Tourism in Three Waves

 

When I began writing this ‘Destination Europe’ blog, I set out with a wish of writing a brief history of the prevailing uncertainties which gave rise to a common European policy created to put an end to the continent’s erratic presentation vis-à-vis its international customer base and at the same time present tourists from other European countries, including Council of Europe- but not yet European Union member states, with coherent routes, intelligent solutions and brand new proposals through which they could rediscover the continent they share.

After all, for me it merely felt like a return to the basis of the programme to which I have dedicated myself for 25 years: the Cultural Routes. As a result, I had simultaneously presented the key parts of a course for students who wanted to develop the way in which those in charge of tourism around the world, but Europe in particular, imagined ‘Destination Europe’.

Where are the tourism policies?

Given the decisions taken by the European Commission since the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the underlying issue revolves around the likelihood of a more voluntary reintegration of tourism policies into European policy after 15 years of disenchantment. Admittedly, such a reintegration has the look of a virus, for tourism affects practically every sector of policy and at the same time is affected by changes in every sector. To mention only some, purposefully erratically: the ‘health without borders’ directive, which will lead Europeans to travel to the place of treatment or cure of their choosing; or the difficult implementation of the Schengen Convention and temporary obstacles to free movement; how about the environmental protection policy, which directly influences the education of tourists on the matter; the common agricultural policy and the question of the place and role of local production in the image of destinations, or even the measures to do with fishing and responses to the crisis affecting marine fishermen.

Oenogastronomy. The Phoenicians Route. Sicily

The above question stems from changes in the market and a critical analysis of what the people who get tourists on the move, accompany them and look after them say. I do not need to remind you of the period of stunning popular success experienced by tourism after the end of the Second World War. This wave, the like of which had never been seen before, began as the social advances of the thirties arose, interrupted by the war. It rode the changing consumer trends of the post-war boom, with its slogans highlighting comfort as paramount in ‘home economics’, when the flexibility of the readymade, off-the-rack, disposable industries hailing from the US supplanted the celebration of domestic manual labour and recycling or reusing things with the joy of the new, of more is better. Captured by nascent marketing and advertising, these new habits meant that the public reacted positively to a readymade, convenient type of tourism. From a society of housework we transformed unawares into a society of family leisure activities “where family and free time collide with the solid entrenched hierarchies of some and the working class vision of others.” (Jean Viard)

However, this wave also engendered a tendency for offers to lose their allure quickly, a tendency which persisted and escalated over forty years, bringing success to the bigger operators who could come up with response-products for mass tourism and set up the logistics to cope with it, with one focus of dream construction, a combination of three key words: sea, sex and sun. This approach still dominates a large part of the tourism market today.

Venice, between history and consumption

Leisure and patrimonialisation

A fundamental change, however, occurred in parallel as the general level of research steadily increased, a change which has touched the entire tourism network over the last 25 years only because of the arrival of a deep anthropological crisis. A crisis which intervened “after 25 years of hegemony of the work ethic” and provoked thought on a shift from a leisure society to a society which tends to leave part of the population languishing the enforced leisure time of unemployment, and a change based on the upheaval of information and communication, not to mention the overhaul made to the map of Europe. It is a rather schizophrenic combination of globalisation and inward withdrawal. Destination Europe tourism has provided graduated responses, which seem to be both a symptom of the changes and a remedy for the concerns borne of the upheavals which affect the fundamental notions of the individual and the family.

Jean Viard writes that “tourism had to recreate the desire for heritage, the sea, the mountains, the countryside… and make cities another type of scenery. Making ‘artialisation´ desirable, enhancing the landscape, are actions which embellish reality and freeze it in the state in which it was discovered.”

 We shall come back to this for ‘artialisation’, which is also known as ‘patrimonialization’ and was evident in the enthusiastically received relief maps exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, is already being questioned, which shows that the next phase has begun in its wake. We have switched from the exotic dream for everyone to the elite dream for everyone, adapting the Grand Tour to fit working-class budgets, then to a return to tourists and tourism providers both sharing the values of traditional ways of working, in which the importance of handcrafting, local production and recycling “in a sustainable development framework’ are a part of the now-growing offer. As is often the case when three waves follow one after the other, the last wave is a synthesis of the preceding two, by implanting technology into a context which as such connects the need for proximity and for travelling abroad. No doubt the need for synthesis, accord and consensus we feel when we lose our way will lead us to recover the two others.

By passing through these three stages, overlapping them and hybridising them, tourism has taken up an essential position in policy for economy, integration and culture at a European level down to a local level.

Paris, between artialisation and patrimonialization

Work ethic and leisure ethic

The sector is important for the economy, due to its resistance to the financial crisis relative to other sectors of production, which have adapted by the breakdown of machinery, or neglect or relocation of men. It is important for jobs and local development in areas which have transitioned from a traditional society dominated by family economy to a postmodern society in which visitors and permanently-relocated pensioners have taken up a brand new role in the provision of wealth based on cooperation, even co-responsibility. It has human importance for it mixes cultures by renewing circulation around a continent which has long shared geography, politics and mentalities. Finally, cultural importance due to the fact that diversification and thematic enrichment of the offer, as well as profound changes to the use of free-time capital and views on work ethic which put heritage in a curious situation where protection and consumption must go hand in hand, all the while prompting discussion on identity.

Let me give you one example, yet one which is all the more striking as it touches a demographic which is taking over, active pensioners: personal accommodation for this growing section of the population focuses on both daily life and tourism, for working time is almost permanently muddled with leisure time: “… the accommodation with “the view” (of the sea, mountains, the countryside or even towns) has integrated the art of landscape, acquired through travel, into the intimacy of daily life; on a quasi-Japanese model of togetherness (if you look at Augustin Berque’s writing), where society is brought together by sharing the same point of view and mutual knowledge of it (which is also the practice of television)” (Jean Viard). I would add that the accommodation which doesn’t have the view recreate it by use of miniature gardens or by returning to the practice of neighbourhood gardening.

But before I set out on a report on behavioural changes and the nature of the initiatives responding to these changes, I must look at the powers exerted by the European Institutions which complement tourism in Europe, and thus the responsibilities they share more or less willingly in the actions they propose and their, at times, management of these changes.

This will be the topic of the following posts.

 

Jean-Paul Clébert. Vivre en Provence. L'Aube. 1993.

Bertrand Hervieu et Jean Viard. L'Archipel paysan ou la Fin de la république agricole. L'Aube. 2001.

Hervé Le Bras. L'Adieu aux masses. L'Aube. 2005.

Jean Viard. Court traité sur les vacances, les voyages et l'hospitalité des lieux. L'Aube poche. 2006.

Jean Viard. Eloge de la mobilité. Essai sur le capital temps libre et la valeur travail. L'Aube poche. 2011.

Jeremy Rifkin. La fin du travail. La Découverte. 1996 et 2006.