How and when did the 'great tourist invasion of Europe' come about? Although a few writers have tried to characterize the rise in travel, their descriptions are almost exclusively narrative with colourful opinions and very little quantitative evidence. This is our attempt to fill in the gap.We have linked together several series on overseas travel in order to produce a consistent long-term series covering the period 1820 to 2000, and have also constructed a new time series on passenger fares for much of the period in which ocean travel was the means of going abroad. We use these new data, along with other evidence on GDP per capita, air fares, exchange rates, and indexes of technological change in the travel industry, in an attempt to explain the long-term rise in overseas travel.I nternational travel has long been a rapidly growing part of the US economy.The number of overseas travellers has risen enormously from not much more than 1,000 annually in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to well over 25 million each year. 3 Expenditures on travel abroad and passenger fares paid to foreign flag carriers now amount to roughly 30 per cent of all service imports in the US International Accounts. 4 Despite this historical success and current importance, not much has been written about the economic history of overseas travel by Americans. How, and even when, did what Boorstin has called the 'great tourist invasion of Europe' come about? 5 Although a few writers have tried to characterize the rise in travel, their descriptions are almost exclusively narrative with colourful opinions and very little quantitative evidence. This is our attempt to fill in the gap. We have linked together several series on overseas travel in order to produce a consistent long-term series covering the period 1820 to 2000, and have also constructed a new time series on passenger fares for much of the period in which ocean travel was the means of going abroad.
and Vic Valcarcel for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
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