible, provide notice to clients of “significant” changes and give the option of a “full refund.”
Had the Nova Scotians booked through the London office of Cox and Kings, the British and European Community rules would have allowed the unhappy clients to pursue unresolved complaints to an independent arbitration over the question of whether the substitute constituted a minor change or a major change, which would activate British legal requirements for notice and refunds.
Hugh Kimber in the firm’s London office, also saying that the substitution did not affect the essence of the trip, explained that if Russell had written on a British reservation form under “special requirements” that Hancock was the principal reason they were booking the tour, British law would probably support a claim.
Paul Ruden, vice president for legal affairs of the American Society of Travel Agents, said that claims against tour operators could be sustained when the changes “so altered the product that it is a different product.” As for the idea of a client’s writing in that a particular feature was essential, it might stand up if the operator did not protest the amendment of the contract, he said.
Before writing in specifics, a potential traveler should be sure that the small type does not rule out changes unless the operator has accepted them in writing. Tours to China present a specific problem. Most tour companies warn that China itineraries are not under their control and specify that if the total signing up falls below a certain level, the trip will not be “fully escorted” or will not have an “international escort.” In such a case, the tour is led by a member of a government or independent tour company in China.
Joshua and Betty Fine of Tampa met with disappointment on this issue last year. They signed up for a Pacific Delight 26-day fully escorted tour, Grand China Experience, leaving Seattle April 6. Eight days before departure, Joshua Fine said, they were notified that the group would have a guide from the China International Travel Service rather than one employed by Pacific Delight.
In this year’s Pacific Delight brochure, the “important notes” say that an “attentive tour director accompanies you from Seattle throughout” the current version of the Fines’ tour. It then says: “Pacific Delight reserves the right to provide an attentive tour director from the first port of entry in China throughout the tour, if the group is more than 10 participants but less than 15.”
If the size of the group “is less than 10 tour participants, the tour will be locally hosted.” The next note says that Pacific Delight “has no control over the itineraries within China and Nepal, which are determined solely by CITS or the Chinese handling travel agency.”
Fine wrote that six places in Shanghai, Nanking, Beijing and Kun-ming were left off the tour. “Yet at every opportunity,” he added, “we were taken to silk, pottery, cloisonne and jewelry shops, places of commercial but not cultural interest to us.”
The Fines wrote to Pacific Delight in New York asking for a “substantial refund” on their $7,000 expenditure. Pacific Delight pointed to the warnings in its brochures and made no refund, while referring to the criticisms as “fully justified.”
Francis Luk, the president, said he had reviewed other China operators’ brochures and had found the same warnings. “This is an industry-wide problem at this time,” he wrote.
On the issue of traveling with a company escort, prospective travelers can ask their travel agent or operator for a written statement that they may cancel without penalty if the tour is not going to have such an escort. This may not be agreed to, but it is worth a try. If not, look carefully at the penalties, and doubly at any cancellation insurance you might buy, since lack of a company escort is not likely to be a “covered reason” for canceling.
Educational tours are often led by people so outstanding that it could be argued the tour does not exist without them. UCLA Extension has scheduled such a tour to Madagascar for August, to be led by Dr. Mildred Mathias, the 86-year-old botanist after whom the UCLA botanical gardens are named. Dr. Eve Haberfield, director of humanities, sciences and social sciences at the extension school, said it had never encountered a situation where a tour leader “at the cutting edge of a field” had been unable to go. If it came up, she said, participants would be asked if they wanted to cancel or go ahead with the second instructor, in this case, Laurel Woodley, a professor of botany at Los Angeles Harbor College.
Yvette Clotier, owner of ETA/Piuma Travel in Malibu, Calif., who is arranging this UCLA trip, also said the participants would be polled.
As for Dr. Mathias, she said: “She is so fabulous. She races ahead of us. I hope to go myself, but in any case someone from the office will be there.” –
