The history of tourist destinations tends to prioritise economic and cultural issues, with questions of power, control and conflict over resource allocation being treated as local government issues involving space, amenities and social tone. This is very important, but only part of the story, and this paper develops ideas about the role of national and international politics in the growth of elite beach resorts in Europe over a century which saw rapid expansion and, in the twentieth century, a trend to the democratisation of visiting publics which proved difficult to assimilate. Attention will focus on the role played by resort environments in, and the impact on them of, the following themes: wars and rumours of wars; royal and other government patronage and 'summer capital' status (with the fear of its removal); the role of political patronage in securing central government assistance for projects helpful to resort interests (railways, port developments, amenities, the dismantling of military installations); metropolitan debates over the role of elite tourism in national economies, and its impact on host cultures, and to what extent it should be encouraged; and, relatedly, the conflicts over gambling and public morality which led to recurrent and impassioned debate in national legislatures, especially with regard to the legal status of casino gambling (above all roulette and bacarrat). These ideas will be worked out through comparative studies of San Sebastian (Spain) and Ostend (in what became Belgium), which followed superficially similar but far from identical trajectories over this century; but material from other beach resort settings, from Brighton (England) to Mar del Plata (Argentina), will also be drawn in where appropriate.