Tidsskriftet

Turistforeningen for Danmark was the Danish National Tourist Organization from 1923-1967. It replaced Den danske Turistforening which dissolved in the turmoil following World War I, and was itself replaced in 1967 by Danmarks Turistråd. This article offers an outline of the development of Turistforeningen for Danmark with a main focus on the interwar-period 1923-1939. Through an analysis of the organization’s activities to attract foreign visitors as well as to „enhance“the travel of Danes within their own country it is shown, how two distinct understandings of „tourism“ co-existed, and was balanced against each other, within the organization. Commercial interests, primarily based in Copenhagen and the larger tourist destinations, saw tourism as an economic activity and an „exporting trade“ to be exploited in an ever-increasing international tourism market. On the other hand were the more than 100 local tourist associations, to a large degree non-commercial, which saw tourism as an educational or „ideal“ activity, meaning cultural and educational where visiting scenery, prehistoric sites, historic town centres and seeing local customs should teach locals and visitors alike about the region and the nation at large. The basic partnership between commercial interests and local tourism was maintained throughout the period, but government involvement in 1935 made Turistforeningen for Danmark a state-sponsored organization, dramatically increasing the available funding, but also shifting the balance within the organization in favour of commercial interests. It also meant noticeable changes in the representations of Denmark through brochures and guidebooks and the beginnings of a modern tourism discourse of ‘fairy-tale Denmark’, stressing tranquillity, laid-back city-life, social welfare and design. This development was halted by World War II, but though co-operation (as well as organizational debate) persisted throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, the commercial and professional understanding of tourism became increasingly dominant, thereby pushing different ways of managing and thinking about tourism to the margins.