Today's travellers want extreme adventure

The Man Who Pays His Way: The Wigan to Pyongyang train trip is so popular, organisers are laying on an extra one

All aboard: the poster advertising the jaunt from northwest England to North Korea

Pity the poor holiday company.

Tui, the very biggest in Europe, says demand for traditional packages is weak. It blames poor sales on Brexit uncertainty and an attendant “slowdown of consumer confidence”, as well as last year’s extraordinarily hot summer. “All markets are trading on lower margins than prior years,” the firm says.

So what does that look like from the traveller’s point of view? Today, Tui was prepared to fly you and three companions over 1,800 miles from Bristol to Dalaman in Turkey (with a 15kg baggage allowance each), put you on a comfortable coach and drive you to the resort of Icmeler for a week’s self-catering holiday at the Babadan Apartments; I’ve not been to the property, but Tui promises it has two swimming pools – and that there’s a postcard-perfect beach around five minutes’ walk away.

All Tui wanted in return, when I checked late on Thursday, is £120 each.

To earn that amount would take less than 15 hours’ work at the national living wage. Since you (and I) have missed that particular departure, here’s an alternative: £120 is only a pound short of buying a one-way off-peak railway ticket from Bristol to Wigan North Western.

I mention that Greater Manchester town not because it presents an ideal alternative to the eastern Mediterranean in June, but because it is the location for a small travel firm that is experiencing a surge in demand that is difficult to handle.

A week ago, Lupine Travel had exactly one booking for a tour it is offering a year from now. Today, while Tui offloads distressed inventory at a huge loss (over 10 per cent of the cost of that holiday in Turkey is going straight to the chancellor in air passenger duty), the Wigan firm is watching customers jostle for the remaining 15 places on the £3,000-plus adventure – and setting up a repeat journey to cope with the overflow.

This in-demand holiday that is evidently more appealing than a week in Turkey is a month’s trip by rail from Wigan to Pyongyang. The Soviet-styled advertising poster shows a big red express waiting at North Western ready to whisk travellers through Europe, over the Ural mountains, across Siberia and Mongolia and into China before a sharp left turn to North Korea.

It won’t be quite like that; I calculate at least a dozen trains will be involved. Lupine Travel has an eye for clever marketing: the tour is basically a combination of existing travel modules, with a day and a night in Wigan bolted on the front.

The eventual cost will be many hundreds of pounds higher due to the necessary visas and the airfare (or, if you haven’t had enough of trains, the rail fare) back from Pyongyang to Wigan. And if you pay any attention to human rights in your choice of destination, there is the awkward problem that some of your £3,195 will be propping up Kim Jong-un’s murderous regime. (In contrast, none of your cash will be going to the supreme leader of Wigan, mayor Steve Dawber).

Even with one trip a month laid on from Wigan to Pyongyang, there will be more people on today’s flight from Bristol to Dalaman than on the train from North Western to North Korea.

But evidently, the prospect of going to extremes sparks deep desires. I wonder if the mainstream travel industry will learn from the long and winding railroad to Pyongyang.