PHOTO: Japan tours are designed to take guests far off the standard tourist routes.

After almost seven decades in business, General Tours changed its name to Alexander + Roberts.

The company was founded in 1947 by Alexander Harris, as a branch of what was then the 25-year-old, Paris-based Agence Générale de Tourisme. That was the origin of the name General Tours. In 1940s America, the word “general” was widely used as a brand for companies, such as General Motors, General Foods and General Electric. Calling a company “general” at that time gave it an established, authoritative sound, as if it was the definitive brand in its field. But in 2014, 67 years later, the brand name has gone the way of “Oldsmobile.”

Alexander Harris was a Polish Jew born in 1921 who saw a tremendous amount of turmoil in his life and made it his life’s mission to try to break down through travel the barriers separating people and leading to misunderstanding and conflict. He told his story in an autobiography entitled “Breaking Borders.”

He lost two generations of family in the holocaust in Poland. Driven from Poland because he was Jewish, Harris was then arrested by Russian authorities and imprisoned and tortured in a Siberian gulag. In 1944, he was released to join the Polish army to fight the Nazis through an agreement between the Russian government and the exile government of Poland. He served until the end of the war, earning Poland’s highest military honors. At the end of the war, he was placed in a displaced person’s camp in Eschwege, Germany, outside of Dresden. When an opportunity arose, he emigrated to the U.S., where the story of General Tours began.

In the post-World War II world, Harris was dismayed to see new battle lines drawn in the regions where the previous wars had been fought. The U.S. and the Soviet Union, which had united to defeat the Nazis, turned against each other.

As a newly immigrated American, Harris was especially unhappy to see the two superpowers turn against each other. During his time in Russia, as trying as it had been, he had developed a deep fondness for the Russian people.

In 1955, he wrote to President Eisenhower asking for support in his efforts to create travel bridges into the Soviet Union. In the midst of anti-Communist hysteria in the U.S. at the time, Harris did not want to embark on such a large project without shoring up some support in defense against the Redbaiters, politicians who made careers out of maligning people for alleged sympathies with communists. Luckily for Harris, Eisenhower, as a witness to the calamities of war himself, was enthusiastically in favor of his effort to create peaceful relations between the citizens of the two countries.

Breaking with a name, holding to a tradition Robert Drumm, the president of the company today, who bought a controlling interest in the company in 1992, told Vacation Agent that he had contemplated changing the name for a long time, and had discussed it with Harris, who had remained in the role of chairman of the company until his death.

“The word ‘general’ does not describe what we do at all,” he said.

PHOTO: The new Machu Picchu and Reserva Amazonica tour combines Peru’s most popular Inca tourist sites with the Amazon rainforest region.

What the company does do is create and operate travel packages in exotic destinations around the world. General Tours, now Alexander + Roberts, was never about going to mainstream destinations. The well-beaten paths of tourism were left to others.

Instead, from the company’s beginning, Alexander Harris was always set on smashing travel obstacles and taking people to places they formerly were forbidden or unable to go because the means for safe and comfortable travel were not available.

General Tours was one of the first travel companies to take Americans to many exotic destinations. It was one of the first to take them to the Soviet Union, as early as 1955, when America’s post-World War II Red Scare was raging at its hottest. It was one of the first to take Americans to China soon after President Richard Nixon opened diplomatic relations with what was then called Red China in 1972.

General Tours was one of the first companies to take tourists to many other exotic destinations such as Syria, Morocco, Jordan, Vietnam and Cambodia. The company was a pioneer in Eastern Europe, even before the fall of the Soviet bloc opened much of the region that had formerly been behind the so-called Iron Curtain to Westerners. Today, the company is forging new paths in emerging destinations in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The company began as an escorted tour operator and it now embodies that tradition and history, though the style of travel has adapted to the times. Alexander + Roberts offers intimate small-group tours with 16 or fewer participants and also offers independent packages, small-ship cruises and custom-designed packages.

Over the years, the company name had become inadequate to express what it did.

“I had been unhappy with the name for a long time,” said Drumm, “but it was really driven home to me when I spoke to a couple of travelers who were telling me about a great tour they took, but they couldn’t remember the name of the tour operator. The way they described the trip, I thought it was one of ours, and it turned out that it was.”

The fact that the travelers had been so enthusiastic about the trip, but had not remembered the name General Tours convinced Drumm that the name had to be changed.

He had previously made efforts to modernize the brand while keeping continuity with the historical brand identity. He tried adding a second component to the original brand: General Tours World Traveler. But it was cumbersome and didn’t catch on. Most references to the company in the press or in private conversation reverted to the simpler “General Tours.”

Finally, Drumm decided it was time to make a bold, clean break from the old brand. The new name was chosen because it incorporates the first names of the founder, Alexander Harris, and the present owner, Robert Drumm, who has been the principal owner of the company since 1992.

Drumm had met Harris in the 1980s when Drumm worked for Pan Am Airways. Drumm and Harris had collaborated to establish the first nonstop New York-Moscow flights on Pan Am. Drumm operated tours into Eastern Europe for the airline under the brand Pan Am Holidays.

Harris continued to be the spiritual leader of the company and the mentor of Drumm until his death in early 2013.

Still taking big strides

In spite of the company’s age, it is still moving forward, exploring new frontiers and maintaining its tradition of breaking borders. The company continues to be on the move at the edges of the frontiers of the travel industry.

In 2013, the company introduced tours to Cuba through a partnership with Insight Cuba. The company offers four People to People itineraries ranging from six to 12 days in length.

Later in the year, the company introduced six programs to India. The programs are grouped in an India-Nepal brochure with 19 programs in all. Also new in Asia last year were programs to Korea, Taiwan and a combination tour of Thailand, Laos and Angkor Wat.

PHOTO: Alexander + Roberts introduced six programs to India last year.

Four new Japan tours were introduced in October 2013 for the 2014 travel year. Characteristic of the Alexander + Roberts approach is the “Backroads and Teahouses of Japan” program. It’s an eight-day/seven-night trip designed to take guests far off the standard tourist routes to glimpse the real Japan through personal encounters with Japanese, a walk through forested trails in Kamakura to see the giant Buddha statue and a cruise on Lake Ashi. It also offered new programs to Sri Lanka.

The company continued to push forward in Africa with a revised version of its “South Africa and Victoria Falls” program, with the addition of a stay at the eco-lodge in Grootbos Private Nature Reserve.

New tours for 2014 are the following: Across the Himalayas, a 10-day trip across the so-called Roof of the World from Lhasa to Kathmandu; Wildlife of Borneo, an 11-day trip that brings participants face to face with orangutans; Machu Picchu and Reserva Amazonica, which combines Peru’s most popular Inca tourist sites with the Amazon rainforest region; Luxury Tenting in the Serengeti, a luxury safari that is based at the camps of Lemala in Tanzania; and The Silk Road in Uzbekistan, exploring the ancient trade routes between the East and the West.

For information, see www.alexanderroberts.com.