Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (519)
On tour
Whether to relax or to better understand societies and their peoples, by the 1930s tourism had become what was then termed a necessity. The tourist industry had expanded enormously, a phenomenon also ascribed to the growing diversity of modes of transportation. Since Egypt was a top tourist attraction,
Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* explored the country's travel business
Whether to relax or to better understand societies and their peoples, by the 1930s tourism had become what was then termed a necessity. The tourist industry had expanded enormously, a phenomenon also ascribed to the growing diversity of modes of transportation. Since Egypt was a top tourist attraction,
Professor Yunan Labib Rizk explored the country's travel business
It was 16 February 1933, the height of the Egyptian tourist season. People from around the world had converged on the Egyptian capital to attend the International Tourist Conference to be held under the patronage of King Fouad. It had taken eight train carriages to transport visiting delegations from Alexandria to Cairo to attend the opening ceremonies, inaugurated by His Excellency Ibrahim Fathi Karim, minister of transport.
In its editorial the following day, Al-Ahram offered readers ample information not only on the conference itself but on the history of tourism in Egypt. The conference as an institution was established in Paris in 1925 and met annually thereafter. In 1932, conference organisers received two invitations by countries volunteering to host the following year's conference. One was from Poland, which proposed hosting it in Krakow, "with its numerous monuments and antiquities". The second was from Egypt. "It was agreed that the conference would convene in Cairo in 1933 and in Krakow in 1935," Al-Ahram recounts.
The article went on to observe that tourism, "whether for the purpose of relaxation or sightseeing, or for the acquisition of knowledge or insight into the ways and circumstances of societies and peoples," had become "a necessity of life for nations." The tourist industry had expanded enormously, a phenomenon the article ascribed to the growing facility and diversity of modes of transportation. Ships, buses and planes made it possible to "roam the earth", safely and rapidly, which was why tourism was becoming an increasingly popular leisure activity. It was little wonder, therefore, that among the topics on the conference agenda were the questions of facilitating customs procedures for tourists, organised coach, yacht and ship tours, and the improved organisation of civil aviation and other modes of transport.
Egypt's place in the world of tourism had been established since antiquity. The editorial writes, "It has even been said that Alexander The Great was the first to open Egypt to the world. Scholars and kings headed for Egypt to behold the wonders of this land, whose people, they said, comprised the oldest nation on earth and that it was the mother of all other nations and peoples. From that time to the present, Egypt has been extolled for the kindness of its people, its safety and security, its copious natural wealth and the great curative properties of its medicine, sun and religious symbols, not to mention the magnificence and elegance of its ancient sacred temples."
The writer, most probably Editor-in-Chief Daoud Barakat, went on to note that the "setting of the ancient world and the rise of the Christian era" had not altered Egypt's touristic status. On the contrary, there evolved a new form of tourism, the Christian pilgrimage, to follow the path Jesus took from the land of Palestine to Egypt. Enhancing Egypt's touristic importance in this regard were its many ascetics who "withdrew from the world into its mountain caves and caverns, from where they issued Christian tenets and teachings, to the extent that it has been said that because of them Egypt was dubbed 'the brain of Christianity.'"
Barakat then went on to "the advancement of nations in the modern epoch" and the rise of other forms of tourism. One of these aimed at "the acquisition of knowledge and the stimulation of the mind from ancient monuments and the contributions these monuments offered to the sciences of construction and design, the arts and historical investigation". A second was in the quest of health and physical restoration "in the light of a perpetually shining sun and on a stretch of land basking in eternal springtime".
Barakat's zeal for Egypt's climate led him to proclaim that there is "none like it on the face of the earth". Weather was ideal in winter, "the season that begins in November and lasts until April", and it remained moderate throughout the summer when Egypt served as "the passage way for travellers from the East to West and from the West to East". Which brings him to Egypt's central geographical location and "transit tourism", as it is termed today, again aided by the increased ease and rapidity of modern transport. In the past, tourists coming to Egypt remained for considerable lengths of time. "Today, however, the tourist can simply pass through, whether he is heading for Sudan or the heart of Africa or destined for India and beyond. This is because it has become possible to see everything in Egypt from top to bottom within a matter of days, whereas this would have taken several months in the past."
This ebullience was somewhat dampened by recent developments in the Egyptian tourist industry. Barakat observed that a considerable portion of Egypt's winter tourism had been diverted to the northern Mediterranean resorts, such as the Riviera and Nice, "where accommodations for comfort are plentiful and the sun casts some of its abundant warmth". The "dwindling numbers of tourists in the past few years", compelled him to urge authorities to devise appropriate "economic remedies to this problem".
As to the gravity of the problem itself, the editor-in-chief referred readers to an article which appeared the previous day. According to its author, Hassan Sobhi, "Egypt is losing thousands of tourists every year. Evidence of this alarming decline can be seen in the many elegant hotels that adorn Cairo and other Egyptian cities and that are currently teetering between lower than average occupancy and closure." Sobhi corroborates his assertion with figures that, he assures readers, are taken from official sources. In the 1928-1929 season, he writes, there were 20,500 tourists. This figure dropped to 13,000 the following year and to 10,500 the year after. Then, in 1931-1932, the numbers plummeted to a record low of 7,500. During the same period, Greece registered a tourist boom, with numbers rising seven-fold from only 5,000 in 1929 to 35,000 in 1933. In addition, tourism in the Riviera increased four-fold from the winter of 1930 to the winter of the following year.
