DearTIME-Reader:

THIS was the year, it seems, 1 when nearly everybody who had never gone abroad made it. Neighbors from Tulsa, Wheeling and Santa Barbara ran into neighbors in Regent Street, Place Pigalle and Via Veneto. A neighbor of TIME Advertising Salesman Crowell Hadden learned the hard way how small the world has become. At home in Glen Cove, L.I., he had bet $100 that he could stop smoking longer than Hadden. One night in Paris, not long after, Hadden spotted his friend in a dim Left Bank cave. "There he was," Hadden chuckled, "relaxed and happy--with smoke curling from his cigarette."

Hadden, who has helped bring TIME a greater dollar volume of travel advertising than any other magazine, has covered some 200,000 miles in the U.S., Europe and Latin America in the past eight years. On a recent 10,000-mile trip to Europe, he noted that the traditional off season is no longer off. Hotel and transportation facilities are still booked up to capacity.

Main purpose of his trip was to attend the 25th world travel congress of the American Society of Travel Agents in Lausanne. There he heard estimates that by the end of this year some 61 million U.S. citizens alone will have taken vacation trips at home or abroad, costing a stupendous $25 billion.

Hadden's message to the 1,892 delegates was that much of this travel is inspired by news stories about people and places as well as scenic color spreads such as those that appear regularly in TIME. To prove his point, he tested the delegates with a panel of numbered pictures that had illustrated TIME stories. A surprising number of dele gates knew all the answers. Still there were skeptics.

He lunched with three of the skeptics--an airline executive and two hotelmen--a week later in a famed Rome restaurant.

To disprove Hadden's claim that confirmed travelers are more likely than not confirmed TIME readers, the airline executive asked four English-speaking travelers at an adjoining table if any of them read TIME. It turned out that one was a Milan subscriber to our Atlantic edition, and the other three read TIME'S U.S. edition. "What's more," one volunteered, "I've been a TIME subscriber 23 years."

Said the airline executive: "I'll buy the drinks."

Cordially yours,

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