2000 years Before Christ, in India and Mesopotamia
Travel for trade was an important feature since the beginning of civilization. The port at Lothal was an important centre of trade between the Indus valley civilization and the Sumerian civilization.
600 BC and thereafter
The earliest form of leisure tourism can be traced as far back as the Babylonian and Egyptian empires. A museum of historic antiquities was open to the public in Babylon. The Egyptians held many religious festivals that attracted the devout and many people who thronged to cities to see famous works of arts and buildings.
In India, as elsewhere, kings travelled for empire building. The Brahmins and the common people traveled for religious purposes. Thousands of Brahmins and the common folk thronged Sarnath and Sravasti to be greeted by the inscrutable smile of the Enlightened One- the Buddha.
500 BC, the Greek civilization
The Greek tourists traveled to sites of healing gods. The Greeks also enjoyed their religious festivals that increasingly became a pursuit of pleasure, and in particular, sport. Athens had become an important site for travelers visiting the major sights such as the Parthenon. Inns were established in large towns and seaports to provide for travelers’ needs. Courtesans were the principal entertainment offered.
This era also saw the birth of travel writing. Herodotus was the worlds’ first travel writer. Guidebooks also made their appearance in the fourth century covering destinations such as Athens, Sparta and Troy. Advertisements in the way of signs directing people to inns are also known in this period.
The Roman Empire
With no foreign borders between England and Syria, and with safe seas from piracy due to Roman patrols, the conditions favoring travel had arrived. First class roads coupled with staging inns (precursors of modern motels) promoted the growth of travel. Romans traveled to Sicily, Greece, Rhodes, Troy and Egypt. From 300 AD travel to the Holy Land also became very popular. The Romans introduced their guidebooks (itineraria), listing hotels with symbols to identify quality.
Second homes were built by the rich near Rome, occupied primarily during springtime social season. The most fashionable resorts were found around Bay of Naples. Naples attracted the retired and the intellectuals, Cumae attracted the fashionable while Baiae attracted the down market tourist, becoming noted for its rowdiness, drunkenness and all- night singing.
Travel and Tourism were to never attain a similar status until the modern times.
In the Middle Ages
Travel became difficult and dangerous as people traveled for business or for a sense of obligation and duty.
Adventurers sought fame and fortune through travel. The Europeans tried to discover a sea route to India for trade purposes and in this fashion discovered America and explored parts of Africa. Strolling players and minstrels made their living by performing as they traveled. Missionaries, saints, etc. traveled to spread the sacred word.
Leisure travel in India was introduced by the Mughals. The Mughal kings built luxurious palaces and enchanting gardens at places of natural and scenic beauty (for example Jehangir traveled to Kashmir drawn by its beauty.
Travel for empire building and pilgrimage was a regular feature.
The Grand Tour
From the early seventeenth century, a new form of tourism was developed as a direct outcome of the Renaissance. Under the reign of Elizabeth 1, young men seeking positions at court were encouraged to travel to continent to finish their education. Later, it became customary for education of gentleman to be completed by a ‘Grand Tour’ accompanied by a tutor and lasting for three or more years. While ostensibly educational, the pleasure seeking men traveled to enjoy life and culture of Paris, Venice or Florence. By the end of eighteenth century, the custom had become institutionalized in the gentry. Gradually pleasure travel displaced educational travel. The advent of Napoleonic wars inhibited travel for around 30 years and led to the decline of the custom of the Grand Tour.
The development of the spas
The spas grew in popularity in the seventeenth century in Britain and a little later in the European Continent as awareness about the therapeutic qualities of mineral water increased. Taking the cure in the spa rapidly acquired the nature of a status symbol. The resorts changed in character as pleasure became the motivation of visits. They became an important centre of social life for the high society.
In the nineteenth century they were gradually replaced by the seaside resort.
The sun, sand and sea resorts
The sea water became associated with health benefits. The earliest visitors therefore drank it and did not bathe in it. By the early eighteenth century, small fishing resorts sprung up in England for visitors who drank and immersed themselves in sea water. With the overcrowding of inland spas, the new sea side resorts grew in popularity. The introduction of steamboat services in 19th century introduced more resorts in the circuit. The seaside resort gradually became a social meeting point
 Role of the industrial revolution in promoting travel in the west
The rapid urbanization due to industrialization led to mass immigration in cities. These people were lured into travel to escape their environment to places of natural beauty, often to the countryside they had come from change of routine from a physically and psychologically stressful jobs to a leisurely pace in countryside.
Highlights of travel in the nineteenth century 
·        Advent of railway initially catalyzed business travel and later leisure travel. Gradually special trains were chartered to only take leisure travel to their destinations.
·        Package tours organized by entrepreneurs such as Thomas Cook.
·        The European countries indulged in a lot of business travel often to their colonies to buy raw material and sell finished goods.
·        The invention of photography acted as a status-enhancing tool and promoted overseas travel.
·        The formation of first hotel chains; pioneered by the railway companies who established great railway terminus hotels.
·        Seaside resorts began to develop different images as for day-trippers, elite, for gambling.
·        Other types of destinations-ski resorts, hill stations, mountaineering spots etc.
·        The technological development in steamships promoted travel between North America and Europe.
·        The Suez Canal opened direct sea routes to India and the Far East.
·        The cult of the guidebook followed the development of photography.
 
