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Tourism and transportation in the world
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1.2 Tourism and transportation in the world
Being in a different place from one's usual residence is an essential feature of tourism. This means that transportation companies are one vital aspect in the total tourist industry, regardless of what other business (such as carrying freight) they may undertake. Without the modern high-speed forms of transportation that are available to large numbers of people, tourism would be possible only for a tiny fraction of the population.
During the 19th Century, railroads spread across Europe, North America, and many other parts of the world. They formed the first successful system of mass transportation, carrying crowds of people to such English seaside resorts as Brighton, Margate, and Blackpool. The tourists on Thomas Cook's first organized tour in 1841 traveled by railroad.
Steamships were developed at about the same time as railroads, but during the first half of the 19th Century, they were used for the most part on inland waterways. In the second half of the century, steamships that could cover longer distances were developed. By 1900, they were carrying passengers and freight on all, the oceans of the world. Historically, the North Atlantic route between Western Europe and North America has been the most important. In the period between the two world wars, steamships made scheduled crossings between New York and either Southampton or Cherbourg in only five days.
Unfortunately for those people who prefer leisurely travel, both railroads and steamships have lost much of their business in the past twenty years. The automobile has replaced the railroad for most local travel, especially in the United States, where the only remaining route that,offers adequate passenger service is between New York anc1 Washington. Passenger train service is better in Europe than in the United States, but it has been cut sharply on many routes. The New Tokaido Line between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan is one of the few successful passenger services to be operated in recent times.
The automobile offers convenience. The traveler can depart from his own home and arrive at his destination without transferring baggage or having to cope with any of the other difficulties that would ordinarily confront him. The apparent costs of a trip by automobile are also lower, especially for family groups, although the actual costs, including such hidden items as depreciation (a lowering or falling in value), may be greater than realized. A very large percentage of domestic tourism now takes advantage of the automobile for transportation. In Europe, where the distance from one national boundary to another may be very short, automobiles are also used extensively for international journeys.
For long-distance travel, the airplane has replaced the railroad and the ship as the principal carrier. The airplane has become so commonplace that we often fail to realize what a recent development in transportation it really is. The first transatlantic passenger flights were made only a few years before World War II began in 1939. Frequent service came into being only after the war, and it was not until jets were introduced in the 1950's that passenger capacity began to expand to its present dimensions.
The railroads have suffered on short-distance routes as well as on long-distance routes. Motor buses, or coaches as they are called in England, have replaced railroad passenger service on many local routes. Most small towns in the United States are served only by bus.
Regularly scheduled steamship passenger service has disappeared from almost all transoceanic routes. Ships still play an important part in tourism, however, for the purpose of cruising. A cruise is a voyage by ship that is made for pleasure rather than to arrive quickly at a fixed destination. The cruise ship acts as the hotel for the passengers as well as their means of transportation. When the tourists reach a port, they are usually conducted on one-day excursions, but return to the ship to eat and to sleep. A majority of cruise ships operate in the "warm seas," the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Wider-ranging cruises— around-the-world, for example, or even into Antarctic waters off the tip of South America—have been offered for the more adventurous. Many of the liners that once sailed on transatlantic or transpacific routes have been converted for cruising, but they are often unable to operate economically on cruise routes. Smaller and lighter ships that are especially designed for cruising have been built in recent years. Ships play another part in modern tourism as car ferries. Particularly in Europe, the tourist who wants to have his car with him on a trip can take advantage of car ferries across the English Channel or the Strait of Gibraltar. Car ferries even ply across large bodies of water such as the North Sea between England or Scotland and Scandinavia. The city of Dover on the English Channel now handles the largest volume of passenger traffic of any port in the United Kingdom primarily because of car ferry services.
Another travel phenomenon of recent times that has grown up as a result of the prevalence of the automobile is the car rental agency. If you don't want to take your own car with you, you can rent one for local travel at just about any tourist terminus in the world today. Many of the agencies—such as Hertz and Avis—that began in the United States now operate on a worldwide basis.
