Philip Scranton, a Board of Governors professor of history at Rutgers–Camden, co-edited a book of essays, The Business of Tourism: Place, Faith and History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) with Janet F. Davidson, an historian at the Cape Fear Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina. The author of 10 books and numerous scholarly articles, Scranton is a noted expert on the history of technology and industrialization. For the past five years he has been researching the international development of jet engines. This past spring, he traveled to France and Great Britain to explore military technical archives. From 2003 to 2004, Scranton served as a senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. In July, Scranton will begin a four-year editorship for the Oxford University Press journal Enterprise & Society.
Focus: Why did you edit a book on the business of tourism?
Scranton: The book is the result of a conference sponsored by the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, which collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Business scholars have written a great deal on contemporary tourism because of the huge revenue generated. In framing the conference we found research by cultural studies scholars, but little on how tourism actually operated over the last century. The call for papers drew 45 proposals from around the world, and we selected 15 of them. The book presents eight papers from the conference and one already published article. Hagley tries to focus on topics that are emergent and under-researched – the enterprises and technologies of tourist activity and on promoting the work of young scholars.
Focus: How did the issue of faith emerge when exploring the business of tourism?
Scranton: Faith was an accident; these terrific proposals just fell on us. We were aware of how the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages represented a kind of sacred tourism in Catholic history, but not of more recent patterns. One scholar discussed the business side of religious trips to the Shrine at Lourdes in France. Millions of dollars exchanged hands for objects, food, and ceremonial garments. It wasn’t a big-business field then, but that has changed. For instance, Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, is where many evangelicals go to marry or vacation. Other than Dollywood, I wasn’t aware of major Branson destinations like Silver Dollar City, but it’s a longtime family business that has made a huge success in mobilizing faith into entertainment.
Focus: How do you classify tourism?
Scranton: There are two simple models of tourism that still matter: go to one place and stay, or follow an itinerary and travel around. The itinerary model was more of an upper- and middle-class practice. In the 19th century, those who were comfortably off would take a guided tour of Egypt, visiting many sites along the Nile and also spending time in Cairo. Then there was the more recuperative type of vacation, which Soviet-bloc scholars are exploring. In Stalin’s time, after the war killed 20 million people in Russia, veterans and bureaucrats could secure rest periods in bare bones “resorts” in the Caucasus. In Hungary, if you managed to keep your state enterprise on budget, you could score a week’s vacation at a lakeside hotel. East Germans, by the ’60s and ’70s, would drive their Trabants to the Mediterranean in Yugoslavia and sometimes wouldn’t come back. At home they were used to pretty drab food, but on vacation they could sunbathe, eat fresh seafood, and drink gallons of inexpensive wine. The edge of capitalism was creeping in.
Focus: How does tourism affect your own life?
Scranton: My work involves research in Great Britain and France, so I go there often. Last year I flew about 50,000 miles, mostly going to conferences and visiting archives. It’s not tourism. When you’ve worked in Paris a dozen times, the trip becomes more practical. Vacation for me is about doing nothing – to go away for several weeks and stare at the ocean. Not traveling; that sort of tourism can be stressful. You go to places you don’t know about, and you’re constantly packing and repacking. For me, a vacation is when your pulse slows, time slows, and you can ignore the responsibilities of academic or business life.
Focus: What current trends could affect the tourism industry?
Scranton: Tourism and climate change will run into each other. We fly too many jet planes, drive too many cars, and every summer the price for gas increases. At this rate, before long, tourism will seem like a luxury again, as it was in the late 19th century, and only people with ample incomes will travel. With real wages declining for most Americans and energy costs creeping up, money for vacations may be squeezed out of family budgets. Middle-class Americans also are more strapped for time than ever before. In summers ahead, it might be wise to stay close to home.