Organized
group holidays offering an all-inclusive price that reduced the travelers'
costs were an innovation of the 1840s. Thomas Cook (1808-1892) , a
brilliant entrepreneur from England,
is seen as their inventor and thus the pioneer of commercialized mass
tourism. His first all-inclusive holiday in 1841 took 571 people from Leicester to Loughborough and supplied both meals and
brass music. From 1855, Cook offered guided holidays abroad, for example in
1863 to Switzerland.
These catered to a mixed clientele, from heads of state and princes to average
representatives of the middle, lower middle and working classes. Cook, inspired
by clear socio-political motives, wanted to use Sunday excursions to tempt
workers out of the misery and alcoholism of the cities into the green of the
countryside. He had more success with inexpensive all-inclusive holidays, often
to foreign destinations, for the middle class. His introduction of vouchers for
hotels and tourist brochures was highly innovative.
Cook's pioneering
role in the emergence of mass tourism is widely recognized. He influenced the
travel agencies later opened in Germany,
above all those associated with the names of Rominger (Stuttgart,
1842), Schenker & Co. (München, 1889) and the Stangen Brothers (Breslau, 1863). Carl Stangen (1833–1911) organized
holidays through Europe, then from 1873 to Palestine
and Egypt,
before extending them to the whole world in 1878. Over this period, the travel
agency was able to establish itself as a specialized institution. It channeled
ever greater demands for relaxation and variety among broadening social strata:
from the 1860s, traveling became a type of "popular movement" that
spread throughout society. The German writer Theodor Fontane (1819–1898)
remarked in 1877.
The opening of
the Alps to
tourists was an equally important development of the 19th century. It was
preceded by an affinity for nature acquired under the influence of the
Enlightenment and Romanticism that sentimentalized the mountains. This created
a flock of what would soon be called tourists made up of researchers, nobles,
artists, painters, writers and other members of the educated classes, as well
as the upwardly mobile middle classes, who followed Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), Horace-Bénédict de Saussure
(1740–1799) and Rousseau
in their search for natural beauty and the mountains. This romanticism of
alpine harmony replaced the mediaeval fear of the mountains and underwent a
"touristization" over the 19th century. Two groups propelled this
process – the aristocracy and the new middle class. The pioneers were
enthusiastic British mountaineers who pursued the exclusive sport in
Switzerland, charging up the summit and encouraging the development of
infrastructure (the construction of hotels, Alpine huts, mountain railways,
Anglican chapels and so on) through their continues presence, as well as
leaving behind the traces of a cultural transfer.
Holidaying Practices in the Interwar Period
The
development of tourism in the 20th century can be divided using a number of
different periodisations. It is common, and plausible, to identify a
"developmental phase" between 1915 and 1945. This covers the stagnation in tourism as a
result of the First World War, but also transitional developments that steadily
acquired importance. It was preceded by a period of growth in which, for
example, the number of stays in a hotel or other form of holiday accommodation
in Germany
rose about 471 percent between 1871 and 1913, a good seven times faster than
the level of growth in the population. The bulk of these belonged to the upper middle
class, and soon the entire middle class, who made their way to the newly opened
coastal resorts on the North and Baltic
Seas, as well as to the
spa, health and gambling resorts. Germans took
to bathing holidays relatively late in comparison to the pioneering British
and, at first, for health reasons, with socializing and recreation coming
later. However, they became increasingly popular, as evident in the development
of famous locations, coastal resorts and beaches. The loss of
their former exclusivity and the shift towards entertainment and distraction
signified an increase in social accessibility, whereas, for example, the new ski and winter
tourism retained its chic clientele at the turn of the century.
The dominant
motif of traveling and holidaying after 1900 was recuperation. However, only
those involved in intellectual work had an established right to relaxation;
this right was extended from nobles, the middle-class professions and
high-ranking bureaucrats to entrepreneurs, merchants, mid-ranking bureaucrats,
white-collar workers and teachers. Without doubt, this was connected to the
regulation of holidays as part of legal agreements on pay.
Most European
countries lacked strict holiday rights before 1900: with the exception of a few
pioneering cases, paid time off work for more than a day only became
established in law after the First World War. In Germany, the Reichsbeamtengesetz
of 1873, which outlined the employment conditions of state employees (Beamte), was the beginning. At first, it was
only relevant to state employees, and holidays for other employees remained the
exception before the First World War, only becoming possible after it, for
example in Austria through the Arbeiterurlaubsgesetz
(Law on Workers' Holidays ) of 1919. Similar developments took place in Switzerland:
holidays for the civil servants of the federal administration were first
subject to regulation in 1879, but only established as a legal right in 1923.
In industry, holiday rights were only granted much later. Among 100 Swiss
factories, for example, in 1910 only 11.9 percent gave their employees paid
holidays; by 1944, this figure had risen to 87.9 percent. The right to holiday
enshrined in normal work contracts today is an achievement of the 20th century.
