CRISIS IN HOTEL INDUSTRY

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21226, 26 July 1934, Page 17

CRISIS IN HOTEL INDUSTRY

EFFECT OF "CRUISING" FASHION A SERIOUS PROBLEM IN EUROPE LONDON, June 12. . What is to be the fate of the thousand and one immense hotels de luxe which are scattered all over the face of Europe in every resort both inland and by the sea? " It is a question which is engaging the serious attention of practically every government on the Continent, for in many countries the hotel industry ranks sixth or seventh in the lists of national industries. In half a dozen Continental States the hotel industry is being subsidised from national exchequers, but even so hotel managers are going out. of business every week. . At least 500,000 men and women in Europe at. this moment are out of work on account of the fall in the tourist traffic, and for most of them there would appear to be only the most slender hopes of ever finding employment again. In countries like Switzerland, France, and Bavaria, which in otlier days largely depended for a measure of prosperity on the annual turnover made possible by the tourist industry, there are do-ens of hotels with the shutters up and every day one reads of another once-famous house Rone into liquidation —and that not voluntary. A tew years ago shipping companies were in a desperate plight. There were no passengers. Meanwhile hotels in Europe were enjoying a boom, for there were so .many tourists. Now the situation is reversed. Shipping companies have realised that it is more profitable to convert their craft into travelling hotels than to let them be laid up for long months on end. Change of Fortunes The ever-growing enthusiasm for "cruises" has meant a death blow to a very large number of hotels on the Continent, which until recent years had never known an unprofitable moment. The empty ships of two or three years ago are now full t.o overflowing. They are to be found in all the sunny seas of the world, carrying tens of thousands of passengers to places which they could never have afforded to visit in ordinary circumstances. The money spent on a fortnight's holiday at Ostend or Dieppe, or more ambitiously on the Riviera or in the Swiss Alps, now goes to paying for a long Mediterranean cruise. The same money which once gave the tourist a fortnight at the foot of the Matte.rhorn low suffices for a visit to Lisbon, a day by Mount Vesuvius, a glimpse of the Acropolis, and days and days of beautiful sunshine on a southern sea. The situation was desperate enough for the Continental hotelkeeper when the British steamship companies alone indulged in the latest popular fad of "cruising." But now foreign companies are coming into this profitable field of business, with the result 'that there win be three times more cruising this year than ever before. . And meanwhile hotels are getting steadily more and more empty. Hotel-keepers are even banding together to petition their governments to "ration" cruising Jest in time they have no clients at all. The Despised Pound The boom in cruising was a direct result of Great Britain's departure from the gold standard. The Continent became a most expensive place to live in, and the English pound, once so formidable an influence in Europe, joined up with the despised lei and dinar, or almost 30. When British travellers could live on British ships and pay in pounds intead of gold lire and gold francs, the success of the new enterprise was assured. Immediately there became a dearth of British visitors on the Continent, except at gambling resorts, such as Le Touquet, Monte Carlo, and Juan les Pins. The Swiss winter sports resorts do not come into the same category as ordinary resorts, but there has been " great falling off of British visitors. Even so, there were still enough people of foreign nationality with money to burn to keep the big hotels fairly prosperous. But now foreigners are following the example of the "mad English," and are going on sea voyages instead of being content to stay on one beach or to sit in one resort drinking the same waters because, it is the thing to do. It is slowly being realised by the Continental, just as it xvas realised by the Englishman long ago, that more health romes from ozone breathed on the great waters than irom the very much over-rated climates of half the spas in Europe. Arid so hotels are closing because there are no visitors. But meanwhile spare o tear for the concierge who no longer sits with a bank of keys behind him, the hand-maiden who has no bed to make, the floor waiter whose trays are still, and the barman without his range of mixed drinks to pass oil' on his unsuspecting British clients as gin cocktails.