Cox and Kings has signed up Martin Bell MP, the former BBC war correspondent, to accompany a tour to Bosnia and Croatia in September.
The upmarket specialist’s new eight-night tour will visit Dubrovnik and the island of Korcula in Croatia before crossing the border into Bosnia Herzogovina, a tiny country sandwiched between Croatia and Serbia, to visit the cities of Mostar and Sarajevo.
Clients will spend three nights at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo where journalists covering the war in the 1990s stayed. The hotel is on what was known as Sniper’s Alley, so-called because it was here that snipers killed peace protesters during the war.
The tour will be the first time in two years that Martin Bell, who covered 11 conflicts during his 30 years with the BBC, has returned to Bosnia. He was badly wounded by shrapnel while reporting from Sarajevo.
Bell’s last visit to Bosnia was for Newsnight, for an investigation into the whereabouts of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic; this time his aim is to help put the country on the tourist map.
He told Travel Weekly: “Of all the conflicts I covered, Bosnia was the place I spent most time and this was the war I was most involved in.
“It’s very beautiful and now very peaceful, but the country has been in limbo since 1996. It needs tourists to get the local economy working again.”
He added: “I did a similar thing to Croatia in 1996, when that country was struggling to get back on its feet after the war with Serbia, and look what has happened there.”
Bell, who followed his journalist career with a brief stint as an independent MP in parliament after winning a safe Conservative seat on an anti-sleaze ticket, said clients on the tour will have a warm welcome and an amazing holiday.
“Bosnia is a fascinating European country, full of old and modern history, with amazing bargains and no other tourists to trip over.”
The itinerary includes tours of Dubrovnik, Sarajevo and Srebrenica, where some 8,000 men and boys were executed by the Bosnian Serb army in 1995.
Clients will also see the famous Turkish Mostar Bridge (left), rebuilt after it was destroyed during the fighting, and the walled city of Jajce, where the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslav was founded in 1943.
Bell said: “This will appeal to people with an interest in current affairs and history.”
There are places for up to 20 people on the tour.
Bell added: “I’m accompanying rather than leading the tour, but I will be with it the whole time to answer questions. I am also doing three-hour talks about the area.”
The tour departs on September 8 and costs £2,095 per person bed and breakfast including flights, three dinners, guided excursions and transfers.
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Download the tour itinerary from the Cox and Kings website (PDF file)