Before the 2020 pandemic, we reached some two million cruise passengers a year in the Marseille city, which is good for the economy, of course. But residents of Marseille also see very bad sides. And they intend to denounce it again today at the beginning of the afternoon, during a rally in a town square. This is the “societal question” of the day with the sociologist Jean Viard, research director at the CNRS, a great connoisseur of Marseille and also a specialist in tourism.
franceinfo: Demonstration just now for two main reasons: the pollution generated by its large liners, but also the mass tourism it generates and its consequences on the city…
John Viard: Pollution from these big boats, especially when they are stationary, is a huge problem, and that is why there is a policy of electrifying the quays so that these boats, when they are stop with their engine – because they run the engine obviously for air conditioning and electricity – So that, it’s moving forward and it’s changing. It is essentially a regional and port policy.
Beyond that, there is on the one hand the fact that, at sea, these big boats, all the boats at sea are very polluting and that, since there are international waters, there is indeed no rules. So these boats use things to burn, which are monstrous, as if the earth were not a totality, as if far from the coasts, one can pollute as one wants. No, it always falls somewhere, so that’s a real issue, even if inside the ports, I think we’re really in the process of resolving the issue.
After a second question, it is the question of large-scale tourism, this popular mass tourism which, in fact, has developed enormously. Me, I defended cruises in Marseille a lot, when I was elected local and I think that it largely contributed to transform the image of the city. What is complicated in tourism is that there are boats arriving, but these people who are on the boats, when they are at sea, they don’t bother anyone. But yes, there are stopovers. Me, I respect that. There are different tourists to whom you have to offer different things.
There are people who come on a cruise, who come to spend half a day in Marseille and indeed, they have to go to the Old Port and do some shopping. Let’s be honest, we hope they will each spend 50 euros to also be in this perspective. There are other tourists who come to do a conference for three days. They have to be taken to another place. There are people who are in Provence who come to spend a day in Marseille. They have to be directed to other destinations. This is what Barcelona have done with some success. That is to say, spread the uses, know the tourists, know what they are looking for and offer them a certain number of answers.
And I think we have to be careful: we are in a world where there are always people who want to reject others: immigrants, cruise passengers… It depends a bit on political colors. Me, I tend to say first: let’s be welcoming! First let’s form humanity, which is all the same the central case of the journey. And then, of course, put in place a tourism policy and regulations, of course.
With the safeguards that you mentioned to limit the nuisances linked to ecology…
Sure !
You quoted the figure of 50 euros. This is a figure put forward, in particular by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which says that each cruise passenger, when he gets off the boat – because not all of them get off – spends 50 euros on average during his visit. But this figure is disputed by the demonstrators of the day.
This raises an interesting question all the same: is a city, here Marseille, but we can talk about all the cities and all the tourist places in France, losing their identity or are the inhabitants dispossessed of their city because many tourists arrive. And there, we know that tourism is picking up, so it’s a topical question after the pandemic?
But of course, there were a billion and a half international tourists before the pandemic and there were 60 million international tourists in 1968. It’s an explosion and we will very quickly be at two or three billion tourists. So it is a central activity of the world economy, but it is specific to tourism.
Tourism is an immense crowd that is at the same time curious, consuming, regulated. It is both invasive, at the same time it provides work. So, does it transform the territories? Somehow, yes, but it transforms them because what people are looking for is typical. They want a typical city, at the limit, what they don’t want is for it to change.
Tourism at bottom is a conservative. If you go back to Rome, you have already been there. You don’t want us to change the historic city. And so tourism, it fixes the heritage, it fixes the territory. In that sense, it influences.
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The subject of the very imposing cruise liners which arrive in these ports is also a subject in Venice, the liners which damage, according to the defenders of the environment, the lagoon of Venice. You, do you make a difference between these two cases, between Marseille and Venice?
It has nothing to do with Venice, the scandal is that the boats enter the lagoon, they are monsters that destroy the city because the city already has a tendency to sink on its own. So that speeds up the process whereas in the port of Marseille, they are at the end of the port.