ancient cities

human spirit, as opposed to the meanness and
gloom of the cities.
The American grand tour of the post–Civil War
years provided a sharp contrast with its earlier
European counterpart. Wealthy Europeans wanted
to see the frontier, but they were equally interested
in visiting such places as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and
Chicago to see for themselves the dramatic evidence
of American progress in industry, technology,
and culture. Local civic elites were convinced
that visitors’ perceptions might determine a city’s
economic prospects, and thus, they engaged in
vigorous advertising campaigns extolling local
economic and cultural attainments.
The rise of mass tourism is generally traced to
the 1850s, when an English entrepreneur, Thomas
Cook, began leading package tours to the European
continent. These tours revolved around visits to
the museums and architectural and cultural reminders
of classical antiquity in the cities that had once
comprised the grand tour. Cities promoted themselves
as well, but as centers of industry more than
of culture. The glorification of technology and
progress supplied the common thread running
through the fairs and exhibitions of the nineteenth
and first decades of the twentieth centuries:
London’s Crystal Palace exposition of 1851 and
the Paris Exhibition of 1867; across the ocean, the
World’s Fair of Chicago in 1893, St. Louis in
1904, and New York in 1938.
As tourism matured, it became divided up into
well-defined circuits. Millions of tourists visit cities
each year. Some of them go to resort cities created
expressly for consumption by visitors. Others visit
historic cities that possess unique historic and cultural
identity. Still others visit older cities that have
become attractive to tourists through the construction
of a specialized tourism infrastructure and the
marketing of events and cultural activities. Ecotourism,
in which people visit natural environments
and remote places, has also emerged as a
specialized circuit of its own. Tourism has also
branched off into specialized areas such as sports
(such as Formula 1 auto racing and soccer), welldefined
leisure activities (such as fly fishing and
skiing), and even extreme sports (such as mountain
climbing).
Tourism has always been signposted; visitors are
essentially coached about what they should see and
do. In the nineteenth century, when nature travel
Tourism
819
became popular, tourists studied photographs and
illustrations to learn how to distinguish picturesque
from ordinary landscapes. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, urban tourism became increasingly
popular. Guidebooks, urban sketches, drawings,
and photographs coached visitors about how
to interpret the cities they visited. World’s fairs and
exhibitions accustomed people to seeing cities
through stylized images of skylines and monumental
architecture. In the age of mass media and the
Internet, prospective travelers have the ability to
imagine themselves in a countless variety of settings,
no matter how remote or inaccessible. As a result,
even when not traveling, people know a great deal
about the places they plan to visit and the sights
they wish to see, even before they arrive.
Contemporary Tourism
The numerous options available to tourists place a
premium on marketing. Tourist destinations of
every sort advertise in airline magazines, newspapers,
and a variety of other sources. Except for the
United States, nations spend significant amounts
on promotional efforts and also build or offer subsidies
for new tourist development. For example,
beginning in the 1970s, Mexico’s tourism agency
built several resorts, beginning with Cancun, and
devoted considerable effort to marketing these
sites. In Australia, the Gold Coast City Council,
using funds from all levels of government, has built
extensive tourism infrastructure to support tourism
development on the Gold Coast and has marketed
it globally.
Cities all over the world engage in active tourism
marketing. In the United States, states and
localities are the main venue for marketing.
New York launched one of the most successful
marketing campaigns ever undertaken by a city
in 1977, when the state government increased
its tourism budget twenty-one-fold to fund the
“I Love New York” advertising campaign. Since
then, city slogans (such as “I left my heart in San
Francisco”) have become commonplace. Cities
promote themselves in print, on television, and on
the Internet. Every large city has created a website
and developed a slogan (such as Portland, Oregon’s
“The City that Works”) for prospective visitors.
Resorts and some cities have been created expressly
for consumption by visitors. The metropolitan areas