The tourism industry facing the challenge of “acceptability” of populations
Cock-a-doodle Doo ! With nearly 90 million visitors welcomed in France, the country of 67 million inhabitants still remains the first tourist destination in the world, according to government statistics. The sector is breaking new records, reveals the Covid-19 episode behind it. A reason for satisfaction in the current relative sluggishness of an economy subject to high inflation expressed by elected officials and players in the sector gathered in Marseille this Thursday around the Minister of Tourism, Olivia Grégoire.
Organized by the National Federation of Institutional Tourism Organizations, this convention was entitled “for positive tourism”. In fact, this title also suggests that there could be “negative tourism”, emitted by this sector which contributes up to 8.5% of France’s GDP (nearly 190 billion euros), according to data from World Travel and Tourism Council. In Paca, or “South region”, as the president of the region Renaud Muselier prefers to call it, the second most visited after Île-de-France, this contribution reaches “20 billion euros for 13% of the wealth regional produced annually. An industry in addition “not relocatable”, rejoiced Renaud Muselier.
“Death to wheeled suitcases”
And it would seem that the first response given to the possible nuisances caused by this mass tourism is first of all semantic: “Let’s stop talking about overtourism, but let’s talk about peak attendance”, encouraged François de Canson, vice-president of the Paca region, notably in charge of tourism and chairman of the regional tourism committee. Later on the podium, speakers from the sector took turns, reporting the need “to work on the collective unconscious”, “to stop tourism bashing”, of the painful “question of membership” of the populations and that of “the acceptability of tourism that can be experienced as intrusive”.
Because there is indeed one of the nodes of the problem that can constitute the visitor-visited relationship, especially in urban centers where short-term furnished rentals are multiplying. The Panier district in Marseilles has already paid the price while today it is the very dynamic Cours-Ju – la Plaine which seem to encounter a problem against which the town hall tries to crack down. “Death to suitcases on wheels”, can we read, moreover, these days on posters freshly pasted in the neighborhood. Tourist pressure that is harmful to the capacity of the inhabitants to simply inhabit their city, and which is not unique to Marseille, but which has also resonances in Brittany or in Corsica.
Other suppliers of tourist contingents in town, cruise passengers, who are several million each year to disembark for a few hours on the shores of the Mediterranean, are also in the sights of the inhabitants, in particular for their emissions of fine particles. This Thursday, in Marseilles, the main shipowners signed this same Thursday a charter aimed at improving the situation by Mediterranean. The city and the region also finance the “zero smoke stopover” system with the electrification of the quays so that stationary ferries can connect to them, although some in Marseille, essentially united in the “Stop cruise” collective would continue to see cruise passengers no longer dock at all.
Beyond the semantic battle seeking to win the support of the populations, experimental devices are tested, such as the implementation a quota system for the creek of Sugiton or the island of Porquerolles. “Today there is no longer any problem between inhabitants, restaurateurs and tourists linked to this attendance”, assures François de Canson. For the Minister Olivia Gregoirewhich recognizes that “tourist pressure can sometimes make coexistence between the number of tourists and the inhabitants difficult”, “it is important to regulate better”.
“I think we have to look at what is positive”, prefers the opponent François de Canson. It is not written, beyond the initiatives and investments to reduce the environmental impact of tourism, that this “positivity” does not end in certain urban centers in anti-tourist slings, as has existed in Barcelona for several years . However, the actors seem to be aware of this and claim to be working on it. This will also be one of the subjects of the next meeting of the sector committee on November 7th.