One Export Never Leaves Home

What is the most important commodity in the world's $132 billion annual volume of international trade? Oil? Steel? Cotton? No, it is an export that is sold at home: tourism. This year it will grow by almost 10%. Some 60 million international tourists will spend $9 billion, which in turn will generate $29 billion in wages, purchases and taxes in the countries they visit. Already such countries as Italy, Spain, Austria and Ireland earn more from tourism than any other export.

Spectacles & Toilets. Tempting tourists to spend in 1964 are many special spectacles: Britain's Shakespeare quadricentennial, France's 20th anniversary of Dday, Japan's summer Olympics, and the New York World's Fair. Last week Pan American and TWA reported transatlantic reservations for the summer were 50% above last year's.

Governments are investing heavily for the long term too. The Greek government has financed 60 hotels and rest houses in the last ten years, and West German castle owners who convert their properties to sight-seeing attractions can get state assistance. Ireland has budgeted $30 million for hotel development. Egypt, aware that increasing tourism will soon bring in about as much as tolls on the Suez Canal ($170 million), is spending $60 million on 40 new hotels, Nile River tourist boats and a Red Sea fishing resort at Ghardaka. The government now floodlights the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, and stagey a four-language "Sound and Light" panorama that relates the story of the Pharaohs. India is subsidizing airplane trips to the remote temples of Konarak. To ease Occidental sensitivities, Tokyo's municipal council recently allocated $560,000 for Western-style toilets in the city's older inns.

Along with improving tourist facilities at home, governments promote aggressively abroad. There are now no fewer than 520 state tourist-information offices in foreign places (105 in New York City). Britain, Canada and Mexico each spend $3,000,000 a year on promotions, and Australia allows tax deductions for companies sponsoring tourist advertising. The promotions have created new spots to attract worldweary travelers. Jordan, the only Arab nation without oil, intends to wipe out its annual $40 million budget deficit with tourists. The government has allotted $21 million for new hotels, is advertising both its camel races and a new seaside resort at Aqaba.

Spreading Net. Until lately lures have been directed at near neighbors and Americans, whose spending is so lavish that foreign resort owners eagerly followed the progress of the U.S. tax-cut bill. But jet planes, higher incomes and the loosening of foreign-exchange restrictions have spread the net. Switzerland may soon begin tourist campaigns in Australia, Japan and Latin America. Spain, whose tourist income has risen 500% in five years to $900 million, has started an ethnic enticement toward Latin America. East Africa's safari promotions have drawn inquiries from Russia.

Russia, along with other Iron Curtain nations, has perceived the hard-money benefits of capitalistic tourism. It expects more than a million tourists this year, including 22,000 Americans. Bulgaria's Black Sea resorts are wooing German nudists, and Czechoslovakia attracts West Germans and East Germans, who hold surreptitious reunions there. Yugoslavia ("Europe in Miniature") spent $50 million last year on roads and hotels, anticipates a $60 million return this year. Even Red China is falling into step. The city of Canton was repainted for this spring's trade fair, and guest houses have been equipped with air conditioning and Western menus--but Americans are still unwelcome.

In this wooing of wayfarers, the U.S. has been a late but eager entry. The three-year-old U.S. Travel Service maintains nine offices abroad, has a $2,600,000 budget. The U.S. expects a million visitors this year, including 60,000 Japanese. They will take advantage of Japan's recently relaxed currency and travel restrictions to invade Hawaii and the U.S. mainland in big numbers for the first time since the war. The visitors will spend $375 million and see just about everything. Everything, that is, except some 3,000,000 Americans, who by then will be out of the country spending $3.1 billion elsewhere and tipping the U.S. balance of payments the wrong way.

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