In the late 90s I had the dubious honour of being a travel rep who looked after the notorious Bellevue apartments in Alcudia. At the time, the apartments were long overdue a refurbishment (which they duly received in 2001) and had a bit of a “reputation”.
Each morning I would arrive at 9am, greeted by unhappy guests with the queue stretching from the desk, out of the door and down the stairs. It also happened to be the year that BBC’s Watchdog introduced their notorious “Holiday Rescue”, where viewers were invited to phone Watchdog and they would send over a film crew and fly the poor guests home. It became something of a joke amongst the reps, with guests coming to complain about a dripping tap and threatening to phone the Holiday Rescue Hotline unless immediate action was taken.
However, I did have visions of turning up one day to be greeted by a less than welcoming film crew. Other reps thought that if it was going to happen anywhere, “Hellvue” was the most likely place. Fortunately, it never happened and I think the Holiday Rescue was just a publicity stunt that the BBC probably regrets now. Could there have ever been a more pointless waste of the licence fee? However, it did imbue me with a deep dislike for Anne Robinson, who presented the show.
Robinson seemed to hate travel companies. She clearly saw it as an easy way of building ratings and her own celebrity. So it is a bit of a shame to see a rather more botox-ravaged, plastic version of Robinson return to present Watchdog in a new hour-long format. Times have changed though and in the late 90s Watchdog was regularly attracting 9 million viewers. Robinson only managed 3.8 million viewers last week. Holiday Rescue has been ditched, the industry has changed and it will be interesting to see if Robinson still has travel in her sights.
When Robinson was in her prime and giving the travel industry a hard time you felt that the BBC did at least balance things out by broadcasting Holiday, which was nothing more than a 30 minute ad for travel companies. Whilst I was never a huge fan of Holiday, it did at least give a positive view of the travel industry. There were also programmes such as Rough Guide which gave a fun and chaotic look at foreign cities. What is there now?
Television these days is built around two things: jeopardy and celebrity. Now the BBC concentrates on programmes like Trawlermen and Traffic Cops where you are supposedly on the edge of your seats to see if the injured fisherman will get to shore in time or if the high-speed chase will end with the crazy driver getting caught. Unfortunately, there’s not much jeopardy in travel , which just leaves star vehicles.
The BBC would argue that Stephen Fry going across America or anything with Michael Palin in are travel programmes. But they soon become more about the people than the places. The Frankinsense Trail and Wainwright’s Walks are fine, but they are hardly mainstream. When the BBC bought Lonely Planet in 2007 one of the reasons given was their expertise in producing travel television. We don’t seem to have seen much of come to our screens. So where is all the travel on the BBC?
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As a big fan of Julia Bradbury I was surprised to see Anne Robinson replace her on Watchdog. I thought Julia did a great job. You’re right in the fact we are severley lacking any good holiday programmes right now but I do know Julia and the BBC are filming a new series of Wainwright Walks in the new year…I guess we should be thankful for that..