At the end of the Second World War, Great Britain faced massive economic problems, including a substantial balance of payments deficit. Accordingly, the revival and promotion of both export industries and foreign trade were central to reconstruction, the economic recovery plan of the Labor administration elected in 1945.Footnote ¹ One overlooked aspect of reconstruction was a government decision to privilege tourism as an invisible export. In the immediate postwar years, facilitating an influx of foreign travelers to Britain was given precedence as an invaluable way to draw hard currency into the country. Attracting so-called dollar visitors from the United States was the top priority. Considering the widespread material damage caused by the war, a scarcity of resources, and the continuation into the postwar period of austerity measures, including the rationing of basic necessities, the success of this government-backed tourism venture was by no means certain. Ironically, the advent of the Marshall Plan and much-needed American financial aid to Britain in 1948 exacerbated the situation. As a signatory to the Marshall Plan, the British government was required to contribute financially and participate fully in a campaign to promote travel to Europe by American citizens.Footnote ² This obligation posed a direct threat to the success of the British government's own tourism initiative and thus compromised the very economic benefits that participation in the Marshall Plan was supposed to provide to Britain.

Studies of Britain's response to the Marshall Plan abound,Footnote ³ as do scholarly works on the history of tourism in the British context.Footnote ⁴ In recent years, the latter have encompassed subjects ranging from medieval pilgrimages and the Grand Tour to the creation of holiday camps in the 1930s, Britain's role in the international tourism industry, and the tourist experience of visiting Britain, up to and including the modern era.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, studies have been published that specifically address the experience of American dollar tourists in Britain in the immediate post–Second World War era.Footnote ⁶ Yet little consideration has been devoted to the study of official tourism policy in Britain after 1945 and its role in reconstruction, let alone its impact on Britain's response to the Marshall Plan, which, as noted, mandated participation in a Eurocentric tourism scheme. This paper seeks to fill these gaps, exploring the reasons why the British state became formally involved in the business of national tourism after World War II and how and why the challenges this presented were increased by the introduction of the Marshall Plan. In so doing, it better informs our understanding of both postwar domestic policy and Britain's lukewarm response to the Marshall Plan. In particular, it provides further insight into Britain's reluctance to bow to American pressure to “become ‘a good European’” and commit to “any endorsement of European political and economic integration” in the immediate postwar era.Footnote ⁷ As many scholars have noted, the Marshall Plan was an exercise in American power, a “key example of the establishment of hegemony at both international and domestic levels.”Footnote ⁸ Yet, as Rhiannon Vickers has shown, in many of the recipient countries, American initiatives were modified or blocked, and “we should not assume that international pressures steamroller[ed] over domestic ones.”Footnote ⁹ In the British context, the tourism component of reconstruction provides a case in point.

International tourism and its promotion were hardly developments new to the postwar era: travel for pleasure is as old as recorded history.Footnote ¹⁰ That said, advances in transportation and technology associated with industrialization, coupled with rising standards of living, facilitated the emergence over the course of the nineteenth century of a mass market for tourism. The terms used to describe this phenomenon—“modern,” “mass,” and “popular”—are used interchangeably to signify an activity inclusive of all segments of the population. For example, in his book on the origins of “popular” travel, Piers Brendon states that the Victorian philanthropist Thomas Cook “invented modern tourism as a means of emancipation for working people.”Footnote ¹¹ As this suggests, “modern” tourism is generally associated with the sheer scale and seemingly limitless nature of both its projected and actual clientele. Cook, after all, founded the most successful travel business of his era. Although his company was not the first to offer organized excursions, it popularized the package tour.Footnote ¹²

Implicit to the growth of tourism as an industry was the assumption that average citizens—alone or in a group—should be allowed to move freely from place to place, visit other parts of their own country, or even venture to foreign parts and return. Concerns about national security, internal and external threats, and the potential volatility of people en masse were among the obvious and real impediments to ready acceptance of this concept. To highlight the role of official sanction in the growth of the industry, one need only compare the favorable way in which popular tourism was accepted in Britain to the nervous reception it garnered in parts of nineteenth-century Europe ravaged by revolution.Footnote ¹³ That said, a formal relationship with government and direct financial support of the private sector did not develop in Britain until after the First World War, when the contribution of tourism to the national economy gained recognition.Footnote ¹⁴ In 1929, the chancellor of the Exchequer bowed to lobbying from the Board of Trade, sections of the industry, and prominent businessmenFootnote ¹⁵ and provided seed money of £5,000 to create the Travel Association, with the specific aim of attracting American visitors to Britain. Under the leadership of Douglas Hacking, the association became an umbrella organization for the travel industry and secured an annual government grant.Footnote ¹⁶ During the Depression, Hacking rebranded it as the Travel and Industrial Development Association and thereby managed to hold on to the funding.Footnote ¹⁷

Despite dire economic conditions, the tourism industry continued to expand in the 1930s. On the domestic front, new enterprises like Billy Butlin's Holiday Camps were established to cater to the home-based market.Footnote ¹⁸ British travel and hospitality firms were also involved in forging a broader global network, taking an active part in the international tourism conferences that characterized the period.Footnote ¹⁹ Obviously, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 curtailed these activities. It also led to a hiatus in government funding for the association. However, that body continued to function on a shoestring budget between 1939 and 1945,Footnote ²⁰ and alongside other businesses catering to visitors, it remained active as a lobby group.Footnote ²¹ As well, tourism and related services were topics addressed by several wartime special committees. For example, in 1943 the Ministry of Labor established the Catering Wages Commission to review conditions in the hospitality sector and make recommendations for the postwar era.Footnote ²² This commission sat for two years and investigated everything from working conditions and the limitations of job training to long-standing concerns regarding the deficiencies of hotel and hospitality services in Britain vis-à-vis their American and European counterparts.Footnote ²³

