The birth of modern tourism is rooted in the recent history of Europe.
The emergence of middle and upper classes combined with holiday time
incorporated into the workplace together fueled by the industrial
revolution contributed greatly to the emergence of the industry. The
terms tourist and tourism appeared less than a century ago and referred
to people traveling for periods over a day at a time. Previous to the
19th century, tourism was primarily reserved for royalty and privileged
families and was generally for cultural reasons. In this article, we
shall see how important Britain is in the history of the industry.
Britain was the first country to modernize through heavy industry. This
led to leisure time and, consequently, the leisure industry. People had
time on their hands travel to for cultural, climate and health pursuits.
Gradually, the working masses were able to plan for leisure like the
business owning class. The British began touring the rest of Europe
eventually finding and developing resorts to become popular
destinations. This is rather quaintly evident in the legacy of holiday
resort names scattered about Europe. The Promenade des Anglais of the
French Riviera is the first and best established resort with the
esplanade bearing its name. Scattered about Europe are hotels with names
like the Hotel Bristol, the Hotel Carlton or the Hotel Majestic and
more. The English certainly are a proud bunch, to say the least.
The British popularized many winter sports both on island as well as
abroad. In the middle 1800s, many villages in Switzerland came under
entrepreneurial attention to provide ski resorts for the new leisure
classes. Notable is the first packaged winter vacation in 1903 to
Adelboden in Switzerland. Many sports including boxing, football, rugby
became organized by the British. The attraction to sports has never
stopped growing worldwide and has always been a reason to travel as a
tourist for an event.
In comes mass travel with the development of transportation. Railways
become the most popular way to visit seasides and other countries.
Technology allowed greater numbers of people to make the most of their
new-found leisure time – the holiday. On July 5th, 1841, the British
founder of modern mass tourism, Thomas Cook, chartered the first train
to take a group of campaigners going from Leicester to Loughborough some
twenty miles away. Seeing potential for business development, he became
the first tour operator and the rest is history.
Domestic tourism flourished, naturally, in the beginning until foreign
travel became in reach of more of the masses. Throughout all of Europe,
resort towns sprang up to accommodate the ever increasing demand of
growing tourism. European river cruises came
as a result of tourist charms with the many splendid rivers throughout
the Continent. It is really about the pursuit of pleasure, indeed.
For many countries today around the world their economies became
dependent on the influx and commerce of international visitors. Higher
speed trains and the advent of planes exponentially increased the
opportunity for the masses to explore this world and its peoples. And we
can thank the British for their persistence and endeavors for their
contribution to the burgeoning tourist industry.
