To this may be added the development of sea travel.
By 1901, the number of people crossing the English Channel
from England to France or Belgium had passed 0.5 million
per year. Shipping companies were anxious to fill cabin
space that was under utilised. For example, P&O
found that the majority of their passengers for India
and the Far East joined the ship at Marseilles. Consequently,
they marketed holidays based upon sea trips from London
to Lisbon and Gibraltar. Other companies diverted their
older ships to operate cruises in the summer months.
However, the real age of international mass travel began
with the growth of air travel after World War Two. In
the immediate post-war period, there was a surplus of
transport aircraft, such as the popular and reliable
Douglas Dakota, and a number of ex military pilots ready
to fly them. They were available for charter flights,
and tour operators began to use them for European destinations,
such as Paris and Ostend.
Vladimir Raitz pioneered modern package
tourism when on 20 May 1950 his recently founded company,
Horizon, provided arrangements for a two-week holiday
in Corsica. For an all inclusive price of £32.10s.-,
holiday makers could sleep under canvas, sample local
wines and eat a meal containing meat twice a day -
this was especially attractive due to the continuing
austerity measures in post-war United Kingdom. Within
ten years, his company had started mass tourism to
Palma (1952), Lourdes (1953), Costa Brava (1954),
Sardinia (1954), Minorca (1955), Porto (1956), Costa
Blanca (1957) and Costa del Sol (1959).
However it was with cheap air travel
in combination with the package tour that international
mass tourism developed. The postwar introduction of
an international system of airline regulation was
another important factor. The bilateral agreements
at the heart of the system fixed seat prices, and
airlines could not fill blocks of empty seats on underused
flights by discounting. But if they were purchased
by a tour operator and hidden within the price of
an inclusive holiday package, it would be difficult
to prove that discounting had taken place - even though
it was obvious that it had! This was the origin of
the modern mass package tour. These developments coincided
with a significant increase in the standard of living
in Britain. At the end of the 1950s, Harold Macmillan
could say "you've never had it so good."
Another significant development also
happened at the end of this decade. The devaluation
of the Spanish peseta made Spain appear a particularly
attractive destination. The cheapness of the cost
of living attracted increasing numbers of visitors.
Mass package tourism has at times been an exploitative
process, in which tour operators in a country with
a high standard of living make use of development
opportunities and low operating costs in a country
with a lower standard of living. However, as witness
the development of many tourist areas in previously
poor parts of the world, and the concomitant rise
in standards of living, when there is equality of
bargaining power, both parties can gain economic benefits
from this arrangement. Spain and the Balearic Islands
became major tourist destinations, and development
probably peaked in the 1980s. At the same time, British
tour operators developed the Algarve in Portugal.
The continuing search for new, cheaper, destinations
spread mass tourism to the Greek Islands, Italy, Tunisia,
Morocco, parts of the coast of Turkey, and more recently
Croatia. For the worker living in greater London,
Venice today is almost as accessible as Brighton was
100 years ago. Consequently, the British seaside resort
experienced a marked decline from the 1970s onwards.
Some, such as New Brighton have disappeared. Others
have reinvented themselves, and now cater to daytrippers
and the weekend break market.
