TOURISM BECOMES AN INDUSTRY - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 16

fairly won by the Treaty of Berlin, which had given the Austro-Hungarian Empire the right
to occupy and administer them. This had enraged the Slavs and given Serbia a grievance.”
Fifty years later, when the Bosnian War broke out and Yugoslavia was torn apart forever,
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon was the favorite book used by journalists trying to understand
the spirit of the country as well as its history. The rich and long tradition of literary travel
exemplified by Rebecca West remains alive and well. Some date it back to Homer and
his epic poem of the travels of Odysseus. The nineteenth-century writers and explorers
Richard Burton and Freya Stark are part of the pantheon that added many more literary
travel writers in the twentieth century: Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, Bill
Bryson, Pico Iyer and others who have kept up the standards and expanded the genre.
The earliest publishers of travel brochures were wary of advertisements for hotels or
luggage that might expect special recommendations in their topics and newspapers. Karl
Baedeker handled that problem by promising his readers in Victorian language that “the
Editor begs to intimate that a character for fair dealing towards travelers is the sole passport
to his commendation, and that no advertisements of any kind are admitted to his hand-
books.”
Most publications couldn't afford such high-minded scruples. After World War II the
travel industry became the single largest source of advertising for newspapers; at its high
point in the 1960s the industry accounted for one-fourth of all the ad revenue.
Normally there is a firewall between advertisers and journalists; advertisers do not re-
ceive special treatment from reporters. But the travel industry wanted more than the priv-
ilege of buying ad space. They hired public relations firms to work hand-in-glove with
journalists, giving them free trips, meals, hotels and nights on the town and then expecting
them to write rave reviews.
Stuart Newman was in on the ground floor of this eventually corrupt relationship. New-
man is very much in the mold of Arthur Frommer. A veteran of World War II, he, too,
jumped into the world of travel after he was discharged from the army, but he landed on
the public relations side. He opened his own firm in Miami, and saw manipulating travel
writers to the benefit of his clients as the purpose of his business. It seemed straightforward
to Newman: convince newspaper reporters to write about a new travel destination, give
away free trips to the destination and, when necessary, help write the articles.
Newman told me that in those days the relationship between public relations and the
press “were considerably more relaxed.” By “relaxed” Newman said he meant that when
he wanted a story that promoted one of his clients' restaurants or hotels or nightclubs “I
would frequently go to the city rooms of the Miami Herald and Miami News , sit at a manu-
al typewriter, use their copy paper and knock out stories.”
Soon the standard form of influencing travel writers was with the free trip, known in
the trade as a “fam” trip or a trip to “familiarize” the writer with the destination being
promoted. Newman said he gave away more airplane tickets, hotel vouchers, drinks at