Home Away from Home

An American tourist who landed in Paris last week while it was overrun by visitors to the International Auto Show plaintively wrote her daughter in the U.S.: "We spend all our time at the American Express office. Here we can sit down and talk quietly. And it's the only place in town with a clean rest room."

For half a century, Americans in Paris --sophisticates and innocents alike--have felt the same way about the American Express office. To them, the grimy faced, flatiron-shaped building at 11 Rue Scribe, across the street from the Opera, has been their home away from home. It has handled their mail (750,000 pieces a year, addressed simply c/o American Express, Paris), cashed their checks, even furnished them with "jeunes filles de bonne famille" for babysitters. Through its portals as many as 10,000 Americans have thronged each day in search of information, messages or waiting friends.

Supermodern Island. Last week progress and change came to 11 Rue Scribe. A gang of builders invaded the old structure, gutted the ground floor and prepared to rebuild the entire six floors. Only the outside will remain the same. France's "Law on Historic Monuments" jealously prohibits tampering with the building's traditional fac,ade; city officials refused even to let American Express sandblast its grimy exterior lest this make the nearby grimy Opera look even dirtier.

When the rebuilders finish April 15, the inside of 11 Rue Scribe will be a supermodern island of U.S. business efficiency in the old world. Gone will be the curlicued wrought iron balustrades, the clutter of desks on the ground floor, the buckety old elevators so useful to a lonely tourist trying to strike up an acquaintanceship with a pretty Iowa schoolmarm. In their place will be $750,000 worth of electronic gadgets, air conditioning, an escalator and labor-saving business machines. Last week, as traditionalists complained, American Express President Ralph T. Reed explained: "Travel has become big business, and we can serve the American public today only by adopting the most modern advances of business technology."

Point V. In the current year U.S. travel has skyrocketed as never before, increasing by an estimated $200 million in just twelve months. Reed calls such spending abroad the new Point V, "the economic power of the American people directed to overseas nations through tourism." He estimates that U.S. travelers last year furnished foreign governments with more than twice as many dollars as did the U.S. Government through economic aid; and closed 10% of the foreign dollar gap.

The travel increase has also meant peak profits ($4,685,000 last year) for 105-year-old American Express as well. In the past decade the company expanded more than it did in its previous 95 years--growing from 50 offices to 343 in 36 countries. This year alone, American Express has opened or enlarged twelve branches, from Istanbul to Honolulu to Houston.

The Grand Tour. The company has grown in other ways. No longer dedicated solely to the care and feeding of wealthy voyagers on the Grand Tour, it is keyed to the mass market, the growing number of modestly paid young Americans out to see the sights "while they can still enjoy it." (Where five years ago only 1/2 of 1% of U.S. travelers were stenographers according to their passport classifications stenographers now make up 8% of the total.) To its dozens of services American Express has added some new ones It arranges sightseeing tours of American sailors on shore leave, ships delegations of G.I.s to the Holland bulb fields, arranges safaris in Africa.

Last week President Reed was working on a new project: travel to Russia. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 Americans would like to travel through the Soviet Union. If international conditions permit, and if he can work out a deal with Russia's official Intourist agency, Reed hopes eventually to be sending tourists on vacation trips to Moscow.

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