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The main feature of travel by luxury liner during the interwar years was the emerging phenomenon of tourist third class. The movement was by no means an immediate, single flood of change; instead, several factors contributed to the evolving meaning of tourism in the early stages of its present incarnation. The first World War left tired, broke Western European nations behind—in contrast with rejuvenated, war-wealthy Americans on the cusp of the roaring 1920s. That decade allowed for the trend of democratic, affordable travel to spread like wildfire through the US. Then, in the darkest years of the Great Depression, the escapism offered by onboard entertainment and total pampering for such a low price drove the appeal of luxury liner “pleasure cruising” even higher in Great Britain and Western Europe.1 Looking back from the present day, we can clearly trace the development of today’s tourist culture, with travel agencies lighting the way from the early 20th century.

Travel before 1918 had a very different character. The years 1890-1919 are called the “apogee” of the era of “the grand saloon,” the rich surroundings built for and enjoyed by old, aristocratic money only.2 (Fig. 1) The ocean liner focused on passenger comfort, starting with regular schedules for setting sail (Fig. 2), was pioneered in 1818 by the Black Ball Line, and in the last years of the nineteenth century, this idea was still young and exclusive enough to be rife with class restrictions.3 Transatlantic travel in any class but steerage—a trip made only once by an individual, and certainly not for pleasure but as an immigrant—was not for the common man or woman.

Changes in immigration policy in the United States contributed to the evolution of tourism. A trio of laws passed in 1917, 1921, and 1924 introduced the quota system to American immigration practice. Before these three pieces of legislation, anyone who could afford to get themselves to the United States was admitted into the country. The immigration laws slashed the numbers of immigrants drastically—to 2% of each nationality’s current US population. Steamship companies had to act fast to save their profit margins because steerage passengers accounted for almost all of the income.4 The need to change was there, and the space, both physical and cultural, for tourist third cabin in the steamship world was created. Physically, steerage accommodations could be redesigned to suit the casual leisure traveler. Culturally speaking, the increasingly prosperous middle class of the United States was the perfect potential market for the redirected attentions of steamship company advertisers.

Before the first World War, Germany ruled the transatlantic world with the biggest, fastest ships.5 As the post-war reparations were doled out, however, German ships went to British and American liner companies.6 Refurbishment of prewar liners into troopships and supply carriers in 1915 and 1916 and back again after 1918 took its toll on the fortunes of liner companies. To make matters worse, Europeans who had felt the hunger of war were reluctant to become spenders again.7 Liner companies needed to change something to save the industry: “Wearily contemplating half-empty ships and falling revenues, a number of passenger agents seem to have come upon the same idea almost at once. Why not, they said, upgrade steerage to third class and soften the sound of it by calling it “tourist” third or “tourist” cabin?”8 The new accommodations made the pleasure cruising vacation, a pastime in which travel was the end, not the means to an end, as before, accessible to the middle class.9

Tourist third class grew in popularity in the United States through the prosperous 1920s. Prohibition, established by the United States 18th Amendment in 1917 and lasting until 1933, drove American vacationers who liked to imbibe to book cruises.10 The alcohol flowing freely deckside was perhaps the first small step towards the development of an on-board atmosphere that eclipsed the ports of call in importance in the minds of tourists.

Pleasure cruising with deckside boozing, eating, and partying as the main attractions continued to grow in popularity through the worst years of the Great Depression, which might be surprising were there not such a great need for escapism during that time.

“The common folk, at least those who still held steady jobs, were also attracted to the sea in the 1930s, and leisure cruising grew in popularity during this lean period. Ships offered inexpensive holidays and an escape, no matter how short, from the dreary conditions at home. Affordable jaunts included six days for £6 (about $20), Southampton to Gibraltar and back, on Cunard’s grand old Aquitania.”11 (Fig. 3)

In the days before the indulgent distractions of tourism, travel was focused on learning about a new place. Tourism on luxury liners, however, was about self-indulgence. “You’re just 15 gourmet meals from Europe on the world’s fastest ship,” boasts one advertisement.12 Especially during the 1930s, the promise of modern technology and lavish surroundings available cheaply was appealing. For example, “in the summer of 1932, 100,000 British people went pleasure cruising, which was described as a bargain, a “carefree” vacation.”13 Shipping liners whose usual business had dried up were being fitted for weekend cruises “in search of sunshine.”14

The packaged tours created by liner companies and travel agencies were anathema to the traditional concept of a traveler.15 The ship was an insular place for tourists, free of the native people or new culture a traveler might seek out: “The traveler used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter. They are always devising efficient new ways of insulating the tourist from the travel world.”16 To that end, any risk that might present itself along the journey was insured by the same travel company that pieced the tour package together.17 The ship, in fact, had become the focus and the purpose of the cruise: “The ship was not a means, but an end; a destination, not an avenue.”18 (Fig 4)