Tourism also figured prominently in the discussions of a myriad number of groups responsible for the overall planning of Britain's peacetime economic future. As early as 1941, the Post-War Export Trade Committee of the Department of Overseas Trade was highlighting the role that tourism could play in revitalizing national wealth. Although difficult to categorize as an export industry per se, tourism was recognized as a pivotal means by which to draw money into the country.Footnote ²⁴ A 1944 report prepared for the Treasury substantiated the point, citing statistical evidence from the interwar years showing tourism to have been a significant peacetime dollar earning industry.Footnote ²⁵ It is hardly surprising, then, that in January 1945 the War Cabinet Reconstruction Committee was prepared to put “the Travel Association . . . in a position to undertake preparatory work in connection with the encouragement of the foreign tourist traffic.”Footnote ²⁶ Well before the war was over, and well before the first majority Labor government in British history had taken office in July 1945, plans were in train to include tourism as a central component of postwar economic recovery. In November 1945, Attlee's Labor Cabinet reviewed the final report of the Catering Wages Commission and endorsed its recommendation that the country adopt a national tourism policy. Tellingly, the rationale behind the proposal was almost entirely economic:

Quick action was said to be needed so that Britain could capitalize on its wartime victory: “In the next few years the prestige of Britain is likely to be so high that large numbers of people from all over the world, and more particularly from the Dominions and the United States, will wish to visit this country. Not only will they wish to see the background against which we stood fast in 1940 and the physical damage suffered by our towns and cities, but those who have friends or relatives here will wish to see the surroundings in which they served.”Footnote ²⁸

Britain also had to act fast in order to maximize its competitive advantage over rivals: “It is important too to keep in mind that much of the continent of Europe is unlikely to be available to tourists for some years. It is clear therefore that in the next few years at least there is likely to be a ready made market for what we have to offer.” That said, the commission also conceded that the country was far from ready to “receive large numbers of visitors” and that it would be “disastrous” to take immediate action to attract foreign guests.Footnote ²⁹ To facilitate planning for the following year and long-term development, the commission recommended the creation of a new government-backed organization to oversee arrangements, provide guidance, and liaise with the travel and hospitality industries. The Cabinet agreed it “would be advantageous to encourage American visitors to come to this country during the summer of 1946”Footnote ³⁰ and directed several departments to launch feasibility studies. As this statement indicates, the Attlee government had a specific goal in mind in adopting a national tourism policy; the aim was not simply to attract more visitors to Britain but to get as many Americans as possible to come.

The magnitude of the task ahead became clear very quickly. It took only two meetings for the newly established Tourist Accommodation Committee to conclude it would be inopportune to launch a national tourism scheme for the 1946 season, owing to “the lack of suitable accommodation and other facilities.”Footnote ³¹ Although “there was plenty of money in the United States of America to be spent on travel,” on the basis of still other reports, it was agreed that “present conditions for tourists” were not yet of a standard that would be “attractive to American visitors.”Footnote ³² Accordingly, the Cabinet authorized the creation of a permanent standing committee composed of senior civil servants to take over primary responsibility for identifying and rectifying the types of problems that needed to be addressed.Footnote ³³ Known as the Inter-Departmental Committee on Catering, Holiday, and Tourist Services, and chaired by the secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade, it sat regularly for the next two years.Footnote ³⁴ In 1948, on the advice of the Exports Committee of the Board of Trade, Harold Wilson persuaded the Treasury to create yet another committee to review the work that had been done to date and focus entirely on tourism policy.Footnote ³⁵ Called the Inter-Departmental Working Group on Tourism, it became the nucleus of government policy for the rest of the decade. Incidentally, once the Marshall Plan tourism initiative came into play, this working group also had responsibility for dealing “in the first instance with O.E.E.C. [Organization for European Economic Cooperation] tourist matters requiring interdepartmental consultation.”Footnote ³⁶

As noted, planning began in earnest in mid-1946. Drawing members from a wide swath of government departments, all the committees cited met frequently and commissioned reports on a broad range of subjects. At its first meeting in July 1946, the Inter-Departmental Committee on Catering, Holiday, and Tourist Services approved a target goal of 150,000 tourists for the year 1947, 70,000 of whom were expected to come from North America.Footnote ³⁷ That November, the Cabinet adopted a recommendation by the secretary for Overseas Trade, Hilary Marquand, to create a new quasi-official body to facilitate and promote tourism.Footnote ³⁸

In December 1946, the government announced the establishment of the publicly funded British Tourist and Holidays Board. On paper, this development was a direct outcome of the Catering Wages Commission inquiry of 1943–1945. However, it also marked the culmination of negotiations with the Travel Association and other ancillary bodies that stretched back to the 1930s. The Tourist and Holiday Board was a non-statutory body, but its creation signaled the virtual nationalization of the tourist industry by the Attlee administration.Footnote ³⁹ The trade recognized it as such; several business organizations, including the Travel Association, voiced strong public opposition to what was perceived as an unwarranted government takeover. Not surprisingly, this complicated the early relationship between the board and the Travel Association. Not until 1947 was a compromise reached whereby a still nominally independent Travel Association “joined” the Tourist Board to serve as its publicity arm.Footnote ⁴⁰ Still, debate persisted for some time over the proper relationship between government and the industry.Footnote ⁴¹