 
Tourism in the Twentieth Century
 
The First World War gave first hand experience of countries and aroused a sense of curiosity about international travel among less well off sector for the first time. The large scale of migration to the US meant a lot of travel across the Atlantic. Private motoring began to encourage domestic travel in Europe and the west.  The sea side resort became annual family holiday destination in Britain and increased in popularity in other countries of the west. Hotels proliferated in these destinations.
The birth of air travel and after
The wars increased interest in international travel. This interest was given the shape of mass tourism by the aviation industry. The surplus of aircraft and growth of private airlines aided the expansion of air travel. The aircraft had become comfortable, faster and steadily cheaper for overseas travel. With the introduction of Boeing 707 jet in 1958, the age of air travel for the masses had arrived. The beginning of chartered flights boosted the package tour market and led to the establishment of organized mass tourism. The Boeing 747, a 400 seat craft, brought the cost of travel down sharply. The seaside resorts in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Caribbean were the initial hot spots of mass tourism.
A corresponding growth in hotel industry led to the establishment of world-wide chains. Tourism also began to diversify as people began to flock alternative destinations in the 70s. Nepal and India received a throng of tourists lured by Hare Krishna movement and transcendental meditation. The beginning of individual travel in a significant volume only occurred in the 80s. Air travel also led to a continuous growth in business travel especially with the emergence of the MNCs.

Remember the days when travel agencies were everywhere and before you took a trip you consulted a travel agent? Of course, that was before the advent of the Internet. Now the travel agent’s job is one of the fastest disappearing jobs there are, but there is still a reason for you to become a travel agent.
Now there is a new kind of travel agent called a home-based independent travel agent.
These independent agents take advantage of one of the most effective ways of marketing products or services. It’s called word-of-mouth advertising. As people are bombarded with more and more advertising messages, advertising messages are getting less and less effective.
When people use a product or service they like, they tell other people about it. That has always been true. But now this fact is much more important. If you want to grow market share these days, it’s best to find a way to take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing.
That’s why a new form of travel agency has sprung up. These “hosting” travel agencies still have travel agents in them, but these agents have a different role. Their role is not to find customers to sell travel to, there role is to sell travel to the people referred by the home-based independent travel agents the agency signed up.
The home-based independent agents are the ones actually “selling” the travel. But most of them aren’t doing it the traditional way with standard marketing techniques. They are taking deeply discounted trips themselves and then telling their family, friends, neighbors, and business associates about these trips. Since these independent travel agents can sell travel too, this word-of-mouth advertising helps them make commissions on the trips the people they refer make.
So not only are they getting deeply discounted trips, they are making money by simply sharing their experiences! These agents even earn commissions on their personal travel too!
That’s where you come in. If you want to get the same perks travel agents get, then you can now easily become a travel agent. All you have to do is to sign up with one of these travel agencies, read a training manual, receive a travel agent ID card, and you are now qualified to receive the same benefits as other travel agents.
You don’t even have to quit your job and become a full time travel agent to get the same travel benefits that were previously only available to travel agents who worked in a travel agency. You can travel at up to 80% off and make some money from doing something you’re going to do anyway…talk to others about the trip you just took.
In fact, everyone benefits. You benefit by receiving huge discounts. The travel agency makes money by selling more travel without expensive advertising. The hotels, cruise lines, airlines, and the rest of the travel industry make more money because they see more travelers. It all starts when you become a travel agent for one of these host travel agencies.