Tourism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The hippie trail came to an end in the late 1970s with political changes in previously hospitable countries. In 1979, both the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan closed the overland route to Western travelers." --Sholem Stein "Starke's Information and Directions also prepared the way for Murray and Baedeker in its effort to cover its field as no previous guide had done, to become the one guide needed for an entire tour. To accomplish this purpose, Starke realized ..."--The Beaten Track (1993) by James Buzard "The Europeans (2019) interweaves rail transport, the diffusion of cultural products, the histories of copyright, mechanical reproduction, tourism, 19th century literature, art and music with the personal lives of operatic star Pauline Viardot, her husband Louis Viardot and her lover Ivan Turgenev to sketch a remarkably lively portrait of 19th century Europe."--Sholem Stein "The favourable reception given to the fifth Edition of her Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent, leads her to hope that the ensuing pages may, in some degree, answer the purpose for which they were written ; and exonerate Travellers from the necessity of encumbering themselves, in every metropolis of the Continent, with books published to serve as Guides. At Paris, Strangers are in the habit of purchasing the Post-book, the List of Pictures in the Musée Royal, and the List of Sculptures in the same Museum, added to Galignani's excellent Paris Guide, and equally excellent Guide through France. At Florence Molini's accurate description of the Royal Gallery, and Gargiolli's account of the City, are usually purchased. At Rome Vasi's Itinerary, (two volumes) and the description of the Museum of the Capitol, besides Nibby's highly and justly estimated publications, are deemed almost indispensable ; as are from ten to twelve Guides at Naples, for the City and its Environs." --Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent by Mariana Starke "You have no need to have read Payne Knight, or Louis Viardot, or John Ruskin, to be able to understand Mont Blanc. The Grands Mulets and the Mer de Glace would interest the merest clodhopper. This is the reason why Switzerland is with travellers an universal favourite. You can’t wrangle about the conflict of styles in a precipice; the odium theologicum has nothing to lay hold of in an avalanche."--Rome and Venice: With Other Wanderings in Italy, in 1866-7 (1869) by George Augustus Sala "London? Paris? Berlin? Moscow? Bah! You pick: One name's as good as another. Don't take offence if already at the start of our journey, we meet a Seine which flows into the Thames, before joining the Tiber at the corner of a Madrid square. Besides, the idea of uniting the states of Europe, which the politicians believe they thought of first, was already inside us when on school desks, we were convinced that Zurich was the capital of Belgium and Warsaw of England. We were already trying to mix, despite the strict watch of our teachers, all of the peoples of Europe. Just one capital, one name, instead of the many learned by rote. Here is a dream which is realized every night, when day-to-day reality sleeps and imagination wakes instead."--opening voiceover panning over a Mini-Europe in Europe by Night (1959) "I'll prose it here, I'll verse it there,
Destinations: Bomarzo park - Le Palais Idéal - Alps |
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Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes.
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Etymology
The English-language word tourist was used in 1772 and tourism in 1811. These words derive from the word tour, which comes from Old English turian, from Old French torner, from Latin tornare - "to turn on a lathe", which is itself from Ancient Greek tornos (τόρνος) - "lathe".
History
Ancient
Travel outside a person's local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes, who at times travelled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings and works of art, learn new languages, experience new cultures, enjoy pristine nature and to taste different cuisines. As early as Shulgi, however, kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building way stations for travellers. Travelling for pleasure can be seen in Egypt as early on as 1500 BC. Ancient Roman tourists during the Republic would visit spas and coastal resorts such as Baiae. They were popular among the rich. The Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or at sea and travelled to their villa urbana or villa maritima. Numerous villas were located in Campania, around Rome and in the northern part of the Adriatic as in Barcola near Trieste. Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the second century AD. In ancient China, nobles sometimes made a point of visiting Mount Tai and, on occasion, all five Sacred Mountains.
Medieval
By the post-classical era, many religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam had developed traditions of pilgrimage. The Canterbury Tales (1390s), which uses a pilgrimage as a framing device, remains a classic of English literature, and Journey to the West (1592), which holds a seminal place in Chinese literature, has a Buddhist pilgrimage at the center of its narrative.