The creation of the British Tourist and Holidays Board and numerous official committees in Whitehall testifies to the importance the Attlee administration attached to tourism. Problematically, however, tourism was becoming a national priority at the very time when the government was preventing its own citizens from engaging in international tourism. Unless emigrating permanently, British citizens could go abroad only on strictly defined grounds; taking a holiday was not one of them. Wartime bans on foreign travel only ended, on a piecemeal basis, in 1946.Footnote ⁴² Even then, opportunities were limited. Travel was expensive,Footnote ⁴³ and currency controls restricted the amount of money people could take out of the country. In November 1945, the annual basic allowance for personal travel abroad was set at £100 per adult and £50 per child. These amounts were subject to fluctuation, depending on the state of the balance of payments.Footnote ⁴⁴ During the economic crisis of 1947–48, the system was effectively suspended; all allowances were reduced to zero.Footnote ⁴⁵ Barred from taking much, if any, money out of the country, Britons thus had little choice but to vacation at home.

Unfortunately, this development coincided with a surging demand for travel opportunities. As a result of the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938, approximately 80 percent of the British workforce had access to paid leisure time.Footnote ⁴⁶ In an era of full employment, a war-weary population had both the money and inclination to travel. Numerous government surveys attested to record levels of demand;Footnote ⁴⁷ in the immediate postwar years, the domestic tourist industry was swamped. As early as 1945, companies such as Butlin's catering specifically to Britons vacationing in Britain were heavily oversubscribed.Footnote ⁴⁸ In 1946 the Ministry of Labor was compelled to create the Committee on the Staggering of Holidays to try to address the problem. This body was still meeting in 1949. The timing was thus hardly ideal for the government to prioritize Britain as a tourist destination for foreigners. Indeed, the secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade supported the postponement of any kind of overseas publicity scheme until at least 1947 lest it provoke a public backlash: “The future of the tourist trade might be prejudiced if tourists were officially encouraged to visit this country in 1946 . . . [as] any such official encouragement would give rise to public criticism in view of the present grave shortage of accommodation.”Footnote ⁴⁹

To compound the situation, the country was plagued by more than just shortages in tourist accommodation.Footnote ⁵⁰ Food and basic amenities were also in short supply.Footnote ⁵¹ The historian David Kynaston observes of Britain in 1945, “Meat rationed, butter rationed, lard rationed, margarine rationed, tea rationed, cheese rationed, jam rationed, eggs rationed, sweets rationed, soap rationed, clothes rationed. Make do and mend.”Footnote ⁵² He could have added to the list both petrol and furniture and mentioned that, rather than diminishing, controls were becoming even stricter after 1945. A case in point is that bread, unregulated during the war lest it damage morale, was added to the ration list in July 1946.Footnote ⁵³

Not that everything in the country was limited or unavailable. Access to some goods, including many foodstuffs, was restricted only by high pricing.Footnote ⁵⁴ Yet conspicuous consumption was actively discouraged.Footnote ⁵⁵ Austerity was the watchword of the day. It was the logical counterpart of a national economic policy that privileged exports and the pursuit and maintenance of a positive balance of trade.Footnote ⁵⁶ Controls were sweeping and affected public life as much as private.Footnote ⁵⁷ To ensure equity and prevent resentment, rules governed the amount and choice of food people could purchase in restaurants, hotels, and other public venues. At any given meal, individuals could order only one main course, and the maximum food order per person could not exceed a cost of £5.Footnote ⁵⁸ Foreigners visiting Britain were not exempt from these measures. Hotels were provided with ration coupons to meet the needs of their guests, and visitors themselves were entitled to a limited number of temporary ration documents.Footnote ⁵⁹

While these measures enabled the purchase of petrol and other goods, it also advertised the very fact of austerity. It was not something that could be easily hidden. Yet transparent scarcity was hardly a good starting point from which to try to persuade people to holiday in Britain. Foreign visitors would need reassurance that their needs could be met without their presence exacerbating shortages and depriving ordinary citizens.Footnote ⁶⁰ From an advertising standpoint, this presented a “two-edged weapon in a situation where we have to explain very carefully to Americans that they will not add to our difficulties by visiting Britain, nor will they have too bad a time themselves, and yet at the same time not give the impression that our economic difficulties have been exaggerated.”Footnote ⁶¹

Generating high “dollar earnings” from tourism was predicated on visitors having the opportunity to spend money in Britain. Yet, any easing of regulations for temporary guests presented huge obstacles on both an organizational and ethical level. Allowing certain groups of people to evade controls would violate the principle of “fair shares for all” underlying the entire rationing scheme.Footnote ⁶² Some officials did argue that special treatment of visitors could be rationalized on the grounds that spending by foreigners advanced the “export” drive. They were aware, however, that this argument would be a hard sell. Tourism was a unique export industry, in that the financial benefits and returns it generated were not as explicitly tangible or identifiable as those accrued from manufacturing, insurance services, and banking. As the Ministry of Food noted, permitting visitors to override the rules pertaining to restaurants would not be feasible “until public opinion has been changed so as to view the tourist traffic as an earner of food rather than a consumer.”Footnote ⁶³ As with accommodation, any hint of favoritism might fuel resentment and even outright hostility toward visitorsFootnote ⁶⁴—which would jeopardize Britain's reputation as a welcoming place to visit. It would undermine both the immediate and long-term prospects of developing a viable tourism industry. For all these reasons, officials concluded that any modification of regulations deemed advisable from a tourism standpoint would be viable only if they were applied to all customers.Footnote ⁶⁵

