Sustainable Tourism Law

FROM TOURISM TO SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 41 roads and roman ports are the key and foundation of travels 9 . The SevenWonders of the World became tourist sites for Greeks and Romans 10 . Roman tourism ended with its empire. The fall of the Roman Empire made travelling (and of course tourism) difficult and dangerous. But devoted pilgrims to the Holy Land or to Mecca and intrepid merchants continued to travel by land and sea. The Age of Discovery reopened the time of travels 11 . In 1793 Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard published Guide des voyageurs en Europe 12 , that many scholars consider as the first modern travel guide. Later in the century, John Murray, an English publisher 13 , and Karl Baedeker started to publish their famous travel guide. Some say that modern tourism is a British invention. True or false, it is a fact that the British travelled everywhere 14 . In 1872 Thomas Cook founded “Thomas Cook & Son”, which is considered the first travel agency 15 . Empirical evidence that a new era for tourism was starting. The ages of Tourism between individualism and standardization In the XVIII and in the XIX centuries, tourism was mainly an individual matter. Tourists travelled alone, or in small groups. Hospitality was a family business. But soon things changed. From an economic standpoint, it is well known that tourism, in the last decades, has become an industry. Figures regarding the economic development and statistics on tourist movement prove it. Mass tourism is a consequence. This determined a 9 N. BERGIER, Histoire des Grands Chemins de l’Empire Romain, Parigi, 1622; V. von HAGEN, The roads that led to Rome, 1967, Italian ed. Le grandi strade di Roma nel mondo, Newton Compton ed., Roma, 1978. 10 Ἡ ρόδοτος (Herodotus, 484 – ca. 425 BC) lists Colossus of Rhodes, Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Statue of Zeus at Olympia and Temple of Artemis at Ephesus 11 Glenn J. AMES, The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery (1550 – 1700) , 1 Ed., Pearson Ed. Inc., New Jersey, 2008. Italian edition, L’età delle scoperte geografiche (1500 – 1700), Il Mulino, 2011. AA.VV. , Amerigo Vespucci e I mercanti viaggiatori fiorentini del Conquecento , edited by Margherita Azzari and Leonardo Rombai, Firenze University Press, Firenze, 2013. John TOWNER, An historical geography of recreation and tourism in the Western world, 1540-1940 , Chichester, Wiley, 1996. 12 Heinrich August Ottokar REICHARD, Guide des voyageurs en Europe , 3 Ed., Weimar au Bureu d’Industrie, in tree volumes, 1805. The first edition was written “sous les auspices de Cathérine la Grande”. The 1805 edition was dedicated to “Alexandre I, Empereur et Autocrateur de toute le Russie”. The Guide reached seven editions, and was translated in various languages. At a certain point, was known as “Guides Reichard”. 13 The first guide books, known as Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers , was published by John Murray III in 1836. 14 AA.VV. , The British abroad since the eighteenth century, volume 1: travellers and tourists , Martin FARR – Xavier GUÉGAN Editor, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. 15 Legends tells that in 1841 Thomas Cook organized the first tour for a group of more than five hundred people to Leicester, England.