The tourist industry

Perhaps, at the outset, I should tell you something about the British Travel and Holidays Association. The Association was formed in 1929 by a few far‐seeing enthusiasts from the transport and hotel industries. It was known as the Travel and Industrial Development Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and it struggled valiantly, with very little support from either Government or the industries it sought to serve, to develop the ‘Come to Britain’ campaign. In those early days, and indeed to some extent even to‐day, it was not considered very respectable for a great nation like Britain to engage in the business of tourism. The British people have never really been very interested in the tourist business. Our position as an island nation with great wealth and investments overseas has tended to make us keener on travelling abroad than on attracting to visit us. The losses consequent upon two world wars, however, have changed our economic position. New sources of income have had to be found to enable us to pay for the imports of food and raw materials on which our very existence depends. One of the greatest of these sources, as I shall try to illustrate to you, is the income in the form of ‘invisible exports’ engendered by the tourist industry.