The rise of the German and the demise of the English spa industry: a critical analysis of business success and failure

Abstract

This paper develops a critical and comparative analysis of the growth and demise of the spa industry in the two contrasting European business environments. These are, first, those market oriented systems of Anglo-Saxon capitalism developed during the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century and, secondly, those systems of state-managed German capitalism developed during the industrial transformation of middle Europe in the 19th century. The paper highlights the fact that, while England witnessed the pioneering development of the modern spa resort, this industry failed to maintain its market position in the face of growing German competition. The paper critically evaluates conventional explanations for this decline which suggest that it was the inevitable consequence of the rise in fashionability of the English seaside resorts, and proposes an alternative explanation. This clearly indicates that English structures of capitalism were ill-adapted to facilitate the levels of planning, investment, control and innovation which were keys to the success of the German spa industry. Thus, in contrast with the English pioneering resorts which were primarily market led and private sector speculations, the German system of statemanaged capitalism produced a well resourced, innovative and attractive series of modern resort destinations. Until 1914 they attracted the patronage of an international elite, including English monarchs who were the lineal descendants of those Georgian kings who had once patronized the English pioneering innovation, the spa resorts of conspicuous leisure consumption.