Tourism, Hotel Industry and Banking Development: The Case of the Lake Geneva Region at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In the first decade of the 20th century, tourism already played a considerable role in Switzerland's economic development, since the hotel industry alone accounted for at least 4% of GDP. In addition, tourism had important spillover effects that benefitted the development of other sectors of the economy such as building industry, trade, agriculture or certain branches of industry (watchmaking, jewellery, embroidery, chocolate, electrical engineering, etc.). From this point of view, Swiss historiography has largely neglected the contribution of tourism to the development of the banking sector, which flourished during the Belle Epoque and became a central player in the Swiss economy in the 20th century. The proposed contribution aims to investigate this issue by analysing the case of the Lake Geneva region at the beginning of the 20th century. Among the main tourist regions of Switzerland, it also had a dense banking network in Geneva, Lausanne and Vevey. While the absence of available banking sources complicates the historian's task, the results obtained in the context of a major research project and the development of a vast database of tourism and banking actors in Lake Geneva will make it possible to conduct both a quantitative and qualitative analysis that is pioneering in this field.