Zigotours Dubai and Abu Dhabi Autumn Camp

A one-week escorted trip between Dubai and Abu Dhabi for teenagers, run by Zigotours, a French youth-travel operator. There is no teaching component: the whole group follows a single published itinerary with its own director and activity leaders. The operator sets the group at twelve to sixteen participants with one adult for every eight young people.

The package is sold from Paris and covers the flight out and back with one stopover, accommodation at the hostel, the meal arrangement, local and private transport on the ground, the excursions and entries on the itinerary, and the leadership team. Zigotours also lists a pre-routing service that can bring a child to the Paris departure from other French cities; it does not publish a price for it, so it is not listed among this camp's paid extras. Cancellation terms are graduated by how far ahead the cancellation falls and are published by the operator.

The group sleeps in a youth hostel in the Al Quasis district of Dubai. Rooms hold three to six beds. The operator states that rooms are not mixed — boys and girls sleep separately — although the catalogue's accommodation record carries only a single mixed/male/female setting for the camp as a whole and cannot express that distinction. Showers and toilets are shared and sit outside the rooms. The hostel has a large open-air swimming pool and an activity room.

Breakfast is a buffet at the hostel and is included in the hostel arrangement. Lunch is taken as a picnic while the group is out, and the evening meal is eaten in small restaurants.

The itinerary the operator publishes runs from Dubai Creek, crossed by abra, through the narrow streets and souks of the Bastakiya quarter to the Sheik Saeed palace at Shindagha, the Al Fahidi fort and the Dubai Museum. The group goes up the Burj Khalifa to the 124th floor and watches the fountain show in the evening, and visits the Museum of the Future. A full day is spent in Abu Dhabi and its great mosque. There is a day at the Aquaventure water park on the Palm, with around thirty slides and a private beach. The desert day is an expedition by 4x4 into the dunes with camel riding, sand surfing, sunset, a grilled dinner and an evening of music.

The hostel that houses the group has a large open-air swimming pool and an indoor activity room. Getting about is by local and private transport that the operator states meets the safety standards of the country.

Zigotours describes Dubai as a former fishing port for sailors, pearl divers and traders that finance, property and tourism have transformed, and presents the stay as a way of seeing both sides of that at once — the souks and the creek alongside the towers and the desert. The trip is supervised throughout by a qualified director and activity leaders who travel with the group, and the operator supplies a first-aid kit to a designated leader acting as health assistant.