In Switzerland,
this right was not regulated uniformly. In different cantons, the situation
developed independently, although from the 1930s collective work contracts
became important; one paid week off was usual. Only after 1945 did most cantons
extend their laws on holidays to the entire labor force. Germany did not
pass a general law on holiday rights until 1963.
One innovative
new form of holidaying that also came to include families with children was the
"summer retreat". From the
1870s, the term, first used in 1836, referred to a middle-class holidaying
practice whose practitioners sought relaxation in the countryside as an
alternative to the seaside during the summer. The summer retreat can be
understood . At first, the lower middle and working classes
could not afford a summer retreat with the family, while Sunday excursions
became a custom for middle-class families before 1914 – these slowly extended
to the whole weekend and then several days.
After the crisis
of the First World War, the summer retreat offered a simple, healthy and
economical holiday, which from the 1920s was accessible to employees and
workers on low incomes. Love of the countryside and a desire for the simplicity
of rural life inspired by a critical view of the city, preferably in the beauty
of low mountain ranges, seem to indicate a particularly German variety of the
summer retreat, which differed from trips to Scandinavian or Russian holiday
cottages or dachas. The behavior of
Germans on summer retreat created a repertoire that came to define the
practice.
Between 1933 and
1939, the National Socialist regime in Germany brought new impulses, an
increasing amount of travel and holidaying practices aimed at the masses. These
developments overcame the once essentially middle-class nature of travel by
creating a social or popular tourism characterized by the state organization of
holidaying and recreation. It goes without saying that tourism served the
political system and the National Socialist ideology. The various stages and
graduated pattern of use of the new tourism are conspicuous, providing an
object lesson in the inherent potential for a totalitarian regime to exploit
tourism politically. Mass tourism emerged in the Third Reich. For the historian of
tourism, this form of holidaying, guided from above, was characterized by its claim
to democratization on behalf of the general workforce, the Volk.
Hitler wanted to grant the worker a satisfactory holiday and do everything to
ensure that this holiday and the rest of his free time would provide true
recuperation.
The National
Socialists implemented this goal through the creation of a body to organize
recreation – the Nationalsozialistische Gemeinschaft
Kraft durch Freude ("The National Socialist Association Strength
through Joy" – KdF) and a ministry Reisen,
Wandern, Urlaub ("Traveling, Hiking, Holiday"
– RWU), both of which were subordinate to the party. In order to avoid
resistance to the social transformation, workers received at first between
three and six days holiday per year. From 1937, the majority of wage-earners
had from six to twelve days off per year and could benefit from the new, very cheap,
opportunities for holidays and travel: walking tours, train journey, cruises
with accommodation and meals achieved great popularity. This is evident from
record statistics that testify to an unprecedented boom in travel: the
2.3 million journeys undertaken in 1934 rose to five million in 1935,
9.6 million in 1937 and 10.3 million in 1938.
In the six years before the outbreak of war, 43 million journey, cruises and
walking tours were sold at cheap prices that could not be competed with, for
example seven days in Norway
for 60 Reichsmark or 18 days in Madeira for 120 Reichsmark.
The KdF tourists,
who traveled en masse as a logical expression of the state's ideology of
national community, kept to themselves and were often met with disapproval at
exclusive resorts and on cruises. On the whole,
it is generally true that the KdF movement contributed to the development of
mass and repeat tourism and thus, to a certain extent, its democratization,
albeit at the cost of the broad masses and to the benefit of the Nazi regime.
The success of the KdF holidays was based on the interaction of three factors:
the need to work and lack of money no longer ruled out going on holiday;
holidays were offered at the lowest prices possible, and the organization
commanded a closely meshed network that adapted itself to the workers' needs
rather than the other way round. One also should not forget the fact that, at the
same time, the German private tourist industry underwent a tremendous boom, for
example in the construction of youth hostels and camping sites and in catering
to the middle-class holidaymakers who gradually returned to the more upmarket
forms of tourism.
One historian summaries the KdF tourism with the words that the Germans
had, admittedly, not yet become a "Volk auf Reisen" ("a people
on the move"), but the Nazi dictatorship had shown the direction which –
delayed by collapse and reconstruction –they would go in the end.
The Expansion of Tourism and Globalization
The last phase embraces the developments in tourism during the post-war period up to the present. Depending on one's perspective, this is the apex of tourism or the phase of practice and consolidation These are justified labels for the period's combination of infrastructural construction and renovation, streams of tourists and holidaying as a common form of recreation: indeed, over the last few decades, tourism has become an important branch of the global economy and is a defining characteristic of modern industrial nations. Tourism crosses borders: spatial, temporal, social and cultural. This is its common denominator. There is a consensus that the enormous boom during the post-war period was bound up with economic growth, technological progress, a high level of competition and the creation of new destinations and traveling styles. The increase in recreational mobility among broad strata of society should be seen against this background. Various factors brought about this boom, including rising affluence, urbanization, the unprecedented construction of transportation and communication networks, and the increase in leisure time as a result of shortening working hours, all of which shaped socialization.
