91Èȱ¬

As hundreds of thousands of Brits prepare to take a hard-earned break over the summer, 91Èȱ¬ One's new consumer travel show, The Secret Tourist, has the holiday from hell so viewers don't have to. Each week a UK family travels undercover to resorts and hotels around the world to find out if bad reports from some tourists are really true.

Presented by Matt Allwright, The Secret Tourist sends the families to investigate and report on conditions in different resorts, including a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh, one in the Dominican Republic and another in Turkey. Joining them is environmental health expert Dr Lisa Ackerley. She and the families gather evidence from areas including swimming pools, hotel food and drinking water, cleanliness of rooms and the safety of children's play areas, and then Matt takes their findings to the people responsible.

The series also reveals some of the common scams, cons and rip-offs used on tourists in holiday spots all around the world, and reporter Carole Machin investigates what can go wrong on holiday, examining the potential dangers in hiring jet bikes, mopeds and the possible problems posed when you need to visit a doctor abroad.

Matt talks to Programme Information's Jane Dudley about the series and about the problems faced by unsuspecting Brits who have holidays from hell every year.

"I've stayed in some really ropey hotels," says Matt. "I do a lot of travelling and I've stayed in some absolutely dreadful places. But there's a difference between being a lone traveller – and kind of putting up with what you get because you know you're not going to be there forever – and taking your family somewhere.

"I think when you've got kids [Matt has two] you're so responsible for everything – for their happiness – and you save up for these holidays and you wait for them all year and then you're trusting somebody not to make you ill and to look after your kids.

"I think it's pretty despicable that people are as negligent as we see in the programme when there's so much at stake for a lot of people. It's not just a couple of weeks; it's your time together. And kids grow up so quickly and you only get so many summers when they're that cute so you want it to be special, you really do, and when it's not, it's heartbreaking."

Matt is well known for his no-nonsense approach on Rogue Traders (which is shown as part of Watchdog), regularly exposing scams and dodgy tradesmen. So when it came to confronting the hotel owners with The Secret Tourist findings, he wasn't prepared to listen to any excuses.

Once the findings were presented, the owners had a period of time in which to fix things before Matt and the team paid them another visit. The reaction he received from the managers, he reveals, was pretty varied. "It's really interesting, it ranged. In Turkey we met with a very nice chap and there's part of me and part of every viewer out there who will say, look, there's a guy trying to do his job. But the place just wasn't up to scratch. And he said we take everything you say very seriously. We sat down and had a very pleasant conversation and he was very earnest about it but, at the end of the day, he still didn't believe our results. He said, 'I've got my results, you've got yours'.

"So at one end of the scale you have him, and we went back to test again and things had improved a bit but not much. But I do think he was trying to make things better. And then at the other end of the scale we met a representative from a resort in Sharm el-Sheikh and when I watch it back I just don't feel he's got my best interests at heart. I think he's got his best interests at heart and he's trying to look clever and trying to get away with it but, as a guest, I wouldn't find that convincing."

Helping the team put together the damning evidence they need is environmental health expert Dr Lisa Ackerly who, armed with her special kit, finds out just how hygienic these resorts are.

"There's one we went to in the Dominican Republic which was potentially very dangerous," says Matt. "Dr Ackerley's tests showed there to be legionella in the water supply. Legionnaires' disease kills one in 10 people who contract it. It's not like there's too much of it – it shouldn't be there at all."

Matt continues: "Interestingly, since we filmed there, the general manager has written to us saying that in 20 years of business he has never had any guest with legionella or salmonella. He said they have now done their own tests for legionella and found none. But, their tests didn't cover the hot water supply which is the place where we found it.

"You don't need long to sort it – you just have to shut the place down and have a thorough work-through of the water system, so I'm told by our experts."

Matt thinks that the more people complain about the dreadful conditions in some resorts the more these countries' tourist boards will have to sit up and take notice. "Obviously we can't cover every resort but we've checked out some that we've heard bad reports about. We're talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of people going through every year. So if we can point out some that are just not up to scratch then, hopefully, over time, it will bring standards up generally."

He also says that it's imperative holidaymakers voice their concerns if they find themselves in a substandard hotel or resort. "You've usually got a tour operator of some sort and your contract is with them, so you should go to them and point out exactly what's wrong. If you're talking about a room, try and secure a room change as quickly as possible. If it's not the room, it's the resort, just get yourself out of that place as quickly as you can."

Matt admits that it's a difficult thing to do but strongly believes that people should just follow their gut feelings. "It's hard but I think a lot of people would just get an instinct. If your room is not clean, if a restaurant doesn't look clean, you get an instinct about a place and I think it's worse to stay against your instincts in a place that doesn't feel right and doesn't feel clean or cared for and risk the sorts of things we've seen, rather than just very early on make a decision that you're going to get out of that place.

"You should be saying to yourself, okay, the holiday is important but I'm not going to stay here wondering about every piece of food that's put in front of me, wondering about the safety of the pool and all these things when I could be down the road, and in two days you've forgotten about the upset and you're just enjoying yourself.

"It's really difficult because you're so in other people's hands. In high season, when everything's booked out, it's very difficult to make those decisions to move but your tour operator should take your concerns seriously and their rep should do what they can to move you on.

"A lot of tour operators now take that responsibility very seriously. I think the problem is that you've got another layer of tour operators now online who don't necessarily have the same investment in people on the ground, so if you take your big names, the companies we all know, I think those reps actually do work very hard now to make people happy, and I think that has been a change in the last 10 or 15 years. As always there are going to be exceptions to that but I have been impressed by how much those companies have responded to programmes like Watchdog and they do work very hard."

One thing tour operators can do little to stop, though, is the many different scams that are attempted on unsuspecting tourists around the world, from straightforward pickpocketing to more elaborate cons involving shopkeepers swapping expensive products over with one that is worthless.

Matt and the team travel to various places to demonstrate these scams which can take place in many different tourist destinations. "I didn't realise," says Matt. "I had an idea that if you walk up and down a main tourist street then you've got to keep an eye on your wallet but I had no idea of the scale of these things. We filmed in Spain but you can't pin anything on one place though because the scams that we recreate could happen anywhere in the world. We deal with fake ticket scams and also the idea of feeling safe inside your hotel and having a 'holiday head' on. When you get into your hotel you think you can relax but you've still got to observe certain rules about the way you conduct yourself."

Despite the many pitfalls that can await a British tourist abroad, the best advice to get the most for your hard-earned cash is simple: have your wits about you and don't act any differently abroad than you would at home – ie don't have a "holiday head" – do your research on the places you intend to stay and, if you're not happy, speak to your rep. Add all that together and Brits should be able to look forward to a safe and happy summer holiday this year. As for the weather, though, there's absolutely nothing that a rep or Matt Allwright can do...