Where possible, officials tried to address the problem of shortages by proposing improvements to existing infrastructure as well as creative alternatives to what had previously been the norm. Hotel accommodation is a case in point. The industry had been hard hit by the war: alongside the hotels destroyed or damaged in German bombing raids, many had been requisitioned by the government to provide temporary housing for troops and civilians. As of 1 January 1946, four thousand hotels were still under direct government control.Footnote ⁶⁶ Refurbishing would be costly and time-consuming. So too would be the replacement of lost infrastructure. Even the industry itself recognized that designating hotel construction and repairs as a national priority would be contentious.Footnote ⁶⁷ Building materials were scarce, and the country was experiencing a housing crisis. Housing problems predated the war; inadequate and shoddy conditions had informed public discourse throughout the Depression era. Ironically, German air raids had helped to level some of the worst slums, but the net result of wartime bombing was a massive shortage of homes. Three-quarters of a million residences were destroyed or severely damaged in the country during the war.Footnote ⁶⁸ In 1945, thousands of families were living in substandard dwellings.

Addressing the housing crisis was of major importance to the newly elected Labor government.Footnote ⁶⁹ Providing new hotels for tourists, while much needed, was of necessity a lower priority. In October 1946, the minister of Town and Country Planning suggested the creation of a “new town” to serve primarily as a holiday resort for foreigners. The plan, which would have involved building both tourist hotels and workers’ housing for permanent residents, was deemed far too likely to generate controversy.Footnote ⁷⁰ Even the act of allowing those tourist accommodations that were up and functioning to purchase much needed supplies, such as blankets, towels, and mattresses, was a tricky matter, because, as the president of the Board of Trade acknowledged in Parliament in March 1946, “the goods most needed by hotels, boarding houses and holiday camps are precisely those in the greatest demand by the domestic consumer.”Footnote ⁷¹ In view of the circumstances, the Board of Trade was, rather ironically, prepared to make special provision for items of this nature to be imported from abroad. The rationale was telling: “While we should naturally prefer to see the British hotel industry equipped with home-produced goods, [the] … adequate equipment [of hotels] is more important to us, and to the prospects of earning foreign currencies by attracting large numbers of overseas visitors, than this consideration.”Footnote ⁷²

Faced with these types of challenges, it is little wonder that officials in Whitehall gave serious consideration to experimenting with some unorthodox forms of accommodation for foreigners. Among the ideas mooted were decommissioned Tube stations (which had served as wartime air-raid shelters), army camps, and military surplus outbuildings.Footnote ⁷³ Such arrangements were usually deemed unsuitable and likely to present a bad impression. For example, the outbuildings were vetoed because officials “considered that American visitors would expect a higher standard of comfort than can be provided by a Nissan hut, however thoughtfully adapted.”Footnote ⁷⁴

These were but a few of the basic practical issues with which officials had to grapple while devising a viable tourism scheme and publicity campaign for the 1947 summer season. To further complicate matters, in early 1947 a combination of factors, including the near collapse of the currency, plunged the country into economic crisis. With reconstruction in jeopardy, retrenchment, and further austerity measures became the order of the day.Footnote ⁷⁵ The postwar recovery of Western Europe seemed equally precarious. The sheer magnitude of the situation, coupled with American concerns about the future of democratic government in Western Europe in what were the early stages of the Cold War, led ultimately to the creation of the Marshall Plan.Footnote ⁷⁶ Also known as the European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan was actually a complex set of arrangements and agreements between the United States and a group of sixteen “partner” countries in Western Europe, including Britain. It was formulated and ratified by an Anglo-French–led committee, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation.

Britain's role in the negotiation of the Marshall Plan has been well documented and need only be summarized here. Initially, the government welcomed the undertaking. The foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, labeled it a “lifeline.”Footnote ⁷⁷ It put reconstruction back on track. At the same time, the Attlee administration was concerned about the Eurocentric nature of the proposals.Footnote ⁷⁸ In particular, although senior officials in the Foreign Office were receptive to the strategic benefits that might accrue from closer European integration,Footnote ⁷⁹ Bevin was not convinced. He famously refused to view the United Kingdom as “just another European country.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Moreover, the Labor Cabinet was determined to ensure that the plan would not entail the “infringement of any country's sovereignty,”Footnote ⁸¹ and thus Britain repeatedly raised objections to the creation of a bureaucracy with strong supranational powers to run the program. Ultimately, a compromise was reached whereby a supervisory, executive organization representative of all the signatories was established in Paris to provide advice, oversight, and administration of American economic aid to the sixteen participating “European” countries. This body, the European Cooperation Administration, in turn created a plethora of committees and subcommittees to manage specific aspects of the plan as they arose.

Britain's successful blocking of measures that could portend greater European unity annoyed the Americans, who, as Tony Judt has noted, “were frustrated by the UK's reluctance to merge its fate with Europe.”Footnote ⁸² Commentators then and since have disagreed over whether or not this disinclination was wise. The exact nature of an “ideal” relationship for Britain vis-à-vis Europe remains a highly charged issue to this day. Different perspectives on the perceived outcome have also informed scholarly debate over what motivated Britain to take this stance in response to the Marshall Plan. There are those who believe it was a grave mistake, born out of unrealistic and ultimately false British expectations about the future. Britain is said to have been acting in accordance with its history as a Great Power, as if the war had only “temporarily handicapped” rather than crippled its global position. The country's “imperial past inflated London's sense of self-importance.”Footnote ⁸³ Britain's “half-hearted approach towards integration” has also frequently been attributed “to an anachronistic determination to play a world role . . . at the centre of a Commonwealth.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Britain's avowed concern with safeguarding strong bonds with its empire/Commonwealth, particularly in terms of international trade, generated censure at the time, and the issue has continued to dominate the historical debate.Footnote ⁸⁵ Some critics of this line of argument have questioned the degree to which national pride influenced the decision-making process. Others have stressed the importance of not reading history backward and assuming that policy makers should somehow have foreseen the demise of Britain's Great Power status and thus acted differently.Footnote ⁸⁶

