parks and other direct tourism-related activities and, finally, tourist shopping. Personal vacation travel makes up about 80 percent and business travels about 20 percent of all expenses. In addition, the tourism economy includes all indirect private and public expenses and investments which enable tourism to take place (Figure 4).
FIGURE 4 The Tourism Industry and Economy Flows
Source: EU (2002). Structure, Performance and Competitiveness of European Tourist Enterprises, 6.
Tourists spend more money at home than abroad. However, since the 1970s international tourism spending has increased much more than domestic tourism and the two numbers are approaching each other. While international tourism spending accounted for less than 10 percent of total tourism revenues in 1970, its share increased during the next two decades to 30 percent in 1990 and 40 percent in 2005 (Figure 5). The difference between domestic and international tourism spending varies a lot from country to country, just as developed countries spend much more on tourism compared to developing countries. The North Europeans spend more on international tourism than on domestic tourism, for example, while USA spends five times as much at home than abroad. Although climate and access to sun and beach seem to be the most important factors driving world tourism, the rise of one day and short-term vacations means that shopping, visits to family and friends as well as city tourism, make up an increasing share of total tourism spending.
FIGURE 5 Global Domestic and International Tourism in $bn, 1970-2015
Source: UNTWO. Historical Perspective of World Tourism. WTTC. The 2007 Travel & Tourism Economic Research. Numbers are estimated.
Looking at ways of traveling, cars and airlines dominate completely. In the US, the car is the most important means of transportation for vacations, because here short term vacations prevail. The car is also important in Western Europe as a means of tourism transportation, but the longer vacations in this region means that flying plays a greater role. Ferries, trains and busses are of much less significance.8
FIGURE 6 The Tourism Economy and Industry of the World’s Largest Tourist Countries in $bn, 2005
Source: WTTC. The 2007 Travel & Tourism Economic Research.
The US tourism sector is by far the largest in the world, making up a quarter of total tourism economy and industry (Figure 6). There is quite a gap down to number two, Japan, with an 8 percent global share, followed by China and the five large West European tourist countries, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain of 4 to 6 percent. China has just recently joined the top ten and rapidly moved into third place. The ten largest tourist countries account for 70 percent of total world tourism spending. As we shall see later on, the world tourism industry that provides travel services is completely dominated by companies in developed countries.
FIGURE 7 High Income and Low Income Countries’ Share of World Tourism in $bn, 2005 and 2015
Source: WTTC. The 2007 Travel & Tourism Economic Research.
To a high degree, world tourism deals with travelling in and between developed and high income countries, although emerging countries such as China and Mexico have fueled non-Western tourism (Figure 7). The growing desire of middle classes to travel has increased the economic importance of tourism in developing countries, mainly emerging countries. In relative terms, tourism is growing more rapidly in developing countries than in developed countries. Political stability and good infrastructure are a precondition everywhere for extending tourism.
In numbers, revenues of the global tourism industry have increased from $875 bn in 1990, to $1700 bn in 2005 and a projected $2590 bn in 2015 (Table 3).
TABLE 3 The Global Tourism Industry in $bn, 1990-2015
Source: UNWTO. Historical Perspective of World Tourism. WTTC. The 2007 Travel & Tourism Economic Research. My predictions are not as optimistic as. WTTC. Numbers are rounded.
From Mass Tourism to Customized Tourism
Rich people have always traveled to distant parts of the world to visit great coastal resorts, see magnificent buildings, experience new cultures, etc.9 The sons of the nobility and gentry in the 17th and 18th century undertook a Grand Tour of Europe as an educational experience. Health tourism existed even in ancient Rome, but it was not until the 18th century that it became important. British spas in Bath and Czech Carlsbad attracted many fashionable travelers during the 19th century. Seaside travel became popular in 19th century Britain, too. As the first country to industrialize Britain invented leisure travel to the French Riviera and Swiss Alps. The UK also pioneered mass tourism.
Thomas Cook was the pioneer of mass tourism. In 1841, he organized the first package tour in history, when he arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person for a group of temperance campaigners from Leicester to attend a rally in Loughborough, eleven miles away. Cook was paid a share of the fares. Cook immediately saw the potential of organized holidays and his business expanded as he arranged an increasing number of package tours in Britain and on the European continent, Paris and the Alps being the most popular destinations.
Cook was soon followed by others, with the result that a tourism industry developed in Britain in the second half of the 19th century. Initially the growing middle classes fueled the new industry, but the introduction of the workers’ right to take holidays in 1871 established the tradition of the working class holiday before 1900, mainly focusing on seaside resorts. The establishment of a national railway network made it easy to reach seaside towns such as Blackpool and Brighton. Other Western countries such as France, Germany and the USA copied to some degree the British holiday traditions, along the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic coastlines.
From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, domestic tourism was the norm, with foreign travel being reserved for the rich or culturally curious. The transatlantic ocean liners of the period between the two World Wars were popular ways of traveling for rich people only. The mass immigration from Europe to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century can hardly qualify as tourism. Cars and small-scale airlines were also introduced as means of travel before World War II. In addition to railway lines, harbors, telegraph and telephone lines, a new infrastructure of roads and some airports widened to some degree the potential of tourism. Before 1950, flights were restricted to leading business men, politicians, and officials, however.
The Age of Mass Tourism
Mass tourism is an offspring of the era of mass production and mass consumption, based on economies of scale.10 Economies of scale are a certain rational way of organizing business and any organizational activity for that matter that dominated throughout most of the 20th century. Often this organizational mode is called Fordism or just bureaucracy, indicating on the one hand a radical low cost and standardized way of production and on the other hand a sharp division of labor and authority. The attractive side of this system was that it drew people out of the poverty that ruled everywhere before c.1900 and gave the majority
