Economic Systems and Their Impact on Tourist Resort Development: The Case of the Spa in Europe

This paper examines the impact of two contrasting economic systems upon the development of the European spa resorts. These are British systems of market capitalism and continental European systems of state-managed capitalism. The author identifies factors facilitating the success of spa resorts and also those associated with their business failure. He challenges conventional explanations that the rise in fashionability of seaside resorts led to the demise of the inland British spa resort and develops an alternative explanation. He demonstrates that the root of the explanation for their decline is an economic one, namely a failure of public and private investment to renew the British tourist product to a level where it could compete effectively in the international marketplace. This happened because British structures of capitalism were ill adapted to facilitate the levels of investment and innovation required for British spas to modernize sufficiently to enable them to compete effectively against emerging continental European rivals benefiting from substantial public-sector support. Visiting spas remained popular amongst the English-speaking upper classes into the twentieth century; the significant change was that, whereas once they preferred to patronize British resorts, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, they chose to visit more modern and attractive continental European destinations.