Travel
[We publish on this page articles and notes which may help our readers in making their plans for travel at home and abroad. They are written by correspondents who have visited the places described. We shall be glad to answer questions arising out of the Travel articles published in our columns. Inquiries should be addressed to the Travel Manager, The SPECTATOR, 99 Gower Street, IV .C. I.]
The Tourist's Dollar
(We intend to publish shortly a reply to this article from the British side, and a further article on behalf of the hotels. In the meantime we think that our correspondent's views are of great interest, though we do not agree with all that he says.—Eo. Spectator.] IN 1927, Mr. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce under President Coolidge, caused to be prepared a compilation subsequently published under the name of The Balance of International Payments of the United States in 1927, and in this it is shown that tourist expenditures abroad by Americans readied the suns of $770,000,000. Europe received about $350,000,000, Canada about $200,000,000, and other countries and the transportation companies the remainder. Canada, by the way, is an exceedingly popular travel field for the American, and the tourist industry is now reckoned there as the third largest of the country, following immediately nediately after agriculture and forestry products, and surpassing mineral production. The significant figures for us in Mr. Hoover's brochure show that of the European total, $190,000,000 (or more than half) was spent in one country—France. The United Kingdom was a long way behind with $40,788,000. In the year or two since, a notable diversion has, however, taken place. France has lost some business, and Germany has gained it. Any casual visitor to Berlin or any German resort last summer could see the remarkable increase in the number of American tourists : Germany was obviously a popular route. and trans-Atlantic tourist agencies (who have a considerable influence on their clients' itineraries) were very obviously recommending it. It is also highly significant that for the past three or four years various German interests have been conducting an exceedingly good co-operative adver- tising camp• "„ in the United States.
It is an axiom in the tourist industry that Great Britain does not get as many overseas tourists as other countries, and far fewer, proportionately, than several years ago. Whether that is true or not is very difficult to determine, because most of the figures are guesswork ; but you have only to examine a typical itinerary prepared by any United States travel agency for " organized tours " to see how little time is usually allotted to the British Isles, and that usually at the end of the trip, when the helter-skelter American " doing " Europe in three weeks is tired out and irritated. A substantiation of this is in the fact that the really big and really fast liners sailing from the other side all use the Channel route instead of Liverpool— not because Liverpool cannot handle big ships, but because Cherbourg puts you into Paris quicker, or Hamburg into Berlin.
Why should the American tourist avoid Britain, or relegate it to secondary interest'? One reason frequently advanced is the high cost of passport visas. Another reason very frequently given is that London does not provide enough " night life " and has very mediocre " shows." English people forget, too, that many Americans nowadays are not British by descent. The millions of Americans descended front Continental immigrants can hardly be expected to have a sentimental attachment for Britain. When they speak of the Old Country," they mean, not Britain, but maybe Rus:ia. Rumania, or Italy.
And so we come to what is usually considered the crux of the matter —British hotels. The word has gone forth that they are both inferior and expensive. More expensive than many Continental hotels they could not possibly be ; but you must never forget that the American, the Canadian and all these overseas people still think of English currency in pre-War terms. They are bitterly disillusioned to find that a good hat, a good dinner or a good show costs as much, or almost as much, in London as in New York.
But apart from that, there is the question of hotel quality. Poor hotels undoubtedly are one of the greatest deterrents of tourist trade ; but whether ours are poor or not is, I think, a great source of bewilderment to those who operate them. The trouble is that the majority of people who are financially interested in increasing the American tourist trade have never been to America, and do not really understand what the American tourist wants. I am far from advocating the standardized skycraper American hotel as suited to British needs ; but at the same time, as a Canadian, I have
to submit that I. !lave Seen in the British Isles only one tourist hotel (it is in Scotland, if that is any clue) that compares in quality with the Chateau Frontenan at Quebec, Banff Springs Hotel in the Rockies, or a score more I could name.
The chief criticism one could make of British hotels— including in this the famous West End ones that cater espe- cially for tourists—is the poor quality of their human service. One can kick, of course, at the lack of bathrooms, inadequate lift accommodation, the lack of public sitting space, and sometimes the tawdry furnishing of bedrooms ; but the principal irritant is the slowness with which the bell is responded to, and the difficulty of procuring quite modest requirements. There are (said an American friend to me last year) too many flunkeys downstairs and not enough chamber- maids upstairs. Accustomed as he was in America to having a suit pressed in two hours, it irked him in England to wait three days because the hotel (big as it was) had no valet service inside its plant. And so on and so on, ranging from his being charged for an extra day because he didn't " check out " by noon, to the fact that he couldn't get butter at meal-tiMes unless he asked for it—the net result being that when he gets home he says : " Oh, don't go to England—the hotels are rotten ! "
Finally, if we are to succeed in the tourist business, we must recognize that our own mentality towards the tourist himself is one of snobbishness. The mass of British people have never yet discovered the enormous economic asset of tourist trade, and that even the poorest tourist—the mid-western schoolteacher seeing Europe on the hoarded savings of several years, for example—brings new money that diffuses itself through every avenue of trade, and benefits every section of the community. Hotels are the principal beneficiaries ; but hotels must buy food and linen, pay wages, occasionally have new buildings constructed. That extra picture postcard, that extra bottle of pop," that motor-coach trip to Stoke Poges, all bring work sooner or later to the Welsh coal-miner or the Yarmouth bloater-curer. And propaganda does not, of course, end at getting the tourist there and getting his dollars ; sending a tourist away satisfied is one of the very best forms of local or national advertising.
CHARLES W. STOKES.
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