No doubt, like the stately passenger liners that were converted into hotels or year-round cruise ships once the days of their transatlantic runs had ended, Americans will adjust their travel plans to whatever circumstances exist. If more people did not take to the road, it was because throughout most of recorded history travel was no pleasure. There was little incentive to tourism when roads were poor or nonexistent, inns uncomfortable, and transportation expensive and inconvenient. Only the favored few even tried to escape the congestion of the city for mountain or seaside retreats in summer, or for curative thermal spas if they suffered from ill health. The country estate and the watering place of Roman times and the religious pilgrimage popular in the Middle Ages, however, represented the small beginnings of what would one day become a tidal wave of tourism.
Tourism differs from travel as leisure differs from labor.
People travel for any number of reasons, from business to war or religion. Tourism, however, is travel undertaken for pleasure. Depending on individual tastes, it may involve rest and relaxation, sports, cultural exchanges, educational and aesthetic experiences, or eating and shopping. As a modern multimillion-dollar business, it caters to the tourist's need for transportation, accommodation, food, entertainment, recreation, health, souvenirs, and social contact. Mass tourism is a relatively modern phenomenon, but travelers have reacted as tourists, regardless of the purpose of their journeys, since the beginning of recorded history.