What are the background and conditions for the emergence of foreign travel agencies?

Travel agencies refer to enterprises that engage in tourism business for profit-making purposes. There are three conditions for this:

The improvement of transportation conditions; the increase of economic income; and the generation of tourism demand.

Travel agencies first appeared in the United Kingdom; later, travel agencies continued to emerge in European and American countries; in the early 20th century, Japan successively established travel agencies such as the Xibin Club and Japan Transportation Corporation;

With the rapid development of productivity, With the rapid increase in social wealth, the size of the property class is expanding day by day, and people in developed countries in Europe and the United States have the economic conditions to travel. Before the industrial revolution, only landowners and nobles had the money to engage in non-economic recreational tourism activities. The Industrial Revolution caused a large amount of wealth to flow to the emerging industrial bourgeoisie, giving them the economic conditions to engage in tourism, thereby expanding the number of people traveling.

The progress of science and technology, especially the vigorous development of transportation, has improved transportation capacity, shortened transportation time, and made large-scale personnel movements possible. The steam engine technology invented by Watt in 1769 was quickly applied to new means of transportation. By the end of the 18th century, steam engines and ships had been invented. But the development of railway transportation technology had the greatest and most direct impact on the birth of modern tourism. In 1825, the Stockton to Darlington railway built by George Stevenson, known as the "Father of Railways" in Britain, was officially put into operation. After that, railways began to be built in various places and extended to further areas.

The Industrial Revolution accelerated the process of urbanization and shifted the focus of people's work and life from rural areas to cities. This change ultimately led to people's need to escape the stressful pace of urban life and the pressure of crowded and noisy environments, and gave rise to the pursuit of returning to freedom and nature.

The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of people's work. With the influx of a large number of people into cities, the original diverse agricultural labor that varied with the farming season began to be replaced by boring, repetitive and single large-machine industrial labor, resulting in people's strong desire for vacations. Of course, the acquisition of paid holidays for the working class did not happen overnight, but was finally achieved after more than a century of hard struggle.

The development of the market economy has provided the necessary social conditions for the emergence of tourism activities. Against this background, a group of forerunners with keen information first captured the market information and began to establish the travel agency business. For example, the world's first truly dedicated travel agent is recognized as Thomas Cook of England. On July 5, 1841, Thomas Cook, a missionary, took advantage of the psychological crisis caused by people in the face of mechanized mass production, and creatively organized the world's first group package tour with the call to participate in prohibition of alcohol. A round-trip train was chartered to carry 570 people from Leicester to Loughborough to attend the temperance meeting. For the first time, a collective discount payment method was adopted. Each person paid 1 shilling in advance, which included transportation costs, a band playing hymns, and a field trip. Lunch and afternoon refreshments. This event is considered to be the beginning of modern tourism activities in the history of tourism and is of great significance.

This event has several important characteristics of later travel agency business activities: first, it adopts the collective discount payment method; second, it has the prototype of group package price; third, it combines food, travel and entertainment. and other elements are concentrated in tourism activities; fourth, it initially reflects the tour guide function of the travel agency. These characteristics have important reference and influence on later travel agency operations.

Later, European and North American countries and Japan followed Cook's successful model of organizing tourism activities, and successively organized travel agencies or similar tourism organizations to recruit companions or tour guides to lead groups to visit the country.