Because the airlines are now so prominent in the tourist industry, it is important to remember that there are in fact two kinds of airline operations, scheduled and nonscheduled. A scheduled airline operates on fixed routes at fixed times according to a timetable that is available to the public. A nonscheduled airline operates on routes and at times when there is a demand for the service. The nonscheduled airline is, in other words, a charter operation that rents its aircraft. The competition between the two has been so intense in the last few years that the media has called it the "Battle of the North Atlantic."
The scheduled airlines aim their services primarily at business travelers, at people visiting friends and relatives, and at others who travel alone or in small groups. A scheduled airline flight is usually filled with strangers going to the same destination. Until very recently, a scheduled flight on some routes needed a load factor of only a little over 50 percent at regular fares to assure a profit. The load (actor is the percentage of seats that have been sold on a (light.
As seating capacity increased with the introduction of newer, larger, and faster planes, the airlines were able to offer a percentage of their seats for sale through travel agents or tour operators. By means of these special fares, they were able to increase their business substantially on such major tourist routes as the North Atlantic, the northeastern United States to the Caribbean, and northern Europe to the Mediterranean. The greatest growth in tourism began with the introduction of these ITX fares, as they are called, in the 1950's and 1960's.
IT stands for inclusive tour, a travel package that offers both transportation and accommodations, and often entertainment as well. ITX stands for tour-basing fares. They are offered by scheduled airlines to travel-agents or tour operators who sell the package to the general public. Still another important abbreviation in tourism is CIT, charter inclusive tour, one that utilizes a charter airplane for transportation.
The nonscheduled airlines got a start largely as a result of government business. International crises like the Berlin Airlift and the Vietnamese War created a need for greater capacity than either the scheduled airlines or military transport aircraft could fill. In addition to transporting supplies or military personnel, the nonscheduled airlines chartered - that is, rented - entire flights to groups that were traveling to the same destination - businessmen and their wives attending a convention, for example, or members of a music society attending the Salzburg Festival. Groups traveling to the same place for a similar purpose are called affinity groups.
In Europe, entire flights were chartered to groups that were set up only for the purpose of travel, usually a holiday on the shores of the Mediterranean. These charter inclusive tours were sold at even lower fares than the inclusive tours on the scheduled airlines. In the United States, the scheduled airlines have tried to capture as much of the traffic as possible, including taking numerous steps to restrict chartering. At present there is a rather uneasy compromise. The scheduled airlines are able to offer some of the services developed by the non-scheduled carriers, while the charter lines have been allowed more latitude concerning the kinds of groups to which they can sell their services.
All transportation is subject to regulation by government, but the airlines are among the most completely regulated of all carriers. The routes they can fly, the number of flights, and many other matters are controlled by means of bilateral agreements between different countries in the case of international airlines. For domestic flights, most countries have a national agency like the CAB—the Civil Aeronautics Board in the Department of Transportation—in the United States. Because of the importance of the United States in generating tourist traffic, decisions by the CAB often have a great deal of influence throughout the world, even though they concern domestic flights within the United States.
Fares on international services are set by agreement through IT, the International Air Transport Association, with headquarters at Montreal. IT is a voluntary association of the airlines, but almost all the international scheduled carriers are members. Government influence is strong since many of the airlines are at least partially owned by the governments.
During the 1960's, the airlines were extremely successful, with increased capacity, higher load factors, and, above all, greater profits. In the 1970's, sharply increased fuel costs and a general business recession in the industrialized countries caused many airlines to operate at a loss. Many of the jumbo jets that had been placed in operation with such high hopes were withdrawn from service and placed in storage. Fares, which had tended to decrease as capacity increased, began to rise again.
The airlines, both scheduled and nonscheduled, must therefore overcome many problems in the next few years. They need to reduce their operating costs to a level where they can continue to offer fares that will make holiday travel attractive to as many people as possible. And they have not solved the problem of attracting new passengers. As important as air transportation is for the tourist industry, it is estimated that only about 2 percent of the world's population has ever traveled by plane.
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