Gimmicks East & West

With U.S. tourism to Europe down for the first time since the end of World War II (TIME, Aug. 4) and steamships only three-quarters full, transatlantic ocean lines are not only talking about lowering fares but resorting to gimmicks to entice passengers into their empty cabins. Into New York Harbor last week cruised the Queen Mary with a novel come-on: 20 slot machines set up in the first-and cabin-class smoking rooms and the tourist lounge. All the way across the Atlantic, the "fruit machines" (as the Cunard Line labeled the one-armed bandits) did a brisk business. "The slot-machine area was the busiest place on the boat, busier even than the bar," reported Passenger Stanton Griffis, former U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Poland. "You couldn't fight your way to them."

The French Line's new, $88 million France, which will make its first Atlantic crossing next February, will have a rock-'n'-roll dance hall (Club des Jeunes), electric bowling alleys, shooting galleries, and soda fountains for teenagers. Passengers on the North German Lloyd's Bremen can take warm, hydrotherapeutic baths in the ship's man-made spa. ("The Lloyd line," says one official, "goes in for good clean fun.") American Export Lines are preparing lowbudget, two-week beachcomber cruises to Caribbean ports on the Atlantic, for which the lines will install barbecue pits for outdoor cookouts. There will also be spear fishing in the swimming pools--with rubber fish.

While U.S. tourism is falling off in Europe, it is thriving in Asia. In the first six months of this year, U.S. visitors have raised Hong Kong's tourist rate 36% over the same period last year; tourism in Japan is up 31%. (Main reason for the big jump: the 52nd annual Rotary International Convention held in Japan last May.) Travel men predict that tourists in the Far East will increase their spending from last year's $200 million to $1 billion by 1968. Already under construction in Hong Kong are three new hotels, with a total of 2,000 rooms, while U.S. Restaurateur Donn Beach, owner of Honolulu's Don the Beachcomber, is building a 145-ft., $400,000 replica of a Mississippi river boat to cruise around Hong Kong's waters.

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