TRAVEL AND TOURISM

Faraway places with strange-sounding names lure the traveler with promises of enchantment, excitement, diverse forms of entertainment, and tantalizing new kinds of food. The urge to travel is as old as civilization. The great historian Herodotus roamed the ancient world, examining the customs of many lands before writing his famous 'History'. Hundreds of years later a young man from Venice named Marco Polo set out with his father for China, and his writings opened the Far East to Europeans of his time. About the same time Ibn Battutah, an Islamic scholar, traveled about 75,000 miles (121,000 kilometers) and recorded his wanderings in the widely read 'Rihlah' (Travels).

Today travel and tourism account for the largest portion of money spent in international commerce. National tourism expenditures in the early 1980s were more than $100 billion. Domestic tourism was much greater. The modern travel industry is organized to cater to every need and desire of the individual traveler. While travel was once an uncertain and hazardous event, it is now an easily planned and coordinated adventure that has been revolutionized by vast improvements in transportation, computer technology, and networks of international communication.

Components of the Travel Industry

The individual traveler is concerned about where to go, how to get there, where to stay, where to eat, and what to see. The travel industry is organized to meet these concerns in a variety of ways: travel agents and tour companies, transport companies, hotel reservation systems, ground transport companies, restaurant reservation systems, and local or national tourism boards.

Destination. Unless the trip is a business or family necessity, the first interest in the mind of the prospective traveler is where to go and what to see. The mass of information available to satisfy the traveler's curiosity is virtually unlimited. Nearly every nation has a national tourism board, and within nations there are tourism bureaus in states, provinces, and cities. All of these advertise extensively in order to attract tourists. Competition in the travel business is intense, and many localities depend heavily on tourism for income.

In addition to advertising by governmental bureaus, travel companies publish many pamphlets and brochures. And there are thousands of travel books available on every place a tourist might wish to visit.

Transportation. There are two categories of transportation used by travelers. First is the means used to get from home to the destination, and second is the type used at the destination. In some cases the two may be identical. If a family drives from Denver to Los Angeles, the family car serves both purposes. But a businessman making the same trip would probably fly to the Los Angeles International Airport and rent a car there.

Tourists who fly to Europe may rent cars, ride the extensive railway networks, get about by motor coach, or even go from one place to another by ship, ferry, or riverboat. If they stay in one location, they often take advantage of local public transportation--streetcars, buses, and subways.
The age of international travel was revolutionized on Oct. 26, 1958, when Pan American World Airways flew a Boeing 707 jet airplane from New York City to Paris with 123 people on board. Jets cut long-distance air travel time in half.

In the following decades the airline industry expanded greatly and used a variety of airplanes. Among the smaller, short-haul jets were the Boeing 737 and the DC-9. Larger planes included the wide-bodied Boeing 747, 757, and 767, the Lockheed L-1011, the DC-10, and the European Airbus (see Airplane). There are now more than 200 airlines serving Europe--the most popular tourist destination--from all parts of the world. Nearly every country has its own domestic airlines, including the new commuter services that provide inexpensive intercity transportation.

Thousands of years before the airplane, ships provided transportation between widely separated landmasses. As late as the 1950s, travel by ship was one of the most popular ways to get across the Atlantic. In the same week that Pan American flew its jet to Paris, at least a dozen ships sailed from New York City to Europe. But jet air travel doomed international travel by ship. Fortunately the world's shipping lines found a new use for their ships--the cruise business (see "The Cruise Industry" in this article).

In the century before the airplane was invented, the railroad became a primary means of ground transportation in North America and Europe. Rail passenger service in the United States has become limited, but it is still a major form of transportation in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and many other parts of the world. In Europe, where travel distances are often short, it is usually more convenient and inexpensive to go by train than by airplane.

Countries and cities eager for tourist business often offer transportation bargains. The best known is probably the Eurail pass, which allows unlimited train travels in Western European countries for specific periods of time. Many countries have their own rail passes as well. Cities such as London and Paris offer passes for unlimited travel on local buses, underground railways, or streetcars.

