Our Bad Experience with Blue Marble Biking

This is a brief, factual description of our experience using Blue Marble to do some biking in Europe.  In a nutshell, the trip in 2000 was pretty good.  It was what happened when we tried to sign up for another trip, in 2001, that was shocking.  Read on...                                                                           

A hotel in Dijon,  France,  August 2000                                                  

We arrived in Dijon eager to meet up with the rest of the group and begin our Swiss cycling tour. Blue Marble had engaged a hotel in Dijon for the tour participants. We entered the courtyard of the small hotel, and found the tour guide working on the bicycles. We were introduced to him and another biker; then, we started up the stairs that led to the concierge, to check in. At that point, the tour guide said that there was an old, hard-of-hearing dog in the hotel, and to be careful. We continued up the stairs; my partner was ahead of me. When we got to the top, we could see a large, obviously geriatric dog lying in the doorway to the concierge. My partner stepped over the dog and went on. I stopped, put my bags down, spoke to the dog, and reached out slowlly to pet his flank. The dog bit my arm. I went to the emergency room, got 2 stitches, a tetanus shot and bandages. The hotel reimbursed me for the medicine and bandages, and we continued the tour.  

The tour                                                             

We had a pretty good time, with only minor complaints about poorly-written route directions and some sub-standard bike equipment.  When we finished the tour, my partner responded to the Blue Marble questionnaire politely, mentioning the dog-biting incident while giving a generally favorable overview of the tour.  Blue Marble responded with thanks and said the Dijon hotel would probably no longer be used in future trips, not solely because of the dog-biting incident, but for other reasons as well. Click here to read the text of Blue Marble's response to our critique last year.

 

July, 2001                                                             

This year, my partner and I again decided we wanted to take a Blue Marble tour.  Despite the dog bite, poorly-written route instructions, and equipment aggravations from last year's tour, we still felt that Blue Marble was a good value.  I called to check trip availability, identifying myself from last year, and was told there were places available on the trip we had chosen.  After a few days, we made a definite decision to take that tour.  When my partner called back, he was told the trip was full.  This was a lie, but we didn't know it at the time.  Oh well, we said, and chose another Blue Marble tour.  When we emailed to ask about availability on that tour, Blue Marble responded by email that they would not accept us for any tours, because of our "expectations regarding safety".  There were other strangely veiled comments, too: "The combination of our pricing structure and the European legal system does not permit us to fund the levels of protection, insurance, and (in the event of accident or injury) compensation that would typically be found appropriate in the United States."

 

We called Paris to get an explanation. We were told that Blue Marble incurred about $300 of expenses from the dog-bite incident and was barred from using the hotel, resulting in much time spent to arrange alternate lodging.  In addition, it is apparently their established, board-sanctioned policy to bar people from further trips, who in their considered judgment are careless, or otherwise legally risky to Blue Marble.  They actually used the words "lightning can strike twice", and implied that I had carelessly ignored their trip guide's warning about the "dangerous" dog that lived in the hotel they had hired. 

 

Again, my memory of the guide's warning is that he did not use the word "dangerous". I interpreted his "be careful" admonishment as reference to the fact that I had to step OVER this animal. Had I heard the words "dangerous" or "bite" or "do not pet the dog" used, I certainly would not have touched the animal. In fact, I probably would have refused to go through the doorway in which the "dangerous" dog lay.  

Frankly, I thought I was being a good sport about this.  I never asked for an apology from either the hotel or Blue Marble (nor was I offered one); I never mentioned lawsuits or other legal remuneration;  I even helped write a favorable critique of the trip afterwards.  As you can imagine, to receive this treatment from Blue Marble is shocking and bewildering to me.  (Particularly unsettling is that their staff lied to us over the phone, about trip availability.)

 

So if you are considering a Blue Marble trip, be careful - be very, very careful. 

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