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Anger at 'Diana tour'

Organisers say they are only satisfying demand. But tourism officials have condemned the tour as "unfortunate and opportunistic".

The hotel owner behind the scheme says he gets as many guests asking where the Eiffel Tower is as he does directions to the site of Princess Diana's fatal crash last August.

The Diana tour takes tourists from The Ritz Hotel to the Pont de l'Alma crash site and on to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital where the Princess was certified dead.

For a little extra tourists can take a macabre drive in a Mercedes, similar to the one in which Diana was a rear seat passenger.

The tours are being organised for the left bank Odeon Hotel by Denis Sergent, chairman of the Fox Trot company.

Emile Cacciari, manager of the Hotel Odeon, said guests were eager to visit Diana-related sites.

}He said: "We get as many questions as to how to find the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe as the Ritz Hotel and the Place de l'Alma.

"We do a promotional offer every year to advertise the hotel. We thought of Diana as it was August, the month of the anniversary of her death. That was the main reason, there's nothing particularly special about it."

Mr Cacciari added that money raised from the tours will be donated to the Princess Diana Memorial Fund but a fund spokesman said the cash would be refused.

Van tours are free of charge to Odeon guests and 150 francs (£15) for anyone else. A ride in a Mercedes will cost 400 francs (£40).

But French tourist officials are less convinced.

Christian Mantei, director of the Paris tourism office, said: "Every day for the past year, thousands of people have found their way daily to the Pont de l'Alma all by themselves. They don't need a tour."

Nearly a year after Diana's death, mourners still lay flowers, drawings and poems at the bridge by the gilded Flame of Liberty - a replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame which has become an unofficial memorial.

Beirut or Bosnia

The Diana Tour is the latest in a line of bizarre holiday ventures.

A US travel agency, Reality Tours, organises trips to prisons in Northern Ireland.

}And Britain's Sunville Discovery travel agency draws up tours to former war zones.

Sunville spokeswoman Noel Josephides said their top destination was Lebanon.

"Over the years we've sensed that our clientele wants to do something different.

"They're curious. They want to feel they're the first people there after what's been 15 years of war.

"Everyone's looking for something different, for a destination the tourists haven't invaded yet."

Sunville destinations include the mass graves of Bosnia or the rubble of Beirut.

Travel expert Nigel Coombs says disaster tourism could be a good thing - and not just for the industry.

He said: "The real world is out there to be seen and there are a lot of us who need - almost for therapeutic purposes - to go there and see what has happened."

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