When viewed in the context of the immediate postwar period, optimism about the country's ability to play a leading role on the world stage was not entirely fanciful or unrealistic. As Judt has observed, unlike other Western European nations, Britain emerged from the Second World War feeling like a victor: “In France the war had revealed everything that was wrong with the nation's political culture; in Britain, it had seemed to confirm everything that was right and good about national institutions and habits.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Furthermore, the British were determined to protect the independence of those institutions.

The possibility that closer ties to Europe might lead to interference in British domestic affairs was a legitimate concern. Many Western European governments were center-right leaning, and the Attlee administration feared outside interference with its socialist agenda.Footnote ⁸⁸ “Moreover, as C. C. S. Newton has shown, the government saw the success of its domestic program resting on “the health of the sterling area.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Thus, the maintenance of strong economic bonds with the empire/Commonwealth was a pragmatic concern. Indeed, Newton concludes that “British policy was governed by economic necessity rather than by political arrogance.”Footnote ⁹⁰ As Ernest Bevin observed to a group of American congressmen in 1947, from a market perspective, “Britain could not simply be lumped together with the rest of Europe. Relations with Europe comprised only twenty-five per cent of our existence.”Footnote ⁹¹ In fact, Europe accounted for only 20 percent of British trade in 1947; 50 percent was with the Commonwealth.Footnote ⁹² While the British government recognized that participation in the Marshall Plan would benefit the country, it had cause to doubt that the push toward greater European economic integration associated with it was also in Britain's long-term interests. As Bevin's remarks indicate, concern about the future of the pound sterling community certainly influenced the British stance on closer European integration.

Yet the British government also had cause for concern about protecting its dollar-earning revenues, a situation highlighted by the conundrum the country faced in meeting all its obligations under the Marshall Plan. The tourism initiative is a case in point.

Under Article VI of the “Economic Co-operation Agreement between the Governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America,” signed on 6 July 1948, the Government of the United Kingdom was pledged to “co-operate with the Government of the United States of America in facilitating and encouraging the promotion and development of travel by citizen of the United States of American to and within participating countries.”Footnote ⁹³ This was a key component of the Marshall Plan, applicable to all participants. The references to “to” and “within” participating countries effectively committed Britain and the other signatories to both a Western European–wide and intra-European program to attract American visitors abroad. This was, in the words of one American official, a “precedent-shattering provision,”Footnote ⁹⁴ in that it clearly committed member nations to work closely together for mutual benefit. Thus, soon after its creation in Paris in 1948, the Economic Co-operation Agreement created the Tourism Development Section, headed by Théo J. Pozzy, an American citizen of French birth.Footnote ⁹⁵ With a mandate to create a “free travel area” in Western Europe, this organization was supposed to encourage European governments to improve their tourist infrastructure and oversee a joint publicity scheme. A working party on the tourist trade was created in October 1948 to undertake preliminary research and formulate a campaign.Footnote ⁹⁶ Great Britain was one of six Marshall Plan members to have direct representation on this body.

Contemporaneously, the Economic Co-operation Agreement sponsored the creation of the European Travel Commission, which quickly became its chief travel adviser.Footnote ⁹⁷ With a membership drawn from official travel organizations in the member countries,Footnote ⁹⁸ the commission was mainly responsible for the creation of advertising materials.Footnote ⁹⁹ Planning for a 1949 publicity campaign in the United States began in late 1948. Marshall Plan funds were allocated to cover the costs of this first endeavor.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Thereafter, member countries were supposed to contribute to a joint fund, with smaller nations paying a minimal amount (Luxembourg's annual share was US$1,000), and larger countries, such as Britain, contributing much more (US$30,000 a year).Footnote ¹⁰¹

Promoting tourism to Europe was a feature of the Marshall Plan for the same fundamental reason that promoting tourism to Britain was a component of the Britain's reconstruction program. Metaphorically speaking, everyone was looking at the same set of statistics; in the interwar years, transatlantic tourism had become a key dollar earner for Europe.Footnote ¹⁰² Yet more than economics was at play here. The geopolitical and diplomatic atmosphere of the late 1940s lent impetus to the promotion of tourism by democratic governments in the West. Freedom of movement was symbolic. That average citizens in the West faced relatively few restrictions on foreign travel seemingly provided a great contrast to the constraints imposed on the inhabitants of the Russian-dominated communist world of Eastern Europe.Footnote ¹⁰³ As well, the opportunity for leisure travel was cited as proof of democratic progress, in that the West was, in modern times, theoretically open to everyone.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Tourism was also touted as a harbinger of even greater global progress as, ideally, it would facilitate peaceful intercourse between people of different cultures and traditions. American travelers to Europe would act as ambassadors, while also learning about the places they visited. Diplomats hoped this tourism scheme “would ideally help Americans see themselves as a part of an Atlantic Community” and thus reinforce support for continued foreign aid and the emerging Cold War alliance in the West.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Americans would also be exposed to all that Europe had to offer in terms of export goods. The tourism scheme was, in short, supposed to be a win-win situation for all the parties involved. This did prove to be the case. Without a doubt, the tourism component of the Marshall Plan played a significant role in the economic recovery of Western Europe.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