Accommodations. The huge upsurge in tourism after 1958 spawned a proportional increase in the amount of hotel space available around the world. For centuries there have been inns, taverns, and hostels open to travelers. In the late 20th century the hotel business is dominated by such chains as Hilton, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Sheraton, Radisson, Ramada, Hyatt, Marriott, Westin, TraveLodge, Best Western, Quality Inns, Regent International, Trusthouse Forte, Four Seasons Hotels, Meridien, IBIS, and Swissotel. Today there are more than 9 million hotel and motel rooms available around the world.

Hotels operated by chains normally offer accommodations ranging from the expensive to the luxurious. But there are still many privately owned inns and hotels that offer adequate facilities--both rooms and meals--for much less than chain hotels. Least expensive for the average traveler is the pension, or boardinghouse, which offers inexpensive rooms and meals. Students can stay in youth hostels at nominal costs, and some hostels now welcome older travelers. Most travel agents carry adequate directories of hotels, pensions, and hostels worldwide. Reservations can often be made through marketing representatives in various countries.

Restaurants. Eating out poses few problems for a tourist who speaks the language of the country, but menus in another language can be confusing and frustrating. It has been suggested that menus be printed in several languages, and restaurants in many major tourist centers now follow this practice.

Dining habits vary from country to country. In Italy, for example, a ristorante is an eating establishment where one is expected to order a full, several-course meal. In a trattoria, on the other hand, one can eat as much or as little as one chooses. In Spain the evening meal is very late, normally after 10 PM; but people often eat snacks called tapas in the early evening to tide them over until dinner.

In some popular tourist spots, reservations must be made weeks in advance. This often means asking a travel agent to do it. Hotel employees, who can recommend good dining establishments, can handle reservations made locally.

The Cruise Industry

After the first commercial jets began flying the Atlantic in 1958, oceangoing passenger service went into a sharp decline. Shipping companies failed, and ships were scrapped. Travel by airplane could save both time and money.

Passenger shipping was saved from extinction by a novel concept: the ship as destination. Instead of being a mode of transportation from one place to another, the ship itself became the attraction. The shipping lines that could not make money by transporting passengers across the Atlantic or Pacific found that they could turn a profit by emphasizing the ship's facilities rather than the ports of call.

Ships were refitted and redecorated to become floating hotels--oceangoing resorts. That they stopped at various ports of call was only an added attraction because there was so much to do on the ship itself: swimming, gambling, movies, games, exercise groups, shows, classes, lectures, and fine dining. And everything was included in one price.

Today cruise lines operate in all parts of the world. The most popular areas are the Caribbean and the Mediterranean seas, but there are also cruises operating to the west coast of Mexico and to Alaska, to the east coast of South America, to the Black Sea or the Baltic, to various ports in the South Pacific, along the coast of China, and around Australia. There are a few around-the-world cruises that last about 90 days, and there are specialized cruises that offer study while at sea. Some of the major cruise lines that operate today are Carnival, Cunard, Paquet, Princess, Sitmar, Sundance, Western, Commodore, Dolphin, Eastern, Norwegian Caribbean, Royal Caribbean, Home Lines, Holland America, Royal Viking, Chandris, Costa, American, American Canadian, Cycladic, Epirotiki, K-Lines, Sea Goddess, and Pearl Cruises.

Resorts

Resorts are special-purpose destinations. They may be places in the sun to get away from winter's cold; they may be places in the snow to enjoy skiing and other winter sports; or they may be health resorts such as Hot Springs, Ark., or Baden-Baden, Germany. Whichever type of resort is chosen, the normal purpose is to get away from it all for a while, to enjoy relaxation and recreation.

Modern resorts have their antecedents in health spas dating back to the late Middle Ages in continental Europe and in seaside resorts that emerged in England in the 18th century. Spa is the name of a town in Belgium that has long been noted for its beneficial mineral waters. There are a great many similar towns and cities in Europe and England to which people have gone for centuries, hoping for cures for a variety of ailments. The first well-known sea resort was Brighton, England, still a popular summer vacation spot.