However, this
growth in tourism after the war only came slowly and in Germany, Austria
and Switzerland
remained confined to domestic destinations. In Western Germany, not until 1953
did the capacity for holiday accommodation reach pre-war levels; the
considerable increases in the percentage of teenagers and adults going on
holiday each year only took place during and after the 1960s: rising from 28
percent (1962) to 58 percent (1980), over 65 percent (1987) and 70.8 percent
– meaning the Western German figures were average in comparison to other
European countries.
Involved in this were, alongside trade union bodies, the holiday organizations
and travel agencies, as well as the large travel companies, which acquired
increasing importance. Subsidized "social tourism" for families and
young people, which helped those parts of the population on low incomes to go
on holiday, was a noticeable trend in several countries. Social policies,
holiday funds, subsidies, charities and entire holiday camps and villages for
workers and low-income employees can be found in France, Austria, Germany and, above all, in Switzlerand.
The apex of
European tourism began in the 1960s: in response to the economic situation and
strategic innovations in the market economy, commercial tour operators and
travel companies transformed the nature of competition through increasingly
cheaper offers, propelling it in the direction of mass tourism, introducing new
destinations and modes of holidaying.
Here, tourism produced its own structures
and secondary systems. Many travel agencies and tourist organizations
were set up, while department stores also offered package holidays, for example
Neckermann in Germany from
1963 and Jelmoli in Switzerland
from 1972. The replacement of bus and rail travel with journeys by car and
caravan, and later by air, provided a powerful stimulus. Charter tourism
occupied a flourishing market sector and established itself with cheap offers
for foreign holidays. Foreign tourism first affected neighboring countries and
then more distant destinations – Austria
and Switzerland were popular
among German holidaymakers, but Italy
and Spain
later gained increasing prominence: From about 1970, journeys abroad clearly
represented the majority; this trend towards foreign holidays has recently
grown even stronger. In general, the number of teenagers and adults
taking foreign holidays rose more than threefold over the 40 years before 1991
– from nine to 32 million.
However, the
researcher must differentiate between the varying levels of intensity that this
boom possessed in different European countries. To do this, one must look at
the frequency, forms of travel, trends and destinations, as well as countless
statistics and market studies, the results of which indicate social and
cultural holidaying traditions. In the mid-1970s, 70 to 80 percent of the
Scandinavia's adult population went on holiday, while in Britain, the Netherlands
and Switzerland this figure
was 60 percent and in Italy
about 25 percent.
Foreign tourism dominated this phase and many resorts and beaches on the Mediterranean and regions in the newly opened up Alpine
countries became magnates for holidaymakers that, later, developed into strongholds
of tourism. On the supply side, the infrastructure underwent intensive
construction: some Alpine villages (St. Moritz, Zermatt, Lech) were entirely
transformed into tourist and skiing resorts; rural provinces (Provence, Côte
d'Azur, Tirol), cities (Venice, Salzburg),
costal areas (on the
Adriatic Sea, Kenya) and islands (Mallorca, Rhodes, the Maldives, Sylt)
increasingly mutated into holiday areas, resorts and complexes.
However, the
increase in touristic traffic hints at another social and structural expansion,
the impact of which has been gaining strength since the 1990s. Holidays and
travel are becoming accessible to ever broader strata of the population; not
only "traditional" holidaymakers – i.e. state employees, white-collar
workers, graduates and urban workers – have benefited. The rural population and
social groups defined by age and gender (women, singles, pensioners) have taken
advantage of tourism, something which is evident from the specific
products tailored to their various demands. This picks up on a central
characteristic of modern tourism – diversification and specialization as a
result of globalization .
This corresponds to tourism's apparently unbridled potential, regardless of the
facts that little structural development has taken past over the last decade
and that touristic tastes and behavior have been reasonably stable since the
Second World War, albeit with some changes in emphasis.
On the one hand,
this view is contradicted by the institution of "club holidays" such
as the "Club Méditerannée" (1955), the "Club Soleil"
(1966), the "Robinson Club" (1970), the "Club-Aldiana"
(1973) and others, which have very successfully put into practice their own
holidaying formulas and philosophies. On the other, artificial holiday worlds
in the form of amusement parks and theme parks are becoming increasingly
important:
Disneyland, Europa-Park,
Port Aventura, Sun City and many others have
annual visitor numbers in the tens of millions and are still experiencing
constant growth. These are made up of post-modern pseudo-events,
simulated worlds and hyper-realities which the tourists internalize as
adventure, fun, game and competition, despite the fact that the visitors see
through their artificiality. Such experiential constructs come and go. For the historian of
tourism, this represents a shift that is noteworthy on account of its
systematic nature: the traditional touristic consumption of symbols (sights,
other worlds) have been extended or replaced by an experience-laden
entertainment culture that is part of a new way of perceiving the world. This
has global characteristics; it is breaking down boundaries by mutating and is
thus moving towards a globalized system with specific, increasingly
interchangeable forms and modes of experience. Only time will tell what structures will emerge
from this innovative potential.
Renee de Ramirez, MS
Hospitality Operations and Management
Chairperson
Fortis College Miami Campus
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