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The revolution in transport during the 19th century and the great rise of personal incomes in the countries of Western Europe multiplied a hundredfold the numbers of people travelling for business and pleasure outside their own country. It was not long, however, before governments realised that this expansion in the movement of people was accompanied by movement of money across frontiers. Travellers, particularly the pleasure travellers, spent money liberally to pay for accommodation, transport, etc., but there was also a certain amount of capital movement connected with travel. This new demand for services and other facilities led to the growth and development of a great hotel and catering industry and entailed heavy capital investment. Travel came to be regarded as a new industry. Indeed, most of the Western European countries considered it an important item in their export trade, and in the 20th century, after 1918, travel began to be treated as a commodity in international trade. By many it was considered a luxury at a time when trading conditions were unfavourable, and thus restrictions were frequently placed on the movement of travellers, who also came to be suspected as likely smugglers of goods and capital. And so it happened that even when the tourist was not prevented from obtaining foreign exchange for travel, his movements were suspected and restricted for fear of criminal activity.

In Lewis Carroll's “Through the Looking Glass”, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Doubtless few academics, practitioners, and administrators connected with tourism would support Humpty Dumpty's approach to the question of definition. In particular, the need for a precise and generally accepted definition of tourism is an axiom that few would dare to challenge. Accurate measurement, so the argument runs, is impossible without a clear idea of what it is that is being measured. If that idea is not a universally held one, then the summation or comparison of data collected from different sources is likely to be misleading. However, despite widespread agreement in principle on the desirability of clarity and universality, in practice a Humpty Dumpty approach to defining tourism exists. Aside from the very basic standpoint that tourism refers to transitory movements of people away from their homes, there is precious little agreement about the nature, scope, and salient characteristics of this movement. The aim of this paper is to clarify the main approaches to definition encountered in the literature on tourism in Great Britain, to set out the approach favoured by the author, and to stress the need for terminological exactitude.

Attention has often been directed to the fact that much unwrapped bread becomes dangerously dirty by the time it is consumed, and there is now a considerable body of opinion in favour of making the wrapping compulsory. The hygienic advantages of this are unquestionable; for although a loaf may be of a high standard of purity on leaving the factory, there are ways by which much contamination may occur subsequently. There are dangers, beyond the control of Sanitary Authorities, arising from contamination by dirty hands, clothing, baskets and carts; the dust from streets, doorsteps and window sills; and from the organisms of disease harboured by apparently healthy “carriers” of infection; and very often pieces of crust are given to little children to bite upon, in order to aid the development of their teeth and gums.—Dr. G. H. Dart (the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney) has recently emphasised the fact that there is much typhoid and paratyphoid fever, and other disturbances of health, which occur without any source of infection being traced; and he maintains that it is a reasonable assumption that some of this infection results from our failure to adopt measures for safeguarding the cleanliness of bread. From a small investigation upon five loaves, it was found recently that four of them yielded bacteriological results that testified to gross contamination—a number of streptocococci, staphylococci and coliform organisms having been found upon each of the four loaves. It will not be disputed that the value of the precautions adopted, even in the most hygienic bakeries, may be greatly discounted by the failure to protect the bread from contamination in its subsequent passage to the consumer; and it seems—to say the least of it—inconsistent, to provide against the contamination of meat (as by the 1924 Meat Regulations)—an article of food which is cooked before consumption—and to ignore the contamination of bread which is eaten as delivered to the purchaser. That bread can be wrapped without loss of flavour and at little cost has been demonstrated in America and by some bakers in England. In a useful paper by C. H. F. Fuller, B.Sc, A.I.C., Research Laboratories, Messrs. J. Lyons & Co., Ltd., which appeared in the last issue of the Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute, attention is drawn to the fact that it is possible, by the employment of a waxed paper wrapping, largely to eliminate moisture loss from the loaf, and thus to secure a loaf which remains longer in a palatable condition, owing to delay in the onset of staling; but before wrapping, the loaf must be cooled until the centre attains a temperature not far beyond that of the outside air, in order to avoid the occurrence of “sweating,” i.e., deposition of moisture on the crust and inside of the wrapper. He also refutes the contention that the wrapping of bread necessarily leads to the absorption of foreign flavours from the wax or paper; for trouble from these causes is avoidable if suitable measures are adopted. Indeed, the whole subject of bread wrapping has been submitted to a close examination by a number of investigators; and in general there is agreement among them that no deleterious effect upon the quality of the bread results, and that the public would benefit from the resulting improvement in cleanliness, freshness and palatability. The hygienic considerations in reference to bread apply also to all exposed food which is not washed, peeled, cooked or treated in same way which removes dirt or renders it safe for consumption. The obvious remedy for the dangers involved by our neglect is to press for legal powers to enforce the necessary precautions and to educate public opinion upon the need for these.