By 1949 American travelers were accounting for 25 percent of all the American dollars entering Western Europe. Annual revenues from tourism accruing to Marshall Plan participants were in the area of $272 million. This was more than twice the amount earned through the sale of textiles, the largest category of goods being exported to the United States by Marshall Plan countries.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ For some participants, the impact of the scheme transcended immediate monetary gain. Brian McKenzie observed that for France, “The development of transatlantic tourism had economic, cultural, and environmental consequences. The Marshall Plan made the attraction of American tourists and the dollars they brought the central goal of French tourism. This had consequences not only for the character of the French tourism industry, but also the perception of France abroad.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

The outcome for Britain was apparently much less significant. Histories of postwar Britain make scant reference to the tourism segment of the Marshall Plan.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Studies of British tourism history either overlook it or dismiss it as inconsequential; for example, Victor Middleton claims that Britain failed to benefit from the scheme because the government was shortsighted about the benefits to be accrued from promoting tourism: “Across Western Europe the American Marshall Aid Plan provided funding for the reconstruction of war-devastated economies. The potential of tourism was recognized by governments in France and Italy as a growth sector in the postwar economy and US resources were adapted and utilized for that purpose, but not in Britain. In an era of austerity and rationing, the idea of leisure travel and fun were considered rather trivial, not serious, and initially did not sit easily on serious shoulders bent to (or by) the wheel of the welfare state.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ Recent publications have focused more on the experience of Americans who visited in the era than on Britain's response to and role in the Marshall Plan tourism scheme.Footnote ¹¹¹ Certainly, prevailing conditions in Britain when the Marshall Plan scheme was launched put the country at a disadvantage. Middleton is also correct that the government response to it was lukewarm at best. British officials sent to Paris to participate were cautious and often voiced suspicions that their European counterparts favored their own national interests over those of the group as a whole.Footnote ¹¹² However, the British government was certainly willing to take tourism seriously; by 1948 it was already committed to its own scheme to promote Britain as a tourist destination. The advent of the Marshall Plan scheme in which Britain was obligated to promote European tourism jeopardized it on several grounds.

The Marshall Plan had broad geopolitical implications for the national sovereignty of the participating countries.Footnote ¹¹³ In both symbolic and practical terms, the tourism aspect underscored the potential minefield this new foray into intra-European cooperation presented. The ultimate goal of the scheme was to persuade Americans to visit a place called Europe, as if such an entity existed. Devising and emphasizing commonalities between all the countries concerned would not presumably have posed a threat to their individual identities per se, but for Britain the very act of participation was rife with symbolism. Advertising Britain in conjunction with continental nations would be akin to identifying Britain and Britons as European. This was bound to be contentious, as so too was British membership in a transnational administrative body such as the European Travel Commission. Britain was not opposed to participation in a stronger international tourism movement. The commission's creation followed on the heels of other developments of a transnational nature in which Britain took a leading role, such as, for example, joining with forty other countries in founding the International Union of Official Travel Organisations in London in 1946.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Nonetheless, membership in the European Travel Commission seemingly had greater implications in that it involved direct participation in “one of the first examples of European integration”Footnote ¹¹⁵ to come out of the Marshall Plan. As Christopher Endy has noted, “Established two years before the landmark European Coal and Streel Community, the E[uropean] T[ravel] C[ommission] was one of the earliest European organizations pooling resources and coordinating policies to improve an industry crucial to the region's economies.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ The Marshall Plan tourism venture thus marked a visible, tangible step toward closer European cooperation and perhaps portended a more formal union with continental powers, an outcome that, as noted above, was viewed warily in Britain.

In practical terms, the advent of the Marshall Plan tourism scheme also put Britain in direct competition with the rest of Europe for American tourist dollars. On paper, Britain appeared to hold an advantage, in that any increase in the number of people booking transatlantic travel was bound to work first and foremost to Britain's economic benefit rather than that of any continental power. Firstly, most people would journey by ocean liner.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Air travel did not overtake sea travel until 1957.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Secondly, British companies controlled a large segment of this market, so Britain would secure most of the ticket fare revenue from passengers, whether they traveled to Britain or Europe.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Yet there was a catch, and it was a very significant one; the advantage was in fact illusory. The number of tourists who could cross the Atlantic in a given year had a finite limit. Furthermore, any increase in the profits accrued from passenger traffic would be more than offset if the net result was an expansion in European rather than British tourism.

A British commitment to two different postwar plans to encourage Americans to travel overseas might not have created a huge problem had there had been an abundance of tourists to spread around, but that was not the case. The transatlantic tourist “season” was time constricted and short-lived. Most holiday travel between North American and Europe took place in a narrow window from late spring to early autumn: in 1948, 75 percent of foreign visitors to the United Kingdom arrived between mid-June and the end of September.Footnote ¹²⁰ The complex logistics involved in getting people across the Atlantic during this twelve- to sixteen-week period also restricted how many could come annually.Footnote ¹²¹ Transportation was a monumental problem. Shortage of space, as well as obstacles to growth, applied to both air and sea routes. Air travel was still in its infancy. Relatively speaking, the number of regular scheduled flights was small, and so was seating capacity. Flying was also prohibitively expensive. Ticket charges were subject to international agreements; fares were fixed and therefore uniform. Neither the global regulatory body, the International Air Transport Association, nor most airlines supported the idea of price competition or preferential reductions for specific groups of travelers.Footnote ¹²² Air travel was not as yet organized with leisure traffic in mind, and few people who flew could be classified as tourists.Footnote ¹²³ Differential fare scales and reduced “tourist class” pricing on airlines was not in fact introduced until the 1950s, and then only after considerable dispute.Footnote ¹²⁴ In practical terms, postwar tourism was reliant on the availability of ocean-going transport.

