Even in the old days. Remember this is Europe. The countries are all tiny, most of them are smaller than the state I live in (AZ). Lots of travel between them. Brits on Spanish beeches drunk on Watneys was a full fledged stereotype all the way back to the 50s.
Actually, I had no clue that this was the case. - as early as the Fifties.
And of course you are right with Europeans living cheek by jowl, except for the East Europeans and the Scandinavians, where the harsh climate has always limited the number of humans able to exist there. Indeed, many Europeans who traveled in the States, including myself, had no real clue how ginormous the country is 😀, and not just in sheer size.
Thank you very much for sharing this piece of knowledge about the British tourists, which is fascinating to me as a historian.
Although the big wave of tourism was still to come…then.