Although Sobhi recognised the impact of the global economic crisis on the Egyptian tourist industry, he pointed out that the booms in Greece and the Riviera indicated that other factors were involved. The urgency of identifying and remedying these factors could not be overestimated. Income from tourism affected more than those immediately involved in the industry, a reality he stated in concrete figures. "If we estimate that 20,000 tourists visited the country and that each spent LE100, this would be sufficient to support 50,000 people." Moreover, there was a less tangible spin-off, which was that tourism was a means for showcasing Egypt's progress and development. In this regard he expressed his hope that the conference, which was being held in the Egyptian capital, would contribute to "enabling Egypt to recover its first-place status in the world of tourism, indeed its incontestable right to this status".
Sobhi voiced the aspirations of many in Egypt, leading us to return to the conference itself. On 5 July 1932, King Fouad issued a royal decree to "create a steering committee for the International Tourist Conference to be held in Cairo in 1933". Al-Ahram readers would have been struck by the unusually long membership list of that committee, which included some 50 individuals.
Representing the transportation sector were the minister of transport himself, who headed the committee; the directors of the Railways Authority, the Alexandria Navigation Company, the Royal Automobile Club, the Egyptian Public Omnibus Company, and the Oriental Shipping Company; the deputy general director of the Public Railways, Telegraph and Telephone Company; the secretary of the Egyptian Electric Railways Authority and the director of the Imperial Airways Company. The latter was British.
If these selections were obvious because of the intrinsic importance of transport to tourism, so too were the following: the director general of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority and the director of the Arab Antiquities Organisation. Also represented were major hotels and tourist companies. Among the representatives of the former were M Behler, general director of the Egyptian Hotels Company, M Charles, director of the Federated Egyptian Hotels Company and M Andareux, director general of the Greater Hotels Company. American Express, Thomas Cook, Kings and the Anglo-American Company for Nile Tours were the most prominent tourist companies on the committee. As is apparent, many sectors of the tourist industry were still foreign monopolies at the time.
Addressing the committee members in their first meeting, the minister of transport stressed the importance of the task assigned to them under the royal decree. Tourism, he said, "has become in recent years one of the most important channels for bringing nations and peoples together. And with the spread of modern means of transport, it has become one of the most lucrative industries, especially for those countries that have organised it properly. Indeed, such is the importance some governments have attached to this industry that they have established special departments for touristic affairs." Had the minister lived longer, he would have seen not just a department but an entire Ministry of Tourism in Egypt.
As the committee got under way with its work, there were some who sounded a note of caution. Among them was Mohamed Karim, recently returned to Egypt after having completed his studies in cinema in Germany. Writing to Al- Ahram under the headline, "The promotion of tourism in Egypt", Karim wrote that some foreigners who come to Egypt in order to shoot promotional films on Egypt end up producing the opposite of their intended aim. He relates that in 1929, the government gave permission to a famous director, Kurt Zimmerman, to make a film on Egypt. "The outcome was that the man produced a most disgraceful portrait of the Egyptian people. Moreover, such was his audacity that he claimed that his film was created with the assistance of the government of His Royal Majesty King Fouad."
Such cautions did not dampen the enthusiasm of the committee members who continued to meet regularly throughout the summer of 1932 and adopted a number of resolutions. The first was that the conference would open on 16 February the following year, with the inaugural ceremonies to take place in the Royal Opera House and the conference meetings to be held in Heliopolis Hotel. They resolved, secondly, to sponsor a promotional campaign competition between tourist companies, "in which the first prize -- a gold cup, inscribed with the name of His Royal Majesty King Fouad -- will go to that company that produces the best advertisement".
Perhaps this announcement is what inspired the Society for the Promotion of Tourism in Egypt to produce a special edition of its annual periodical. Seventy-pages long, on glossy paper, the magazine featured "a broad array of exciting articles by a collection of select writers known for their passion for Egypt and Egypt's natural scenery, glorious historical antiquities, thriving cities and ports with their many palaces and mosques". The magazine also boasted "marvelous photographs of many scenic locations and monuments". One cannot help but be struck by the irony, as one reads the article, that the society had taken London, rather than Cairo, for its base. The editor was a certain Philip Taylor who also produced Sphinx, a magazine published in Cairo.
In November, when the conference was only three months away, the organising committee took several other measures intended to promote its success. One was to appeal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to furnish free entrance visas to the participants, a request to which the ministry readily agreed. Another was to produce a guide to be distributed to the participants on Egypt and its antiquities. They also succeeded in arranging for free three-week passes on Egyptian railways and tramways.