“The word ‘travel’ comes from the French travail or work, a word derived in its form from Latin tripalium, a torture instrument consisting of three stakes designed to rack the body.”19 In contrast, the word ‘tour’ is from the Latin word tornus, a “tool for making a circle.”20 The derivatives “traveler” and “tourist” carry their root words’ connotations: “The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sight-seeing.” He expects everything to be done to him and for him.”21 Travel is perhaps seen as more meaningful than tourism. In today’s lexicon, a traveler might invoke the image of a deep, thoughtful stranger surrounded by a mysterious purposefulness. We all know what a tourist looks like: huge digital camera, guidebook, fanny pack or bulky backpack, loud, obnoxious, and perpetually lost. That perception is not as modern as it seems. The Dublin Review published a satirical cartoon (Fig 5) based on the same idea in 1855.22

This negative perception of a tourist spawned an anti-tourism movement, especially in older parts of Europe, where arrogance and nostalgia for the way old meaning of travel was pervasive. Guidebooks like Baedeker’s created problems for the anti-tourist. By trying to provide the tourist with a native experience, the guidebooks actually ruined many native spots by publicizing them to death. “The visitor could seek the city that lay beyond, or deconstruct the standard expectations of the city—in the classic vocabulary, to go “off the beaten track”—but this would henceforth always be a reaction to highly codified and commodified tourist geographies.”23 In other words, any traveler who rejected the guidebook had to use one anyway in order to know which touristy spots, advertised by the book, to avoid. Because of this phenomenon, any travel which was not defined as tourism became a reaction to the very movement it rejected—it was pushed into the obscure corners by the growing cultural ruination left in the wake of a guidebook’s recommendations.

The culture of tourism is part of a larger problem of the American obsession with “pseudo-events,” endlessly repeatable experiences manufactured and advertised as “adventures” by businesses to a passive public.24 Tourism, as an early manifestation of that marketing strategy, is now woven into the economic and cultural framework of our lives. The ease and cheapness of travel in the first half of the 20th century, as well as the appeal of escapism and convenience due to war and depression, formed the right conditions for a stark separation between travel and the new phenomenon, tourism.

Notes
1John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971).
2Brinnin, 303.
3Stephen Fox, Transatlantic. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). http://www.wnyc.org/books/18589
4Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias. Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 9.
5Brinnin, 318-319.
6Ibid, 429.
7Ibid, 432.
8Ibid.
9Thus the language for everyman’s travel was popularized. The word “tourist” was applied to hotels, activities, and whole cities, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes. Although the meaning has evolved, we still use the term “tourist” to describe a sightseeing visitor.
10Coons and Varias, 46.
11William H. Miller, A Picture History of British Ocean Liners, 1900 to the Present (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2001), 39.
12Cited in Daniel J. Boorstin, “From Traveler to Tourist: The Lost Art of Travel,” The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum, 1961), 77.
13Coons and Varias, 59.
14Cited in Ibid.
15Uses of the word “traveler” in history and literature has carried a meaning distinctive from the meaning of “tourist,” including the following examples from the Oxford English Dictionary entry for “traveler:” “When I was at home I was in a better place, but Trauellers must be content,” from Shakespeare in As You Like It; “An old Travailer in the sea of Experience,” from Tom of All Trades; or the Plaine Path-way to Preferment by Thomas Powell; and “these travellers lead an aimless life, wandering from station to station, hardly ever asking for and never hoping to get any work,” from F.W. Carew in No. 747: Being the Autobiography of a Gipsy. These uses of the word carry an undercurrent of adventure, risk, and hardship—all of which the word “tourist” lacks.
16Boorstin, 91-92.
17Ibid.
18Ibid, 86.
19Coons and Varias, 53.
20dictionary.reference.com entry for “tour.”
21Boorstin, 85.
22James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 199.
23David Gilbert and Claire Hancock, “New York City and the Transatlantic Imagination: French and English Tourism and the Spectacle of the Modern Metropolis, 1893-1939,” Journal of Urban History, Vol 33, 102.
24The term “pseudo-event” was coined by Daniel Boorstin. The issue has seeped into (or perhaps out of) our language, becoming a syntactic paradox. “The word ‘adventure’ has become one of the blandest and emptiest in the language…to ride in the new Dodge is an ‘adventure.’” (See Boorstin, 77) In a world where having a late lunch makes one “starving” and we might hear the words, “incredible” and “amazing” dozens of times per day, how could we begin to describe an experience which was truly “so extraordinary as to seem impossible” or “causing great surprise or sudden wonder?” The culture which produced pleasure cruising also produced this casual hyperbole in language. We expect less and exaggerate more.

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Originally posted by lasuvidaboy:
As an example, she mentioned that the Chinese are generally consumer travelers (shoppers) while the Japanese are cultural travelers (interested in the sights). Americans tend to be cultural travelers as there is not as much of a need to purchase items that we have at home-usually at lower prices.

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Based on her expertise in the travel industry and the stats she provided, I would tend believe her observations over yours.

[ 05-15-2013: Message edited by: lasuvidaboy ]

[ 05-15-2013: Message edited by: lasuvidaboy ]

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Originally posted by Globaliser:
Unfortunately, like so many broad generalisations, that is so wildly inaccurate as to be comical.

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Originally posted by lasuvidaboy:
... by Elizabeth Becker.

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