Discovering America

In Manhattan last week, 17 Russians toured Chinatown and peered at Easter gowns in Fifth Avenue shopwindows. As cherry blossoms bloomed in Washington, 20 Japanese climbed out of their touring bus to snap pictures. Along Chicago's State Street wandered 72 curious Finnish businessmen. (Their hotel flew Finnish flags, provided Finnish maids for room service.) The Russians, the Japanese and the Finns are part of a new foreign invasion. They may not be seeing America first, but they are seeing it at last.

President Eisenhower having proclaimed 1960 "Visit-U.S.A." year, U.S. airlines and travel agencies are teaming up to persuade foreigners to do just that. For the first time American Express Co. is plugging U.S. tours in foreign newspapers. Trans World Airlines sent five specially trained girls to canvass likely tour groups abroad. Last year an estimated 5,500,000 tourists visited the U.S., spent nearly $900 million. This year's goal: 6,000,000. More than 5,000,000 will be Canadians and Mexicans, but the number of overseas visitors rises each year.

Gangsterland. Most are businessmen, or upper-income tourists who must "justify" their U.S. trip as business because of currency restrictions, though such restraints are being eased in many parts of the world, notably prospering Europe. Nearly all want to see the Grand Canyon, a U.S. supermarket and Disneyland. After King Mohammed V of Morocco paid an official visit to Disneyland, he returned later in civilian clothes, paid his own way to see it all again.

Nationalities often have their own favorite sights. Britons frequently want colonial Williamsburg included in their tours, and try to track down tidewater plantations that once belonged to ancestors. Most Italian tourists head first for Niagara Falls, which outdo the fountains of Tivoli in splash. One of the favorite U.S. cities for overseas visitors is Chicago. Chicagoans like to think that their industry and brisk way of life are the attraction, but the visitors are actually drawn by a romantic conviction that Chicago is the heart of U.S. gangsterism.

Foreigners visiting the unfamiliar New World have their problems, though it is just a canard spread by Columnist Art Buchwald that a Frenchman wrote home that he had a hard time finding a martini with enough vermouth in it. Last year a member of the Japanese Diet toured the U.S. accompanied by an aide loaded down with gallon bottles of sake, a huge box of rice, Japanese pickles, soy sauce and seaweed. Twice nearly ejected from hotels for cooking odoriferous concoctions in his room, he was upbraided when he got back home for causing Japan bad publicity. His explanation: "How could I trust the native food?"

Portuguese Spanish. In many respects the U.S.--which likes to lecture foreign nations about the lack of ice water and other amenities--is singularly indifferent to the needs of overseas visitors. There are seldom interpreters and few facilities at airports or docks to help tourists. Foreigners often complain that they are put last in line at U.S. customs inspection, then cross-examined as if they were dope smugglers or prostitutes.

Sightseeing companies, whose business is tourists, are frequently confused by foreigners. A Los Angeles agency accepted a tour for a large party of wealthy Brazilians, who paid in advance for a driver who could speak their language. The agency provided a Mexican who spoke Castilian Spanish, was baffled when the Brazilians were not satisfied. Said the tour manager plaintively: "They wanted someone who could speak Portuguese Spanish." To help eliminate such troubles, Washington's Democratic Senator Warren G. Magnuson has introduced a bill to set up a federal U.S. tourist bureau.

The biggest obstacles to increased foreign travel to the U.S. are high transoceanic fares and the belief that America is so expensive that only a millionaire can afford a vacation here. Air transoceanic fares are in fact dropping. And travel agencies have already gone a long way toward bringing a U.S. trip within the means of foreigners. Today a British Cook's Tour of 15 days in the U.S., including air fare, hotels and everything but meals, costs just $613.

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