Tourism: Yankees, Come Back!

A popular travel book this summer is London on $500 a Day (Macmillan; $7.95), a not-so-whimsical guide for "the well-heeled sybarite." In a season when sybarites, and a lot of other people, are staying home in herds, the book has not notably eased Harold Wilson's balance of payments problems. As its title suggests, however, the shoestring vacation abroad has gone the way of the Gladstone bag and $4 Moet et Chandon.

Zooming air fares, European inflation and the dwindling power of the dollar have combined to squeeze the annual American exodus. From all indications, fewer than 7 million Americans will go overseas this year, down about 7% from 1974, and about 20% below halcyon 1973. Latest figures show that travel to Europe, normally the destination of three out of seven Americans going overseas, is off 10%. Notes Victor Minerbo, a familiar Parisian presence who for years has wheedled business for the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower: "Look around and see how many Americans you can spot! None!"

Signs of decline are everywhere.

Cruise ships in Greece are half-filled; quietly, like duchesses dating salesmen, several first-class hotels in Paris are selling rooms en bloc to package-tour companies. Says David Jones, an official of the British Tourist Authority: "The Americans have given up travel. They just don't have the money."

Those Americans who do still make it to Europe are largely the affluent. Indeed, the European travel industry finds some comfort in the fact that Americans are still the biggest spenders around; in France they shell out an average $63 a day, v. $26 for the Germans.* But almost everywhere Yankee tourists have been learning home truths abroad: they have been buying less, staying at cheaper hotels, taking subways and buses. Many have discovered the less traveled provinces of France, such as Burgundy and Perigord, where $5 still buys a good dinner with wine. Others have stretched shrunken dollars by taking leisurely barge trips through the English countryside or hopscotching across the Continent on a $200 Eurail pass good for 30 days in 13 Western European countries.

Free Champagne. More and more vacationers have whittled air fares by booking charter flights and package tours. Says Virginia Donohue, of Donohue Travel in Wilmette, Ill., "The only people going to Europe this year--and these are people who have been going to Europe since they were children, an don't buy tours--are coming in askin for charters and free information like where can they get a list of Irish farm houses where they can stay."

One effect of the diminished American presence abroad is a refreshing return of old-fashioned politesse on th part of hoteliers, waiters and shopkeepers, who are collectively crying "Yankee, come back!" On the Fourth of July this year, the Georges V Hotel in Pari sent champagne (Prince de Venoge, '65 to the rooms of all American guests. For the first time, at the Fete du Louvre, programs for the Paris Opera Ballet wer available in English. Some European hoteliers suggest to guests that they can have a picnic lunch `a la Manet for fa less than a bistro meal `a la carte. Fo their part, American tourists seem considerably more subdued than the caricature Midwesterner abroad who demanded his bill in "real money." "They argue over checks less often," says Jean Bruel, owner of Bateaux Mouches, the famed sightseeing boats in Paris. "The; now ask you if you speak English be fore they talk to you in English. They no longer assume that they can pay you with a credit card or a traveler's check but ask you first."

Many Americans have found that; holiday in their own country is now less expensive than almost any foreign foray, whether they buy the cheapest ticket --the Greyhound Ameripass, 30 days of unlimited bus travel for $175--or go for a fly-and-drive tour of the Northwest. Travel within the U.S. has shown a marked increase, notably in the South and West. Alaska and Hawaii have also enjoyed a bumper summer. Heading south into Baja California along the new transpeninsular highway, gringo travelers have discovered such little-known Mexican resorts as Puerto Escondido, Loreto and Mulege, all moderately priced; Manzanillo, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, promises to become the world's next deep-sea fishing capital. Nicaragua and Colombia are also enjoying a vogue. For the gregarious, the biggest bargains in the sun are probably the French-accented Club Mediterranee resorts, from Guadeloupe to Tahiti.

Inalienable Right. Ocean cruises are back in style, partly because the passenger knows fairly accurately in advance how much his vacation will cost. One sellout this summer was a Royal Cruise Line odyssey that flew tourists from Los Angeles to Athens for a 14-day cruise to Egypt, the Greek Isles and Israel--all for $998.

Indeed, regarding vacation travel as an all but inalienable right, few Americans have stayed entirely in their own backyards. Many who usually escape for a month in summer have taken only two weeks this year and plan to get away again next winter. A pair of New Yorkers, for example, are toying with the notion of an off-season $998-per-person package holiday in Russia, which 5,057 Americans visited in the first four months of this year--an increase of 42% over the same period last year. In the spirit of Apollo-Soyuz, the New Yorkers figure, Brezhnev may even invite them to a champagne lunch in the Kremlin.

*Who last year for the first time spent more in the U.S. ($400 million) than American vacationers spent in West Germany ($300 million).

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