TOURIST INDUSTRY’S VALUE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 21 March 1936, Page 7

TOURIST INDUSTRY’S VALUE

ENORMOUS ADVANTAGES Speaking on the value of the tourist industry at the inaugural luncheon in London of the Institute of Travel Agents, Lord Stanley said that travel agents formed one of the most important branches of one of the country s greatest and perhaps most neglected industries, the tourist industry. Organisations such as theirs did not work purely from the selfish point of view. The enormous commercial and economic advantages which a country derived from their efforts would make them worth while even if confined to these comparatively narrow results. But the more people travelled and the more they got to know of other nations the better it would be for the peace of the world. It was not an exaggeration to say that if a league of travel' agents were sitting at Geneva to-day determined to advertise each other’s good points rather than to criticise weaknesses the world might be a happier place to live in. Of all the marvels of the present age the development of transport, in its scone and rapidity, was one of the greatest. Tn reply, the chairman, Mr John Frame, said the income derived from tourist traffic in France was officially estimated in 1929 at over £100.000,000. It was estimated that the total income of Britain from tourists was about £24,000,000 in 1933 and £25.000.000 in 1904. These totals were considerable enough to stand alongside other more familiar items in the balUnce of payments of the country, such as tile exports of the woollen industry t£28,846,0C0 in 1934) or of coal (£31,854,000).