In medieval Italy, Petrarch wrote an allegorical account of his 1336 ascent of Mont Ventoux that praised the act of travelling and criticized frigida incuriositas (a 'cold lack of curiosity'); this account is regarded as one of the first known instances of travel being undertaken for its own sake. The Burgundian poet Michault Taillevent later composed his own horrified recollections of a 1430 trip through the Jura Mountains.
Grand Tour
Modern tourism can be traced to what was known as the Grand Tour, which was a traditional trip around Europe (especially Germany and Italy), undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means, mainly from Western and Northern European countries. In 1624, the young Prince of Poland, Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa, the eldest son of Sigismund III, embarked on a journey across Europe, as was in custom among Polish nobility. He travelled through territories of today's Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, where he admired the siege of Breda by Spanish forces, France, Switzerland to Italy, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It was an educational journey and one of the outcomes was introduction of Italian opera in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s and generally followed a standard itinerary. It was an educational opportunity and rite of passage. Though primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of Protestant Northern European nations on the Continent, and from the second half of the 18th century some South American, US, and other overseas youth joined in. The tradition was extended to include more of the middle class after rail and steamship travel made the journey easier, and Thomas Cook made the "Cook's Tour" a byword.
The Grand Tour became a status symbol for upper-class students in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this period, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's theories about the supremacy of classic culture became very popular and appreciated in the European academic world. Artists, writers, and travellers (such as Goethe) affirmed the supremacy of classic art of which Italy, France, and Greece provide excellent examples. For these reasons, the Grand Tour's main destinations were to those centers, where upper-class students could find rare examples of classic art and history.
In 2008, The New York Times described the Grand Tour in this way:
- "Three hundred years ago, wealthy young Englishmen began taking a post-Oxbridge trek through France and Italy in search of art, culture and the roots of Western civilization. With nearly unlimited funds, aristocratic connections and months (or years) to roam, they commissioned paintings, perfected their language skills and mingled with the upper crust of the Continent."
The primary value of the Grand Tour, it was believed, laid in the exposure both to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.
Emergence of leisure travel
Leisure travel was associated with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom - the first European country to promote leisure time to the increasing industrial population. Initially, this applied to the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, factory owners and traders. These comprised the new middle class. Cox & Kings was the first official travel company to be formed in 1758.
The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names. In Nice, France, one of the first and best-established holiday resorts on the French Riviera, the long esplanade along the seafront is known to this day as the Promenade des Anglais; in many other historic resorts in continental Europe, old, well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol, Hotel Carlton, or Hotel Majestic - reflecting the dominance of English customers.
A pioneer of the travel agency business, Thomas Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at Kibworth. With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway, he arranged to take a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street station to a rally in Loughborough, 11 mi away. On 5 July 1841, Thomas Cook arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person; this included rail tickets and food for the journey. Cook was paid a share of the fares charged to the passengers, as the railway tickets, being legal contracts between company and passenger, could not have been issued at his own price. This was the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public; Cook himself acknowledged that there had been previous, unadvertised, private excursion trains. During the following three summers he planned and conducted outings for temperance societies and Sunday school children. In 1844, the Midland Counties Railway Company agreed to make a permanent arrangement with him, provided he found the passengers. This success led him to start his own business running rail excursions for pleasure, taking a percentage of the railway fares.
In 1855, he planned his first excursion abroad, when he took a group from Leicester to Calais to coincide with the Paris Exhibition. The following year he started his "grand circular tours" of Europe. During the 1860s he took parties to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and the United States. Cook established "inclusive independent travel", whereby the traveller went independently but his agency charged for travel, food, and accommodation for a fixed period over any chosen route. Such was his success that the Scottish railway companies withdrew their support between 1862 and 1863 to try the excursion business for themselves.
See also
- Atlas Obscura
- Backpacking (travel)
- Dark tourism
- Disaster tourism
- Escapism
- Exotica
- Flâneur
- Grand Tour
- Guide book
- Holiday
- Jet set
- Orientalism
- Picturesque
- Point of interest
- Scenic route
- Scenic viewpoint
- Sense of place
- Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- Sex tourism
- Slum tourism
- Space tourism
- Sublime
- Tour
- Tourist attraction
- Tourist trap
- Travel
- Travel literature
- Tourists (Duane Hanson) (1970)
