Travel Monitor
Imtiaz Muqbil
Chiang Mai

The search for creativity and the yearning for survival has spawned the introduction of a new range of tours for northern Thailand, bringing to the industry a dash of badly needed professionalism in product development.

“The Old Trade Route”, a series of soft adventure itineraries covering some of the most scenic parts of “Golden Triangle country” were released last month by Track of the Tiger Co. Ltd., a Chiang Mai-based operator and owner of Maekok River Lodge.

Track of the Tiger’s managing director Shane Beary called the all-inclusive excursions of 2, 3 and 4 days “the next generation of holiday options for the north of Thailand, designed for inclusion in a longer holiday package that takes in northern Thailand, southern China and Laos as marketed by the major overseas operators”.

He notes that several overseas tour operators have long complained about the failure of local tour operators to introduce new and interesting tour programmes to meet the ever increasing demands of the world market.

“The longer we wait to meet this demand, the greater the chance of these overseas operators seeking newly emerging long haul destinations” he said, a reference to the threat not only from Indochina but also from established destinations like Indonesia and Australia.

Track of the Tiger’s new tours are important in several ways: they’ve been thoroughly researched, focus on providing a quality experience at the expense of numerical quantity, have flexible pricing (standard F.I.T. and Micro groups) and protect the interests of the travel agents.

Most significantly, they meet safety standards and go out of their way to ensure minimal cultural friction between visitors and the many hilltribes visited.

For many years there has been a widespread - and erroneous - assumption that only hotel or airline developments are considered newsworthy, especially in the business media. Tour operating, the third vital leg of the holiday package, has been dominated mainly by the announcements of name brand operators with high profile media management machinery and personal connections.

Most of the new tour developments have focused on southern Thailand, driven mainly by the tremendous surge in the popularity of Phuket. Northern Thailand is only recently coming back into vogue, mainly as a bridgehead to Indochina. There too, many Thai tour operators have stuck to the traditionally popular sites.

Mr Beary spent years researching his product and last March compiled his findings into a report called “A proposal for the development of tourism in Chiang Mai and northern Thailand”, which identified the need to develop a series of ‘tourist routes’ around the north of Thailand. Mr Beary said, “The Old Trade Route programmes are a pilot project designed to prove the validity of that tourism development proposal”.

He notes that the description of Chiang Mai as the “Rose of the North” applies more to the province and “not the city itself”. Advertising and marketing people in seeking to promote their city based products have, by borrowing the phrase, employed a degree of artistic license.

"To see the north as it is often depicted in promotional literature, you need to leave the city behind you and get out into the provinces to where little has changed in the past few decades.”

“Perhaps the best way to do this is to follow one of the road systems radiating out from and returning to Chiang Mai in a rough loop that takes in the heart lands of the north. Using the road system as a general axis, the potential for detours off to places and attractions of interest is almost unlimited.”

Track of the Tiger’s tour itineraries include sensitive treatment of two crucial aspects: the river trips on the Kok River and visits to hilltribes. In the knowledge that many foreigners feel uncomfortable about the effects of their visits to hill tribe villages, Track of the Tiger has developed an etiquette for such visits that is beneficial to both the visitor and the hill tribes alike. A detailed page of the company’s standard issue ‘Tourist Information Handbook’ (provided to all clients in a single comprehensive document along with detailed tour itineraries, maps, and tour diary) explains the rules for everything from making a purchase to taking photographs and responding to begging children.

Mr Beary said, “Our commitment to minimising the affects of tourism on the hill tribe and rural communities is based not on the market appeal of an eco-friendly approach, but on the sound business principle that if the integrity of the attractions cannot be sustained, then neither can our tour operation”.

He has adopted a similar approach to the traditional bamboo raft trips down river which he notes have developed a poor reputation owing to low standards that are well documented in the better guide books.

“To overcome this Track of the Tiger developed a new style of raft that not only uses less bamboo but is disassembled at the end of each trip for re-use”.

Tractor tyre inner tubes are employed as concealed flotation on the raft, making them lighter and stronger, increasing safety and more easily steered through tricky sections of the river.

Like Chiang Mai itself, which Mr Beary referred to as a city of contrasts, Thai tour products are marked by both the mediocre and the excellent. But a few companies like ‘Sea Canoe’ in southern Thailand, and ‘Track of the Tiger’ in the north, show that Thailand is still capable of holding its own.

The writer is executive editor of Travel Impact.

Note* Track of the Tiger Tours recently moved their operation to their new property, Maekok River Village Resort, also located in Ban Thaton.