Unlike the airlines, shipping companies did offer variable and competitive pricing. Theoretically, ocean liners gave less affluent people the chance to travel. From a sociopolitical standpoint, this was certainly something the Labor government in Britain was in favor of promoting,Footnote ¹²⁵ but it was also an outcome counterintuitive to the economic goals underlying the entire tourism initiative. As one official bluntly observed, Britain needed wealthy visitors with plenty of dollars to spend.Footnote ¹²⁶ In the late 1930s, the total passenger shipping fleet operating in the North Atlantic had numbered approximately ninety vessels.Footnote ¹²⁷ During the war, most British ocean liners had been requisitioned for military use, and a substantial number were destroyed. Those remaining needed extensive refurbishing. In 1947, the number of ocean liners available for civilian use on the transatlantic route was less than fifteen. Whereas in the prewar period the number of annual passengers had peaked at 359,000, in 1947 it was closer to 150,000.Footnote ¹²⁸ Official figures indicated that 110,000 tourists crossed in 1948, and the outlook for growth was not promising. Shipping companies had little incentive to expand the North Atlantic fleet, given low demand for off-season use of ocean-going cruisers.Footnote ¹²⁹ Officials knew that a rapid increase in shipping capacity was unlikely to happen soon.Footnote ¹³⁰ One possible solution to the problem of finite numbers of travelers was to lengthen the tourist season. British officials frequently discussed the possibility of promoting winter travel. If foreigners could somehow be persuaded that February and November were ideal times to holiday in Britain, this would generate a demand for travel in the “off-season,” which transportation and hospitality industries would feel compelled to meet.Footnote ¹³¹ Such plans were, however, invariably deemed impractical and downright unrealistic.Footnote ¹³²

As there was little chance of raising the absolute number of North Americans who could journey to Britain, the only possible way Britain could secure a sizable increase in its dollar earnings from tourism was to maximize the amount of money individual visitors spent while in Britain. People had to be persuaded not only to come to Britain but also to stay in Britain, for most, if not all, of their sojourn abroad. Those who passed through on their way to Europe or divided their vacation time between Britain and the Continent would, figuratively speaking, represent a loss of dollar income for Britain. Even if they traveled on British ocean liners, and their first port of entry was Britain, visitors who made an immediate beeline for Paris or Brussels or Rome would make no substantial contribution to improving Britain's financial position. Out of necessity, then, Britain's tourism campaign had to focus on persuading dollar tourists not only to “Come to Britain” but also to stay and not to go anywhere else.

In 1945, the British thought they had a competitive advantage over continental countries, assuming it would take those nations some time to put themselves on a proper footing to attract tourists. By 1948, the situation had changed. Several continental countries, including France, were developing their own national tourism schemes.Footnote ¹³³ As well, under the Marshall Plan, those nations, like Britain, were mandated to cultivate American tourists. For Britain, the Continent was now very much a part of the competition. To make matters worse, having already spent several years grappling with the challenges involved in mounting a British-centered tourism initiative so as to increase Britain's dollar earnings, the British government as a participant in the Marshall Plan had to unite with the competition and to promote it too, to the potential detriment of Britain's own undertaking. Both campaigns were targeting the same limited clientele. If that was not enough, there seemed to be abundant evidence that Britain was no match for many of the other places on offer. Time and time again, British officials found themselves having to confront and attempt to devise ways around the fact that Britain was simply not perceived as being as attractive a tourist destination as its nearby neighbors.Footnote ¹³⁴ By 1948, officials in Whitehall were far less certain than they had been in 1945 that Britain's wartime victory or past colonial ties would be a major drawing card for tourists. In a report on the prospects for a successful tourist season in 1948, one noted, “What we are trying to do . . . is to persuade Americans to spend their money here, rather than in France or Italy. The ‘home country’ of most Americans may, some 50 years ago, have been England or Scotland. Nowadays, it is as likely as not to be Italy. These people are not ‘cousins over the water’, they are foreigners.” More to the point, as the report bluntly observed, “they are foreigners who have to be persuaded to come to a country which is not traditionally one of the world's playgrounds.”Footnote ¹³⁵

On a practical level, Britain was at a disadvantage vis-à-vis its continental neighbors in a competition to attract transatlantic dollar tourists. Entry and exit from the United Kingdom was an exacting process, not simply because visas were required—that was true in other western European countries—but because of other measures, such as strict currency regulations.Footnote ¹³⁶ In order to restrict the purchase and sale of the pound sterling outside the British Isles, an individual entering or leaving Britain was permitted to carry a maximum of only £5 in cash notes.Footnote ¹³⁷ Any excess funds were confiscated. Usually, the notes would be mailed back to the traveler's country of origin, though the Treasury objected to publicizing the practice lest the deterrent effect of the regulations be lost: “It a traveler knows that the worst that can happen to him will be that the money will eventually be restored the temptation (already very strong) to bring in notes acquired cheaply abroad, or to take out notes in order to increase his spending power abroad, is correspondingly increased.”Footnote ¹³⁸ People who landed in Britain were thus in the position of having to locate money-changing services almost immediately, not an easy task. Conditions at ports and airports were deemed both substandard and unwelcoming; a 1949 report from the British Tourist and Holidays Board advised: “Port Authorities should . . . do their best to modernize and improve facilities at ports . . .Visitors cannot be expected to spend hours in cold Customs sheds or on open piers without catering and other essential services.”Footnote ¹³⁹