The modern resorts of the Caribbean islands, Mexico, the Canary Islands, the French Riviera, Spain's south and east coasts, Hawaii, the Italian Riviera, the Greek islands, Florida, California, and the Black Sea coast attract many thousands of visitors each year. Like cruise ships, they offer a great variety of recreation opportunities. Unlike the ships, they have golf courses, tennis courts, ocean bathing, and other features that ships cannot provide.

The winter resort is of more recent origin. Skiing, made more popular by the Winter Olympic Games, is the main attraction. Therefore most winter resorts are in mountainous areas such as the Austrian, German, Italian, Swiss, and French Alps; the Canadian and American Rockies; and the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire. The first major ski resort in the United States was developed at Sun Valley, Idaho.

Travel Agents and Tour Companies

In 1841 an English Baptist missionary named Thomas Cook arranged for a railway excursion from Leicester to Loughborough for a temperance group. Three years later the railroad--the Midland Counties Railway Company--agreed to make the excursion a permanent feature if Cook would provide the passengers. He became the first travel agent, and the company he founded--Thomas Cook and Son--went on to become one of the world's leading travel agencies with offices around the world.

In the late 1950s, before the jet age, there were about 3,000 travel agents in the United States. By the late 1980s there were more than 20,000, with tens of thousands more worldwide. A travel agent is a retailer, an intermediary between the prospective traveler and all the components of a trip. Agents book and sell airline, train, bus, and ship tickets. They reserve hotel rooms and arrange for ground transportation at the destination. They can also make restaurant reservations and obtain theater tickets. For these and other services those whose wares they sell pay them a commission.

Tour operators are companies that arrange every aspect of a travel package. They bring together all the elements of a trip for travelers or for groups of travelers: plane reservations and tickets, hotel arrangements, ground transportation, entertainment, and more. All these components are sold together as a package. Travelers may deal directly with a tour company, or they may book tours through a travel agent.

Today there is a great deal of overlapping between the services of travel agents and tour operators. Companies like Thomas Cook and American Express perform both services, and many independent travel agencies put together tour packages for customers. Among the other major tour companies now operating around the world are: Maupintour, Cartan, Four Winds Travel, International Weekends, Olson Travel, Hemphill-Harris Tours, Lindblad Travel, General Tours, Perillo Tours, the Cortell Group, Globus-Gateway, EuroWorld, CIE Tours, Bennett Tours, Crownline, Charter Travel, China Orient Tour Service, Trafalgar Tours, Single-World, DER Travel Service, and Arthur Frommer Tours.

Trip Planning

Arranging for a trip can be as simple as telephoning for a motel reservation or as complex as setting up an around-the-world tour. The more arrangements to be made the more useful are the services of a travel agent. Airlines and many hotel chains also make extensive travel arrangements.

Travelers to a foreign country need certain documents in order to be allowed in and out of the country. The most necessary of credentials is the passport. This is a formal document issued by governments to their citizens. It establishes the carrier's identity and nationality and authorizes travel outside the country. A United States passport is valid for either five or ten years. To obtain one an individual needs proof of citizenship, two recent identical photographs 2 by 2 inches (5 by 5 centimeters), proof of identity, and a fee payable to Passport Services. A signed application form must accompany these. Passports may be obtained from passport offices in 13 cities, from some post offices, and from some clerks of federal or state courts (see Passport).

A visa is required for entry into some countries and may be obtained at a point of entry. This is an endorsement placed in a passport indicating it has been examined and approved by a government official.

Some countries also require travelers to show a vaccination certificate. Vaccination requirements vary, but common diseases against which visitors need immunity are cholera and yellow fever. Local health departments normally inform prospective travelers of infected areas in all parts of the world. Vaccination certificates can be obtained from passport offices.
Individuals who plan to drive in foreign countries may need an international driver's license, usually available from automobile clubs. Travelers should also be aware of currency regulations, conversion rates, and customs regulations of countries to be visited.