Alison Buckley Tour Guide
Alison was born in Surrey just outside London, but grew up in the Midlands, in a town called Solihull near Birmingham. She has one older sister called Sue who lives close by their parents. Their father worked for Cadbury Schweppes all his working life and so chocolate featured quite significantly in her childhood.
She later went to Loughborough University where she studied History and Social Sciences. After University Alison moved down to London and worked in an Advertising Agency for a few years. After saving up enough money she took off and spent 18 months travelling around the world. During this trip she got the travelling bug and could not go back to an office job. In 1993 she joined an adventure travel company called Explore who were going to pay her to travel and work as a Tour Leader, leading trips that she wanted to go on anyway. After working in Egypt, Greece and Tanzania Alison was sent to Turkey to work a season of eight months in March of 1993. It was on arriving in Istanbul for her first trip that she was to meet Phil who was working for the same company. After establishing that Alison was not in his group, Phil was very helpful to her and the rest is history!
Phil and Alison both continued to lead tours here in Turkey and so she returned the following year. At this stage Bougainville Travel was in its early stages and so Phil left Tour Leading to concentrate on the business and Alison carried on with her guide work. They got married in April 1996 in the UK and had a wedding party a week later at Red Point Bar.
Their daughter Emine was born in 1997 and for the first couple of years of her life Alison did not work. She later joined Simply Turkey as a rep when Emine was two years old and together with three of her friends they set up their own creche in Kaş to look after their children whilst they were working. At this time there were no child-care facilities so they had no choice but to do it themselves. They continued the creche for about three years until the kids became school age. Her son Jem was born in December 2000 and at this time she was still working part-time for Simply Turkey.
Phil and Alison have started the lengthy process of obtaining Turkish citizenship for themselves, because of their long term residence and business relationships. They decided that the children could decide at a later time.
They started Stone Property Services in 2010 together with their business partners Salim and Phoenix. They felt that there was a need for another property management business in Kaş and of course there are many links with Bougainville. All the partners fulfill different roles within the company, hers being to visit guests staying in the properties, give them information about Kaş and the surrounding area, but also she is in charge of house-keeping. For her no day is ever the same and there is no time to be bored.
Alison Buckley New Guide Orientation
We asked her if she had any comments about the BT partners: Phil, Ufuk, or Tevfik.
“What can I say about the partners!!!! The three are all so different in their personalities and methods of working, but put it all together and it seems to work.”
Alison said that many people have asked her over the years why she and Phil decided to stay in Turkey.
“Obviously we both love the country very much but I do vaguely remember a conversation that we had with each other and this is before we had the children and any other major responsibilities. We decided that we would give it a go at living in Turkey, see how BT went and of course if it didn’t work we were both young enough to go back to the UK or somewhere else and try something different. When the children came along we said that when they got to school age we would go back to the UK, but the time came along very quickly and then we just thought “why do we need to return to the UK when there is a perfectly good school here?” I am very pleased that the children have grown up in Kaş. They have had an idyllic childhood in that they have had the freedom to come and go as they please, they know two cultures and of course they are bilingual. At the moment they do not appreciate any of this, but I am sure they will do when they are grown up. They laugh at Phil and myself when we speak Turkish saying our accents are all wrong, and ask us not to speak in front of their friends!!”
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