How avoid mass tourism in Brittany and develop environmentally friendly holidays ? On this World Tourism Day, the vice-president of the region, in charge of the issue, was invited on France Bleu Armorique at 7:45 a.m. this Tuesday.
France Bleu Armorique: How many tourists does Brittany attract each year?
Anne Gallo: In general, we talk about overnight stays and this year we will be around 100 million overnight stays, which is a significant year, roughly equivalent to or even slightly higher than 2019.
How much does tourism bring in each year in Brittany?
It is an important economic activity since it represents approximately 8.1% of Breton GDP. It’s nearly 70,000 jobs in the territory and when we count the excursionists, that is to say people who travel for the day, whether they are Bretons or tourists, we are around 7 billion euros in economic benefits, which is very significant.
At the moment, we talk a lot about sobriety but tourism is rarely synonymous with ecology. Should we rethink holidays so that they are more respectful of the planet?
This is not necessarily true. At the level of the Brittany region and with Tourisme Bretagne, we work with the economic players and institutions that create this tourism network. We have been working for a number of years on sustainable development values, in particular with Ademe. We provide eco-friendly kits to educate tourists about sorting waste and saving water. We are also working on mobility, we are developing cycling plans and public transport. We have a big program to encourage people to come to Brittany without a car, in partnership with the SNCF, so we are already very committed to environmental transitions.
In Brittany, can we not speak of mass tourism?
No, mass tourism is Barcelona, Dubrovnik or Venice. Brittany, of course, experiences occasional high traffic peaks, especially in summer in certain areas. We know that the tourist destinations of Cap Fréhel, Saint-Malo, the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel and the Gulf of Morbihan are the destinations that welcome the most tourists. But we speak rather of occasional hyper frequentation. And our job, at the level of the Brittany region and Tourisme Bretagne, is to manage flows, to support the movement of visitors to the interior of Brittany so that they can discover its magnificent nuggets. I am thinking of canals or green spaces.
Accompanying these flows will be a real challenge in the years to come because we can see that with the heat waves, Brittany is attracting more and more tourists who want to avoid the heat…
It’s true that people spontaneously go to the seaside, but we are working on communication for the interior of Brittany. We have a great chance, it is the canals of Brittany where we can practice cycling, hiking, boating. They are islands of freshness. We have great biodiversity, a lot of trees, we have nearly 600 kilometers of canals.