This text is part of the special Plaisirs booklet
We know all too well the excesses of tourism. The overcrowding of “must-see-it’s-written-on-TripAdvisor” places leads to the devastation of natural sites, the watering down of cultural practices and major inconvenience for local populations – talk to the 850 000 Amsterdam residents who, not so long ago, hosted 20 million tourists a year! And that’s without counting the share of responsibility of tourism practices in climate change.
If the societal and environmental ills caused by unbridled tourist activity can be seen with the naked eye, the remedies are more difficult to prescribe. And for good reason: the stakes are complex; the actors, multiple and global.
In his recent essay Reinvent tourism. Save our vacations without destroying the world (Éd. Du Faubourg, 2021), Rémy Knafou, geographer, professor emeritus and pioneer in the study of tourism in France, puts forward several possible solutions that concern both industry and travelers. After the invention of tourism, its democratization and globalization, a fourth tourism revolution must be set in motion, he believes: that of reinvented tourism. We joined in Paris the one who calls himself “touristophile, but tourismophobic” (who fears “the commercial apparatus which exploits the desire to travel of men”) so that he enlightens us.
What is reinvented tourism?
It is a type of tourism whose practices are adapting to a new context, the novelty due to the weight of the environmental constraint, which is at least twofold: on the one hand, the climate emergency, which will therefore weigh more and more on transport, large CO emitters2 ; on the other hand, the territorial urgency: to stop wanting to add to the vast catalog of tourist destinations places still untouched.
How to get there ? Are there any model destinations?
The destinations which lead the way are those which stop thinking that their future depends on more and more tourists, on the endless pursuit of urbanization, as well as on the increasing use of very distant clienteles. Destinations that also care about the acceptability of tourism to their population and offer tourists a quality experience. We can see the magnitude of the task …
The reduction of the burden of tourism on the environment directly concerns the means of transport, first and foremost, the plane. You propose that the pricing of flights take into account their true environmental costs and that frequent travelers be imposed a progressive tax. How could this be achieved?
Tariffs favoring longer stays and less frequent trips are subject to a regulation that the competent international associations such as the States (which in many countries have had to invest to save airlines from bankruptcy) will have to achieve, as soon as possible. being the best. The problem is that there is no pilot in the globalized tourist system in which we live, the sum of the interests of the countries and the organizations not coinciding with the general interest of the planet. The ball is therefore also in the court of public opinion, environmental defense associations, generation Z, etc., to get leaders to turn statements into action.
However, the traveler often seeks the cheapest experience, and when it comes to price increases, some invoke the return of elitist tourism. What is it really ?
Selection by money rules the world; it is therefore the selection threshold that will vary: low-cost flights will cost more, and the customer will have to arbitrate according to his budget as he already did: not everyone can afford a trip to Polynesia, the Seychelles or in Antarctica. But if the price fell with the length of stay, more people would be able to go further, longer, but less often.
You suggest forcing shipowners to equip their cruise liners with particulate filters to limit sulfur oxide emissions. Other measures concern their destinations. Explain to us …
Most of the fleet, even recent ones, is made up of very polluting giant ships: a ship with 3,000 people on board (the largest transporting twice as many) produces almost as many emissions per day as 15,000 cars. That said, if the new polar ships meet the most demanding standards of the moment, the fact remains that they transport tourists to places both very remote and untouched which should remain away from this grip. world tourism which is irresponsible, if we define the responsibility as the concern of the following generations and the will not to make the whole planet a tourist space to be conquered. To satisfy our thirst for travel and discovery, we already have so many places available!
You conclude your essay by stressing that reinvented tourism requires a change in behavior on the part of everyone. What should we change now?
In the current system, denial reigns among companies, primarily transport: this is the case when the leaders of the cruise industry recall that global maritime traffic represents only 3.5% of polluting emissions, of which only 1% comes from cruising, or when airlines say they only contribute 2.5 to 3% of greenhouse gas emissions; if all tourism stakeholders continue to reason like this, we will hit the wall. Hence the need for a growing proportion of tourists to become aware of the issues and to signify it by modifying their practices, which will have effects on the entire system.
Awareness is a long-term matter… Will the tourist of tomorrow be able to reinvent himself?
He will know, because he will have no choice. On a planet populated by 10 billion inhabitants and subject to global warming, the tourist of tomorrow will adapt his practices, which are more responsible, more thoughtful, more reasonable. Tourism was an invention of European society in the Age of Enlightenment. The global society of tomorrow will have to invent tourism adapted to the state of the planet: it is on this condition that tourism will have the future that we can wish for.