(2 of 11)
The recession of the past few years has created what analysts describe as an enormous pent-up appetite for vacations abroad. TWA Spokesman David Venz observes, "A vacation in Europe is easily deferred. People who have been working have been salting their money away." Lines have never been so long at U.S. passport offices. Between January and May, Americans picked up 2,021,007 passports, a 26% increase over the same period a year ago. At Manhattan's 630 Fifth Avenue passport office, applicants sometimes stand in line for as long as four hours. Alitalia flights from New York to Italy have been fully booked since early May. The new cut-rate ($149) People Express transatlantic flights are sold out through mid-September (see box). Sales of American Express vacation packages, which are almost all priced below 1980 levels, are running 43% ahead of last year, and for the peak month of June were 100% ahead. TWA has already sold 175% more of its budget Supersaver tours than it did during the same period last year. Many budget packages are virtually sold out. To plan late is often to pay more this year.
The bonanza has caught many travel organizations with their telexes down. Carefree David Travels, an Atlanta-based agency that puts together charter packages for travel agents, has had to add five staffers and five telephone lines since June 1, and could use five more employees if it had time to train them. Charter Travel Corp., which specializes in scheduled charters and operates out of Chicago and Minneapolis, has added eight U.S. cities and three European destinations in 1983.
For a great many middleaged, middle-class Americans, this year's visit to Europe is a return trip. "Fewer innocents are going abroad," says Adele Klate, owner of Los Angeles' Gulliver's Travels. "They know the small hotels, the little restaurants. They're not buying the highly touted places any more." The American tourist redux is more worldly in his activities and tastes, particularly when it comes to food and wine. He does not recoil from snails, eels and sweetbreads as he once did, orders tortellini ai funghi porcini with authority, and often chooses a vintage he knows from back home.
Maurizio Manzini, manager of American Express in Rome, sees the emergence of a "new kind of American in Europe." He explains, "Today's tourists have more interests and a different cultural background from the elderly, usually wealthy client who in past years wanted everything organized down to the last, tiniest detail. They like to wander and find out things on their own."
"The American no longer has the image of a spender who throws away money," says Athens American Express General Manager George Efthyvoulidis. "He expects something in return." That lesson is apparent at least to Johannes Brenner, who owns a popular souvenir shop behind the Cathedral of Our Lady in Munich. "In former years," he confesses, "Americans were the main customers for those porcelain monsters—the huge vases and ornate groups and centerpieces, laced figurines and gilded plates. Now we sell those to the Near East. Americans know too well what Rosenthal, Meissen and Nymphenburg should look like. We still sell a good deal of kitsch, but Americans buy it now because it is amusing."