European tourism in midstream

 For two years, the theme of European Tourism Day has been heritage and these complex heritage objects that are the cultural routes; a calculated move away from the traditional arrangements where every year lobbyists are given a platform to reassert the importance to the economy of this or that industry sector. It was a sizeable gamble, since they were no longer observing but rather predicting, and consequently helping those who haveswitched on to cross-border tourism, before the Lisbon Treaty has really been implemented. I have already produced a detailed description of this evolution and how, after more than 10 years of waiting, the scenery of European tourism suddenly changed to take into account the new players in the field, under the auspices of Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani.

Trapani, Sicily. The Salt Route

The theme for 2012 came back, in some ways, along more traditional lines, striking a balance between two themes: overcoming the persistent seasonality of tourism in the morning; coastal tourism in the afternoon, which was predominantly spent in a dynamic round table. At the Commission, much importance has recently been placed on the need to diversify maritime activities while protecting against all forms of excess (overfishing, invasive construction, uncontrolled concentrations of tourism, neglect of hinterlands, concentration of capital in foreign hands, etc.) harming the integrity of cultural and natural heritage and even the quality of marine water, believe it or not. As in other sectors of the economy, the concern is of killing the goose the lays the golden egg.

Maria Damanaki, European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries

As in other sectors, however, help arrives minutes before the end, and it smacks a little of trying to save a terminal patient. The European Parliament and its legal pressures have pushed Commissioner Maria Damanaki and the competent Directorate-General (Maritime Affairs and Fisheries) in front of a number of huge challenges which go far beyond the EU’s capabilities, since we are dealing with a global issue, responsibility for which rests with all countries that have signed the major treaties and resolutions on the environment.

However, working with the contradictions of member states and their continuous affirmation of subsidiarity laws (only the Maltese Minister for Tourism was present), two Commissioners and two Directorates-General were at least able to come together around a common goal: to make the seas which bathe the shores of Europe and which we share with other continents measure up to the same criteria for quality of service as other destinations which have renewed not only their product but their very approach to tourism.  

Mario de Marco, Maltese Minister for Tourism, Culture and the Environment

In this regard, the Mediterranean (and the Black Sea), civiliser of three continents and top nautical destination, is a textbook case where geopolitics combines with or even conditions leisure policies while, due to Europe’s reunification, the Baltic Sea is another area where cooperation between the countries around it has already given rise to extremely interesting experiments. What is more, nobody has mentioned the Barents Sea or the Arctic. Although they are already embroiled in pivotal geostrategic battles, tourism will grow unavoidably in these regions, if only because global warming will reshuffle the cards over the next 50 years and its effects will certainly be notable by 2020, when the European Union takes stock of the results of its growth policy.

In all instances, be it extending tourist seasons and thus better distributing visitor numbers, or preparing a proactive policy for harmonious and controlled coastal development, the key is reducing the adverse effects of mass consumption and hence mass tourism while taking account of social changes such as the marked change in the age pyramid over the last 60 years and the way in which the concept of holidays has largely moved on from passively expecting the product to the active response of tourists, who have once again become travellers.

Fish market, Venice, Italy

Before I present the examples that Commission officials chose to illustrate good practice for the two themes, I would like to end this general presentation section with a note on the evolution of the tourist policy launched with much courage and determination in 2010. There are only two years left in which to implement the policy’s instruments before the Commission changes hands and the European elections take place. The fight for a significant increase to the tourism budget after 2014 seems to have been won, however, which would make it possible to properly bed in certain actions.

First among the instruments are the creation of a European tourism observatory and a quality label which provides governance tools for a European ‘brand’.

Without these instruments, used to enhance destinations’ success – in a Europe essentially perceived as ‘cultural’ by tourists worldwide – the still fragile successes of the plan’s first efforts could be put at risk. Now the plan has, finally, set out the heritage and identity of European tourism and created occasions to bring together the most persuaded operators (cooperation over cultural routes with the label of the Council of Europe, ‘Crossroads of Europe’, help for regions in the networks, the EDEN label, etc.), it has come face to face with, as Antonion Tajani rightly pointed out at the launch of European Tourism Day, the third industrial revolution, that of communication and knowledge industries.

Opening of ETD, Antonio Tajani and Pedro Ortun (on the screen)

The Commissioner spoke about ‘journeys for growth’, mentioning the proactive ‘50,000 tourists’ policy in conjunction with sending countries in Latin America and hoping for meaningful change with regard to the provision of tourist visas in order to facilitate travel, which is certainly topical if we are to believe the statistics showing resistance from this European sector in relation to heavy industries.

However, we must also be able to use the observatory to measure the impact of the ‘journeys for growth’ as we do for the cultural routes, which rather fortunately do not sit well within the confines of traditional tourist engineering. To my mind, we cannot have do one without the other, for the phenomenon of tourism has not stopped evolving, far from it.