Once in the country, visitors then had to find suitable accommodation, which, as already stated, was at a premium. Of equal importance, British officials knew from past experience that even those hotels in good working order were considered inferior to those available in Europe. A scathing report sent to the Cabinet in 1949 summarized the problem well:

On his return from a fact-finding mission to North America in 1949, the director-general of the Tourist Division of the British Tourist and Holidays Board, J. G. Bridges, reported that at the American Society of Travel Agents Convention he had “on all sides [been told] . . . quite bluntly that unless the whole hotel position is speedily and materially improved, agents will not be able to recommend their clients to come to Britain. It was emphasized that if we want the dollars, hotels must be prepared to give certain and definite priority to North American business.”Footnote ¹⁴¹

British food was a further problem. Bridges reported that the poor quality of catering in many hotels was the subject of bitter comment and unfavorable comparison with continental establishments. Why, they asked, was it that British standards were so poor compared with other countries in Western Europe that had actually been occupied by the enemy?Footnote ¹⁴² Complaints were also voiced about the confusion caused by the £5 limit on all restaurant meals. Unable to change that situation, British planners eventually decided it would be a good tactic to stress that English cooking would at least be recognizable to Americans—there would be no surprises, as with snails, in France, for example.Footnote ¹⁴³ Yet, snails aside, all sorts of goods and amenities were more readily available on the Continent than they were in Britain.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Lord Hacking of the Travel Association told the press in August 1948 that the extensive restrictions meant that “visitors came with pockets full of dollars which they were not allowed to spend.”Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The British Tourist and Holidays Board also advised the Board of Trade that “with the devaluation of the pound, the best way of increasing tourists [sic] receipts are by encouraging shopping,” but lamented that Britain did not emulate Europe where people were “encouraged to buy,” not simply “grudgingly permitted to do so.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Alcohol and other luxuries were cheaper in Europe, and their sale and distribution were not as restricted as in Britain.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ An American bank executive summarized the frustration controls engendered:

Most Western European countries were, like Britain, grappling with challenges in the aftermath of the war. They did not necessarily have better hotels or more plentiful food supplies to offer foreign guests, but from a reputational standpoint, countries on the Continent did have an edge on Britain. To take a rather mundane issue, there was the weather. At pains to disabuse Americans of the idea that it was always rainy, cold, and dreary in Britain, British officials considered ways to counteract “climate prejudice.” Advertising consultants inferred this was a losing battle; they suggested avoiding the topic altogether and in publicity materials using only photographs and pictures depicting pleasant conditions.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ One could go on and on in this vein, providing more examples of why those responsible for national tourism policy believed that the Continent would overshadow Britain in any kind of direct competition, but perhaps the following comment about the difficulties presented by rental car arrangements best encapsulates the point:

Given the circumstances, British officials had obvious cause for concern that Britain's plan to use tourism to boost economic recovery would be completely jeopardized once the Marshall Plan tourism scheme was up and running. In December 1948, Ernest Wimble, a British representative at the Economic Cooperation Administration in Paris, informed the British Tourist and Holidays Board that the Marshall Plan organization was considering the “possibility of some form of co-operative advertising by Western European Countries in New York”; he observed, “In his view, there would be many dangers for the United Kingdom in such a scheme.” He went on to reassure “the Board of Management that both he and Mr. Bridges [the head of the Tourist Division of the board] were well aware of them.”Footnote ¹⁵¹ Over the course of 1949, British officials involved in the planning process in Paris faced consistent criticism from other Marshall Plan participants over their frequent attempts to place hurdles in the way of a cooperative advertising campaign that would publicize all the member states in conjunction with each other.Footnote ¹⁵² The British Tourist and Holidays Board wanted Economic Cooperation Administration monies to be used to showcase each individual country in isolation from the others.Footnote ¹⁵³ The Inter-Departmental Working Group on Tourism was also alive to the dangers of competition: “As regards our general policy towards tourism in Paris . . . we should examine any proposals for co-operation very closely. . . to guard against . . . proposals for co-operation which diminish our competitive attractions to dollar visitors.” That said, so as not to appear “to be ‘dragging our feet’ on this subject to which the Americans attach so much importance,” the Interdepartmental Working Group on Tourism was “in favour of defining our attitude toward O.E.E.C. in this connection as being enthusiastic protagonists of co-operative emulation. In other words, let all the participants pool their experience in Paris and let each country strive to improve its own attractions in friendly competition.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴

Well aware that the Americans were “also very interested in intra-European tourism as a means of breaking down our narrowly nationalistic attitude towards one another,” the British were also resistant to identifying Britain as part of an entity called Europe.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Even as the Marshall Plan tourism scheme came to fruition, the British were hedging their bets. By December 1949, rather than distancing itself from imperial connections, the government had set up a “Working Party to investigate the possibilities of tourist promotion within the Commonwealth . . . to promote traffic in sterling area countries.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶

Britain had to accept the Marshall Plan tourism scheme but it did not embrace it. Participation in this important component of the Marshall Plan, and acquiescence with the international pressures inherent in it, had the potential to trump Britain's own plans for postwar recovery. That this was the case suggests that Britain's well-documented reluctance to submit to American attempts to promote greater European economic integration in the wake of the Second World War was well grounded in terms of the prevailing economic realities. For Britain, the Marshall Plan was a tourist trap.