1955 saw the beginning of the second decade after the end of the world war of rapid evolution in transport based on the development of air travel on a mass scale and the growing use of roads. The introduction of two new forms of mass transport has led to a relative decline in the use of the older forms of travel by sea or train. Changes in transport, however, are working out their effects faster than the attempts to plan transport systems and to integrate forms of transport by state control and the creation of vast monopolies. State intervention in public transport, to which great attention was given both immediately before and immediately after the last war, has inevitably failed in its main purpose because the most important form of mass transport today—travel by road—is in private hands and is not regulated to any great extent. The number of cars in Western countries owned and operated by private individuals both for business and pleasure purposes, free from all restrictions as to route and time and influenced only partly by the normal economic factors of price, have played havoc with the overall schemes of integration. To many this is more evidence of the importance of competition and of an element of freedom necessary for efficiency, at least in capitalist societies. But we have here a curious blend of competition and freedom, with public transport largely state controlled. The distortions are likely to becomes serious in the future. The great carrier monopolies and international cartels limit the free play of economic forces.

This is a period of great change in the travel world. The revolution in the technique of transport, the development of road travel, particularly the private car, the development of aviation together with rising standards of living and leisure time, and the demand for greater mobility and better communication, have led to mass movement across international frontiers. Many of these frontiers do not represent a natural geographic division and in some densely populated areas the daily movement through frontier points is considerable. Whereas formerly the statistics produced as a by‐product of control systems which were based on a full census of travel were satisfactory, this is no longer the case in many areas today. In certain areas of course the limited amount of traffic or the geography of the region still permits the operation of such systems, whether for control or statistical purposes.

Mesdames et Messieurs les invités, Chers membres, Il m'a rarement été possible d'ouvrir un de nos Congrès en un endroit aussi riche en traditions que celui où nous nous trouvons aujourd'hui. Rempli d'émotion, je vous souhaite la bienvenue à Athènes.

Résolutions Sous la présidence du professeur W. Hunziker, Berne (Suisse) l'A.I.E.S.T. a tenu son 9e Congrès, du 14 au 19 septembre 1958, à Saint‐Gall, Bregenz, Lindau et Constance. Les travaux, portant sur le thème des nouvelles tendances de la politique du tourisme, furent ordonnés autour des rapports suivants:

The following definitions and standards for food products have been adopted as a guide for the officials of this Department in enforcing the Food and Drugs Act. These are standards of identity and are not to be confused with standards of quality or grade; they are so framed as to exclude substances not mentioned in the definition and in each instance imply that the product is clean and sound. These definitions and standards include those published in S. R. A., F. D. 2, revision 4, and those adopted October 28, 1936.

Fundamental notions of economic theory based on a static approach are falling into disuse, and the new dynamic economics is hampered in its progress by the belated development of social research and industrial psychology. In a sense, economists have hardly had time to digest the revolutionary Keyoensian doctrines, but already find that they are out‐moded. Particularly embarrassing for present day problems is the fact that there has not been sufficient time to study fully the effects of variations in the balance of international payments on the propensity to consume and on employment. It is the policy in Western Europe, for example, to isolate the effects of a semipermanent imbalance in international payments. These countries are pledged not only to maintain but to raise the high standard of living however slightly in the immediate future. In this essay a brief attempt is made to show that travel is an important factor which research to this end cannot afford to neglect.

A great deal has been written about the economics of transport in recent years. Most of the views expressed, however, deal with transport as an essential industrial factor in the national economy. The importance of the contribution of the transport system to the national economy is very often held up as an end in itself, so much so that the normal considerations of competitive efficiency and meeting consumer demand are not applied. It is quite true, of course, that transport is a public utility and, especially the railways, represents an important element in the stability of the community both strategically and economically. It may perhaps be claimed that far less attention has been paid to tourist aspects of transport in recent years compared with the situation of 50 or even 100 years ago. Admittedly all forms of transport by road, rail, sea and air deal not only with passengers, but also with freight, and for many transport companies the tourist demand is a marginal one. Nevertheless from the tourist's point of view transport charges are an essential factor in determining his own expenditure and therefore transport charges play an important role in limiting the expenditure of the whole of the tourist trade.