Business trip

“ In driving overland it is different; you may find some one to consult with who has made the trip before you,--but the chances are that all those who have done so are dead. You will have no time-tables to consult and, if you go as we did, no reservations to make.
It all looked so easy, while I was only thinking about it, that it seemed simplicity itself. Just get a team of horses and a wagon, and start. Incidentally, I would have plenty of company,--so many folks had said they would like to go. We would have a tent, cots, cook, guide, and all the necessary outfit. ”

“ I hope we will be in early enough for myself and daughter to catch the little steamer running to Vancouver.
Before closing, however, permit me to give one of the most valuable points in the art of traveling. When you leave home drop its cares entirely and trustfully. Let your friends write nothing about your business unless it be such as they know should hurry you back and for that intended. Look on the bright side of everything before you, and do not complain because you have not the comforts of your home. Profitable travel is often laborious, and like all well applied labor, pays. ”

“ It’s never above seventy, even when all the rest of the country is melting at a hundred in the shade. Ten dollars round trip. Fifty to seventy-five passengers to the trip. Three trips a week. You’ll wear diamonds! You’ll go to college! ”

“ Of all people needing the experience of travel, the ticketing agent who directs others on their journeys should be first to possess that advantage.
Dispensing to these gentlemen few promises and religiously observing those is a strong undercurrent in shaping your course. Unfailing attention to reservation requests, prompt news of the whereabouts of specific shipments, and early notification of upward tariff revisals, &c., &c., are assets that help forge a friendship out of which springs new business, which a “fourflusher” or thoughtless one is prone to overlook after his final handshake. ”

“ If one of the number then offers to take them there in his car, it is understood of course that his hospitality extends only to the means of transportation. All procure their tickets beforehand, and the expense of the entertainment at the hotel is divided among them. When one is doubtful on which plan the trip is to be conducted, one should by all means endeavor to pay one’s share. It is best in a case of this sort for a single individual to speak for the rest. ”

“ The circular tour is a magnificent idea, a praiseworthy business scheme; it has educated the minds of millions and why it should have ruined their manners is a mystery, unless indeed they had none when they were at home. Some of our fellow-travellers with whom we originally started disappear every day or two, to join us again. We lose them temporarily when we take a private conveyance or when they stop at a cheap hotel, but we come altogether again on coach or long car ”

“ Commercial travellers, who stop and do business in all the towns and by so doing render commerce much cheaper than it otherwise would be, and who give that constant support to the houses of entertainment which makes them able to supply the occasional traveller well and at a cheap rate, would, as a matter of course, never by any chance go by the railroad; and the occasional traveller, who went the same route for pleasure, would go by the coach road also, because of the cheerful company and comfortable dinner. ”

“ The travel and tourism industry, once small, is now our third-largest retail trade and second-largest employer. The travel industry directly or indirectly supports nearly seven million jobs and generates some $292 billion in receipts, or 6.4 percent of our gross national product. Internationally, tourism now is the largest business export among America's service industries ”

“ Carriages and hotels were all of the very best, and the cost of the whole trip was really remarkably small. The ordinary traveller, making the trip on his own account, must have had to pay a great deal more, and experienced an amount of trouble and fatigue, and consequent loss of temper, of which we passengers by the Midnight Sun have had no conception. ”

“ Now, while journeys, whether on land or sea, are apt to be but tiresome businesses when they are undertaken at the call of some tedious errand, they are vastly different affairs when they conduct the traveller to joyful places and delectable pursuits. ”

“ In the late spring there is an exodus from the Riviera to Aix-les-Bains; doctors, maîtres d'hôtel [Pg 75] musicians, lawyers, fly-men, waiters move into summer quarters; and any one who has time to spare, and enjoys a three-day drive through beautiful scenery, might well do worse than make a bargain with a fly-man for the trip from the coast to the town on the banks of the lake. When a fly-man does not secure a "monsieur" as a passenger, he as often as not drives a brace of friendly waiters over just for company sake. ”

“ We, in our day, read the early voyages as if the enterprising men who conducted them were voyaging purely for science and adventure, but, then, as now, business was energetic and commerce was reaching out its hands in every direction for larger profits. ”

“ Happily for the American business world, the infection of “summer travel” grows more and more contagious as its benefits become better understood. Year by year the tide increases in volume, and the facilities of travel are multiplied to meet the demand. If these pages shall serve to assist the tourist in the choice of his route, or, the choice being made, in rendering his journey more enjoyable, their purpose will be fully met. ”

“ He proposed that, in view of the humble circumstances of the child, the privilege of naming him for the trip be sold at auction among the passengers of our car, adding, by way of explanation, that the sum thus realized might "give the little fellow a start in life."
The average overland tourist is never slow to adopt any expedient to relieve the tedium of the journey ”

“ It is a good plan for American tourists, who have any amount of purchases to make, to take a carriage by the hour, and the banker's clerk or commission merchant whom they engage to accompany them, and make a day of it. It will be found an economy of time, and to involve far less vexation and fatigue, than to attempt walking, or trusting to luck to find the articles desired. ”

“ You will understand that in this business no one is paid wages by the day or month, but each receives a certain part, or lay, as it is called, of the proceeds of the cruise. By this arrangement, you will see, at once, that every one, from the captain to the cabin boy, has a personal interest in the success of the voyage. ”

