A TOURISM: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:-

Tourism as we know today is relatively a new phenomenon although has travel since time immeruorial, with different motives of travel. The motives differed upon the needs of the society and these motives depended upon the socio economic and cultural development of the society. The motivation for travel had been a) Conquest b) Trade c) Pilgrimage. Today it has emerged as one of the world’s key economic drivers as countries have opened up their borders, nations have democratized, living standard have risen and various sections of the society have the freedom to move across the international borders. A time magazine has declared that we are on the verge of the “golden age of travel” with an ever increasing world population being able to visit other nations due to the emergence of cheaper transport and anonnodation.

Hence organized travel is as old as mankind and man has been on the move traveling in groups. In olden times, people traveled for pilgrimages or as government messengers or as traders or as a part of marching army. People traveling had to be provided with transportations food arrangements for overnight halls, and transport across timers, mountains and deserts. People stopped at caravan Sarais at night. Their host provided them with food. There were ‘dharulshalas’ where people were provided with utensils for cooking and mood for fire. Very little has changed in the force of the needs of the traveler. The only differences is that the forces are more sophisticated sarais have been replaced by hotels,

transport is one wheels or by air, trains and buses criss-cross the country and luxury livers sail though the oceans. The guides, priests, leaders of caravans have been replaced by travel agents, tour operators and excursions agents and traveling has become more cumbersome, with a large no. of formalities to be completed, right from the onset of the journey.

The development of civilization brought about conscious travel, so as to explore the new world. It was around 4000 be that the invention of money by the sumerians brought about the beginning of modern travel. They were the first to use money for business and commercial dealings. Homer has recorded the wonderlust of the ancient Greeks in Odyssey. The people who first traveled for the purpose of trade were Phoenicians. Also early travel in India and other parts of the orient was due to trade and economic. India attracted not only invaders like Alexander of Maredonia, Sultal Mahumd Gazin and many others but also travelers like Vasco-do-Gama and christopher columbus who set out of India but discovered an entirely new world.

Probably the most famous traveler of all time was Marco polo, who recorded his adventures at the court of Kublai Khan; his travels by land through central Asia, the Gobi Desert, and the Mongol Empire from Tibel to Burma and Southern India; and his 3½ year sea nonage home after an extended stay of 17 years (1273- 92). After 700 years tourists can still profitably read the observations of the nonstian traders when contemplating their own tips to China and the far East. Few travelers of any age have ventured so widely or written as authoritatively as Ibn Battula did (c.1304-c.1377).

History of travel and tourism indicates that in the past travel was undertaken not for the purpose of pleasure but with intentions which involved around different motives.

1) Some traveled for the purpose of trade and the relations of these traders matured into cultural interactions.

2) Some traveled for knowledge, motivated by the desire to explore new lands.

3) There were others who traveled for religious purpose either to propagate their religion in new lands of the purpose of pilgrimages.It assumed that a significant importance during the middle ages. It because a well established customs in many parts of the world. Pilgrims began traveling to the main shrive in Europe. This was because of the adoption and spread of Christianity. This practice has flourished over the countries. However it served as a powerful means of promoting unity and

understanding between people from different different regions. Christianity in Europe and later in America, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism in Asia brought about assimilation of language, culture, philosophy and forms of government. Religion till today continues to play a vista role in travel.

4) It was the Romans who first undertook travel for pleasure. Pleasure travel is associated with the Roman Empire. They were probably the first to undertake pleasure travel. Due to security good communication system, travel literature giving routes, names of major roads and distance between places gave an airports to travel in the Roman Empire. They also traveled during holidays particularly for the famous Olympic games. ‘Spas were developed during this period, since medicinal purpose baths were very popular with the Romans. They believed in the use of medicinal purpose of mineral water, either by drinking it or by immersing in it. Therefore the concept of seaside resorts developed with ‘Spas’. This concept because popular by the later half of the 18th century and Europeans realized the curative effects of sea water. By 1865 seaside resorts sprang up in Britain, France and other central European countries. So spas and seaside resorts paned the way for modern pleasure travel all over the world.

Renaissance was all important stage in the development of travel. It represented a reawakening of the classical heritage which wingled by the new ideas of humanism and scientific temper. The beginning of Renaissance was made by the movement of Greeks after the full of Constantinople in the hands of the Greek. This led to feeling of people from Greece and surrounding areas of Italy.

Thereafter, during the 18th century a new concept emerged in the form of annual holidays. This was another important landmark. It was a force rumer to the concept of paid holidays which was been responsible for extraordinary growth of tourism. The term holiday being derived from holidays this was associated with religions observames. Today it has a secular meaning, implying respite from the routine work and a time for leisure, recreation and amusement.

1) Industrial revolution was responsible for the change in economic and social system.

2) The prosperous and the well to do could now move out on holidays.

3) As the pressure increased in cities the need for escape because even more acute.

4) To field relief from daily routine, the city workers, folet the need for relief, comfort physical adventure, and pleasure.

5) Desire to escape the summer heat, wherever the temperature was extreme.

This tourists traffic resulting in technologically advanced society led to the development of pleasure traffic on large scale.

Air transport has been a major factor in the growth of international travel and tourism. It was definitely instrumental in promoting international travel, with respect to long distance and intercontinental travel, attempts to create commercial airlines was made after world war I but the forties and fifties brought about a major break through in travel.

In the 18th century, leisure lime available to Europe’s aristocracy led to be a fashion for travel among the sons of the wealthier classes. On the continent university students have encouraged to speed a year at a foreign institution, while in Great Britain was born the idea of the Grand Tour, i.e. all educational journey that comprised a year or two of travel and learning in the major cities of western Europe. According to A.J.Burkart in his book titled Tourism past, present and future, one such privileged youth was the Seotismace James Boswell, who between 1763 and 1766 toured Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Frame. He zealously recorded every fact and in 1785 wrote the Journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson his contemporary educard Gibbon while on his grand Tour of Italy in 1764 explained tourisms contribution both to ‘literature’ and ‘historiography’.

Thus the development of the grand tours followed a shift in the focus of culture, and of economic and political power. The wealthy and the rich began visiting countries which had passed their peak of prestige but had historical and cultural significance. Thus romans visited Greece, Britishers visited Italy. However one thing is clear that during this golden age of the grand tour travel was no longer an aristocratic preserve new wealth of bourgeoisie promoted travel among them, and paned way for popular tourism of the 19th and 20th century.

Another factor which was a boon to tourism was the revolution in aesthetic consciousness that transformed attitudes towards nature. Mountains, forests and seas which for centuries were forbidding and rolled in stories of , were row endowed with majesty, glamour and divinity. The rediscovery of the beauties of untamed nature and with the new fourd love, bestoured upon ancient times and the fascination for the ruins and remnants of the distant past to be found all over the European landscape especially in Italy, it is out of this sensibility that all apatite was created for sight seeing without which tourism, as we know it today world never have evolved. In India, Himalayas have been all using and divine,

with religions and mythological attachments, but today they have a unique and rare attraction for the Europeans. Initiating the west, the Asia-pacific region too has began selling its global past.

12.6 TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND