The History of Tourism: Structures on the Path to Modernity

 

Various academic disciplines have repeatedly sought to re-evaluate the significance of tourism. Globalised tourism’s socio-economic place within the framework of the leisure and holidaying opportunities on offer today has attracted particular attention. Such accounts often leave out the fact that this also has a history. The present article aims to overcome this shortcoming: it seeks to present an overview of the important structures, processes, types and trends of tourism against the background of historical developments. It deals with early forms of travel in the classical world and the Middle Ages, as well as the precursors of modern tourism, Bildungsreisen (“educational journeys”) and the middle-class culture of travel. It then examines the boom in mass tourism in the 19th century and the unique expansion of tourism in the 1960s characterised by new forms of holidaying and experience shaped by globalisation.

 

http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-on-the-road/the-history-of-tourism