“ Factories and large tradesmen arrange trips for their work-people once or twice a year. Why should not the agricultural labourers have a trip? A trip of the simplest kind would satisfy them, and afford matter of conversation for months. All railway lines now issue tickets at reduced rates for parties above a certain number. For instance, to the population of an inland village, what would be more delightful than a few hours on the sea-beach? Where the sea is not within easy reach, take them to a great town—if possible, London—but if not London, any large town will be a change. ”

“ In some of these steep, narrow, crooked streets there are little shops about the size of a large closet in which the merchant, sitting crosslegged on bench or cushion, can reach his goods and wait on his customer without rising or interfering with the enjoyment of his pipe. As the narrow thoroughfares are not wide enough for carriages, we had to walk through them with a guide. ”

“ This is as delightful a holiday as one could imagine, and the foreign tour—which has often been made merely as a succession of nights of travel in stuffy sleeping-cars or a round of overfeeding orgies at Parisian hotels and restaurants—has added charms of which the generation before the advent of automobiles knew nought. ”

“ If you do not want, or cannot sell these articles on board, there is a merchant here who will be happy to take them off your hands at a liberal profit. One of our passengers, a Scotchman, being used to long voyages, arranged his cabin upon this plan, and cleared a considerable sum during the voyage, by selling these articles quietly to the passengers: he was obliged, of course, to be careful not to have a crowd or any noise at his berth; and, therefore, you must be cautious, and, as soon as your "customers" are served, request them to take their "goods" and consume them in their own cabins. ”

“ I fancy that every one, after one tour in the bush, will find that experience teaches that a few things taken, were useless, and some left behind were sorely wanted, and a little judicious sorting and arrangement will ensure the second trip being far more comfortable, without in the least increasing the bulk of your personnel. ”

“ Is he not really a stay-at-home who has ventured out merely to stretch his legs? Ask the keeper of a commercial hotel in a country town who his customers are. He will tell you that they are commercial travellers and coffee-room visitors. The two classes are distinct in the mind of mine host. One suggests work, the other play. The commercial man is bound to travel whether he likes it or not, the visitor is a fitful amateur amusing himself by a change from the monotony of home. ”

“ It should not be understood that the routes given embrace a tenth or a twentieth of those that exist; any railway or steamship agent can give you dozens or perhaps hundreds of routes of travel, and after you think the subject is exhausted you can easily find a rival agent who can give you a selection from many more. The lines of travel that are here laid out are intended to embrace the chief cities of Europe and America, together with the principal pleasure-resorts. The traveler will pay his money and take his choice, or rather he will take his choice and then pay his money. ”

“ For twenty-five cents a man can get a whole European trip in my Museum without getting on board of a steamer. I only charge ten cents to come in so [Pg 249] as to get people to come, and I charge fifteen cents to get out so as to make 'em stay until they have seen all there is to be seen. People get awfully tired travelling abroad, I find, and if you make it too easy for them to run back home they'll go without finishing their trip. I charge burgulars one umbrella to get in so that if my burgular comes back he'll have to make good my loss, or stay out. ”

“ You shall find all the nations of the earth, and all the styles of shaving and not shaving, hair cutting and hair letting alone, for ever flowing through our hotel. Couriers you shall see by hundreds; fat leathern bags for five-franc pieces, closing with violent snaps, like discharges of fire-arms, by thousands; more luggage in a morning than, fifty years ago, all Europe saw in a week. Looking at trains, steamboats, sick travellers, and luggage, is our great Pavilionstone recreation. We are not strong in other public amusements. ”

“ Tourism — human circulation packaged for consumption, a by-product of the circulation of commodities — is the opportunity to go and see what has been banalized. The economic organization of travel to different places already guarantees their equivalence. ”

“ And in these days when, what with railways, through-tickets, and Cook’s and other guides for timid tourists, the journey from one end of Europe to the other is made so quickly and so cheaply as to be within most educated men’s reach, it is no wonder if most of us in our turn make the venture. ”

“ Travellers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length arrives—the time of spectacles and funerals. ”

“ Those would be rented all the time, and even in'the summer slump each year there'd be at least two or three new customers for the other cabins. And a year or two of being in business would begin to bring us an increased amount of repeat trade, so that we could look forward safely to a profitable business--if we could just hang onto the motel right now! ”

“ The local tradesmen and shopkeepers look upon the Trip as a great nuisance because, they say, it takes money away from the town that ought to be spent in their warehouses; they do not take into consideration the fact that the men are confined like prisoners all the rest of the year. ”

“ You can see, then, that so far as going from America to England is concerned not much expense is involved; $60 to $70 will procure the round-trip passage, which will occupy about sixteen to twenty days. On the other side the travelling expenses with a wheel may be made almost anything the individual chooses to make them. One wheelman will ride from city to city, stopping at large hotels in each city, spending several days there, and going to theatres and places of amusement. ”

“ Today, the travel and tourism sector of our economy constitutes the second largest retail industry in the United States. The benefits of travel remain as enticing as ever, but the hazards and dangers have largely disappeared. Americans who want to travel abroad can experience the tremendous diversity of the world's cultures on group excursions or on individually designed tours. ”