In December, Al-Ahram gave another update on the forthcoming conference. It estimated that the number of participants and those accompanying them would exceed 400. They would be arriving in Alexandria on 14 February and staying in the country for two weeks. Entertainment arrangements included several tea parties, luncheons featuring traditional Egyptian foods and two balls, one hosted by a baron in Heliopolis Hotel and the second to take place in Luxor and hosted by the Society for the Promotion of Tourism in Egypt.
Final details of the conference programme and other arrangements were announced in early February. Al-Ahram reported that each participant would be given a free rail pass and that this courtesy would be extended to the participant's wife or daughter should the daughter be single. The conference itself last from 16 to 20 February during which there would be three meetings, visits to various historical monuments, museums and mosques, and an automobile excursion to the monasteries at Wadi Natroun organised by the Royal Automobile Club. However, the excursion that would most tantalise participants was the tour of Upper Egypt. Conference members would be divided into two groups, setting off a day apart, so that the hotels of Luxor and Aswan could accommodate their numbers and still be able to accommodate ordinary tourists who would be in Egypt that month, which fell at the height of the tourist season. The arrangements indicate that the conference would succeed in its dual aim of promoting tourism and commerce.
Al-Ahram was on hand to cover the conference at virtually every step although one notes that it tended to focus closer on extra curricular activities. One could not help but to notice as well that the official sponsor, King Fouad, had not been present at the inaugural ceremonies. Apparently he had given priority to the inaugural celebrations of the Railway Conference, also being held that evening, and it was unreasonable to expect His Royal Majesty to attend more than one such occasion on a single day.
Conference meetings, as planned, took place in the Heliopolis Hotel. Perhaps the agenda for the second day's meeting best illustrates the types of topics that came under discussion:
- Duty exemptions for tourist publications;
- Toll exemptions for tour buses;
- Ambulance services for inner-city thoroughfares;
- The publication of travel guides;
- Compulsory accident insurance for tourist buses;
- International documents and regulations on tourist aviation;
- Licences for maritime tourism.
Also that day, the delegate from the Egyptian Royal Automobile Club submitted a report on the cooperation between the national railways and the bus companies, although it was decided to defer discussion of the report to the following session. In addition, the French minister of foreign colonies delivered a paper on inter-African cooperation in transport, "so that the entire continent of Africa can become linked together, thereby facilitating automobile and other forms of transport between the various parts of the continent". One imagines that Egyptians were particularly intrigued by the idea in view of the ancient links between them and those parts of North Africa that were still under French domination. Of great concern to all participants, however, would have been the discussions on currency and exchange rates in view of the many different currencies in circulation, the disparities in exchange rates and the restrictions certain countries imposed on the export of their currencies. It was thought that the International Hotel Federation could contribute to solving some of the problems.
At 10.30am on Monday, 20 February, participants assembled to attend the conference's closing ceremonies, held in the same venue as the other meetings, the Heliopolis Hotel. As the schedule of the preceding days had been too cramped to permit for the presentation of all the papers, several more papers were delivered. These included a report by the chairman of the International Hotel Federation on currency restrictions in some countries and the impact of this on tourism, and that by Mohamed Bahgat Shimi on the international exhibition of tourist publicity.
This was not the only element to detract from what should have been a more festive occasion. The plan had been for the minister of transport to present the award to the winner of the best tourist advertisement contest. As the contest never took place, the gold cup was presented instead to the conference's founding father.
Although the conference drew to a close on 21 February, commentary in the press continued for some time afterwards. Of the more earnest and impassioned variety was an article by Mohamed Kemal Fahmi, representative of the Bank of Egypt Tourist Bureau, who listed the "fruits of the International Conference on Tourism". That this conference was held in Egypt, he wrote, was "the greatest proof of Egypt's place among civilised nations and its high international standing". The conference afforded Egypt the opportunity to display the level of progress it had attained and "demonstrate that the Egyptian people honour the legacy of their ancestors while pursuing their quest for modern advancement". Also, Egypt's representatives in the conference were in an excellent position to promote Egypt's reputation abroad as well as "to take part in the humanitarian efforts being undertaken by civilised nations towards the advancement of the world and the betterment of all mankind".
In counterpoint to such commentaries were articles with a refreshing element of wit. An example was the article by the author of the column, "On the fringes", who accompanied the conference participants on their tour of Upper Egypt. The columnist habitually referred to himself as the "old man", a reputation he seemed determined to live up to through a touch of self-deprecating humour. In Luxor, for example, he restricted himself to the monuments on the east bank of the Nile. After all, a visit to "Master Tutankhamen" would have entailed "crossing the river, boarding a car, mounting a donkey, getting off and walking, then climbing a mountain and crawling on one's belly, only to return from the expedition in wretched health".
In Aswan, the "old man" remarked on how cheap meat was. On the other hand, other daily necessities cost twice as much as they did in Cairo. However, he held his greatest reserve of cantankerousness for the cabaret nearby his hotel in Aswan. But then, one does not have to be all that old to sympathise with his grievance about the "deafening noise of the blaring jazz band and the raucous dancing".
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* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
