Vacations are intended as a break from productive time. However, tourism is something different: it means changing places, moving to another space, other than the habitual residence, for more than a day and less than a year. In turn, according to the definition of the World Tourism Organization, it is expected that tourists only make expenses and do not generate economic income in that period. Despite the fact that it has mutated over the decades, it is assumed that, as such, it is something relatively new. In dialogue with the UNQ Scientific News Agency, Marlene Pedettidirector of the Degree in Tourism and Hospitality of the National University of Quilmesdemystifies this story: “We have told the history of tourism since man stood up and began to walk”.
Hunting, the exchange of products, trade, wars and religious pilgrimages marked the beginning of tourism. The first records are already found in ancient Egypt with the Nile River as a navigation route. In Classical Antiquity there were already people who wanted to know the seven wonders of the ancient world and made pilgrimage trips to the pyramids, the Gardens of Babylon, the temples and the library of Alexandria. In fact, the fifth century B.C. C. is marked by herodotuswho in addition to being considered the father of history, is called as the father of travel history.
“Herodotus left writings of what he saw on his trips, where he not only navigated, but also entered the continents. Its historical records tell us how people did tourism at that timePedetti points out.
It was the Greeks who installed a kind of “sports tourism”. When they made pilgrimages to Olympia, Delphi, Athens, and Corinth, places where the Olympic Games were held, they not only saw sports, but there were sculptures of the gods and social gatherings were held. Also, it was they who began with the use of water and bathrooms.
The bikini, an old fashion
Every fifth of July is World Bikini Day. In 1946, after inheriting a lingerie business, engineer and designer Louis Réard introduced a “two-piece” bathing suit for women. Despite this, this invention dates back thousands of years. “In Roman times, around the year 400 AD. C., there are the first mosaics of women with a dress that looks like a bikini. One thinks that they are from 1950 and in reality they were already in antiquity”, Pedetti points out.
The Romans were not only characterized by the bikini, but also by hot springs and circuses. Thus, they installed coliseums and baths in each place they conquered.. At this time, the large movements of people were generating routes. Considered as great road builders, the saying that ‘all roads lead to Rome’ is valid for them.
The first trip of graduates?
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the British aristocracy carried out the so-called ‘Grand Tour’, a kind of graduate trip where the recently received young people traveled through Europe with a tutor in search of the best of culture and the arts. Paris, Vienna and Rome were fixed destinations for them.
In fact, in 1670, the priest and tutor Richard Lassels described it for the first time. Although tourist guides are also thought of as relatively new, the former predate Ancient Greece.
duck overboard
By 1600 hot springs became fashionable. In fact, the word “Spa” actually corresponds to a city in Belgium where thermal centers flourished. Water cures and health and beauty treatments were the reasons for submerging. A century later and with the same meaning, sea bathing was established as an attraction. Who did not go into the sea as a child to heal a scratch with iodine? By the end of the 18th century, Brighton, a former fishing village in the south of England, had become Europe’s top seaside resort.
tourist revolution
The Industrial Revolution brought with it two great novelties for the movement of people: the steamboat and the railway. In 1841, an Englishman named Thomas Cook He made the first organized trip for people by train and, without wanting to, he discovered that he could make a package and charge for the service. “He founded the agency with his own name and it lasted until the pandemic, where it went bankrupt in 2020. Along with Wells Fargo and American Express in the US, they are the first antecedents of travel agencies”, says Pedetti.
Hand in hand with the train, hundreds of tourist destinations were created, places that were far from the big cities but that the tracks brought closer. These sites were still only visited by a tiny group of high net worth individuals.
In Argentina, there were so-called ‘railway hotels‘: Quequén, Tigre, Mar del Plata, Corrientes, Sierra de la Ventana, La Falda, Mendoza and many more. None other than Albert Einstein stayed at Eden de La Falda and crew members of the German ship Graf Spee took refuge in Sierra de la Ventanawho fought in front of Montevideo during World War II.
I’m not going by train, I’m going by plane
After World War II, the plane appeared as a possibility to travel to any tourist destination.. For example, Cuba became attractive in the mid-1940s. In Havana, the International Air Transport Association was created, which to this day continues to order all commercial air issues worldwide. Punta del Este, Camboriu, Isla Margarita and Acapulco are some places that flourished this time.
Air transport made it possible to reach and connect to more distant places that previously could not be known; and little by little, the offer began to lower the price.
Democratize the holidays
Until approximately 1920, tourism was linked to the wealthier classes. However, luxury and brightness gave way to small and family hotels. Simpler cars, buses and lodgings made travel cheaper. More and more people were able to access holiday tourism.
In the mid-40’s, Juan Domingo Perón promoted social tourism in Argentina, which allowed massive access to a right that was previously considered a privilege. Chapdmalal and Río Tercero were the favorite places. The democratization of tourism was the work of a State that subsidized the vacations of large families, retirees and pensioners, and honeymoon couples.
Hand in hand with social tourism came union tourism and the unions built their own hotels for their members to enjoy both in summer and winter. With union tourism, Pedetti account, a large number of workers were able to access vacations as they are conceived today.
traveling revisionism
Starting in the 1960s, tourism also began to be criticized and new visions and ways of doing things appeared. “They became aware of the type of extractive tourism that was carried out and the issue of sustainability with three axes arose: environmental, cultural and economic.. Since the 1970s and 1980s, ecotourism, community and alternative tourism have taken off,” says Pedetti, who has a Master’s in Development and Management of Tourist Destinations from UNQ.
From then on, the new tourist demands range from sophisticated places to a return to nature and a close link with the communities that inhabit those sites. However, the pandemic once again changed the way of traveling and vacationing; But that is another story.