Becoming American Express:
150+ Years of Reinvention
and Customer Service
WAR
AND THE AGE OF TRAVEL
During the summer of 1914, approximately 150,000
American tourists were stranded when war engulfed Europe, many without
access to funds. Banks had ceased to pay against foreign letters of credit
or any other form of foreign paper. Panic-stricken travelers lined
up inside and outside the offices of American Express in
whatever city they happened to be visiting. American Express was able to
cash all travelers cheques and money orders in full, enabling quick passage
home for thousands. Many of those remaining were able to book passage home
soon after a decision by American Express and a consortium of nine U.S.
banks to ship $10 million in gold to Europe so that local banks could once
again honor foreign drafts.
Throughout the war, American Express provided other services as well. The company was appointed official agent of the British government to deliver relief parcels, letters and money to British prisoners of war in Germany. Eventually, American Express was delivering 150 tons of packages a day to British prisoners in Bulgaria, Germany, Holland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. Employees also went into the prisoner of war camps to cash drafts for British and French prisoners, and made arrangements whereby they could receive money from home.
American Express officially entered the travel business in 1915. As one executive wrote to the company’s president earlier that year, “Already, we supply travelers with the tickets for their European tours; we receive and forward their mail; we provide reading and writing rooms for their convenience; we store and forward their baggage and packages; we engage their return steamship accommodations. In fact, we are doing already for travelers practically everything except that which is most remunerative to ourselves, namely, furnishing eastbound steamship tickets to Europe; providing hotel accommodations and conducting small parties desiring such a service.”
Within the decade, American Express was undertaking tours to Europe, South America, the Far East, the West Indies and other destinations around the globe. The company became synonymous with luxury travel after its successful charter in 1922 of the first around-the-world cruise, a four-month, 30,000-mile voyage of the Cunard liner, Laconia, with stops in Cuba, Panama, Honolulu, Japan, China, Java, Singapore, India, Cairo and the Mediterranean. (The Laconia went on to carry passengers around the world for another 20 years, before being torpedoed and sunk during World War II.)
American Express’ focus on travel continued through the next several decades. The sale of travelers cheques and money orders – and, more specifically, the float on them and the prudent and profitable investment of that float – generated the revenue that supported this phase of the company’s travel endeavors.
