Lhe outlook for the 2022 tourist season looks promising. At the international level, the page of the two years of pandemic seems to be turning for good: according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the arrivals of international tourists in the world more than doubled (+ 130%) in January 2022 by compared to 2021.
As for France, a “very, very good season” is looming, to use the words of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, who was then Minister Delegate in charge of Tourism, during a press conference last April. The figures, supported by the return of foreign tourists, indeed show a 24% increase in reservations to date compared to 2019 and 30% if we take the forecast turnover.
READ ALSOSummer holidays turned upside down by climate change
The “post-Covid” prophets, who predicted a world more like before in terms of tourism, seem for the moment to have been wrong with the massive return of tourists to airports or to beaches. This is enough to revive, in parallel, “tourismophobia” or touristophobia, which designate the aversion towards tourism and/or tourists, which the cases of Barcelona or Venice seem to demonstrate, with the theme of overtourism (overtourism). However, it’s a safe bet that even if the trends were not on the rise, this touristophobia would persist.
At the sources of “touristophobia”
Indeed, it seems inherent to tourism, and has been for a long time. As early as 1842, the dictionary of the French Academy proposed the following definition in its Supplement to the dictionary of the French Academy:
“It is said of travelers who travel through foreign countries only out of curiosity or idleness, who make a kind of tour in countries usually visited by their compatriots. It is said above all of English travelers in France, Switzerland and Italy. This phrase was borrowed from the English language. »
READ ALSOAnd if you spent the summer in Deauville
Touristophobia is obviously combined with Anglophobia and is found in the definition of “absenteeist” in the Grand Dictionnaire universelle du XIXe century (1866-1877) of Pierre Larousse:
“The habit of the wealthy classes, among certain peoples, of spending part of their life outside their country, a habit peculiar especially to the English aristocracy: absenteeism is a scourge that is sometimes hidden under the name of tourism. »
Tourism is the industry of transporting people who would be better off at home to places that would be better off without them.
At the same time, great writers abounded in the same direction. George Sand declares that “tourists only believe in distant and famous things”. Victor Hugo explained in 1843 that “soon Biarritz will put ramps on its dunes, stairs on its precipices, kiosks on its rocks, benches on its caves. Then Biarritz will no longer be Biarritz; it will be something discolored and bastard like Dieppe and Ostend”. History will have finally proven him wrong…
Later, other intellectuals will amuse us with their good words on tourism, such as the academician Jean Mistler (1897-1988) who writes:
“Tourism is the industry of transporting people who would be better off at home to places that would be better off without them. »
This pejorative view of the tourist has rubbed off more widely, for example in the academic world. As the psychologist Dominique Picard noted in 1995 in her book The Rituals of Living (Editions du Seuil): “ [Il] it’s fashionable to be overwhelmed: we’re not going away for the weekend, we’re going to “write an article in the countryside”; we don’t take vacations, we go “on our land”; we do not travel, we “go to a colloquium”. And if sometimes, despite everything, we mention an outing, a trip or a reading of a playful nature, it is because we are “authorized” to take a little distraction “all the same”. »
READ ALSOEscape – Travelogue in Denmark
What is behind this stigma? From the earliest days of tourism, the opposition was set up between the “tourist”, a herdsman and increasingly subject to an industry that offered only illusions, and the “traveler” who visited destinations with a clear conscience. This long tradition of mockery, even hatred, towards these “traveling idiots”, to use the title of the book by Jean-Didier Urbain which analyzes this disdainful prejudice, remains very much alive.
Social contempt
As we noted during the m-Tourism conference organized last April, this can be seen as a form of social contempt. This enterprise of delegitimizing popular tastes is reflected even in our statistics.
For example, the quarterly TNS Sofres “Monitoring of tourist demand” survey, which replaced INSEE’s “holiday survey” in 2004, offers a formatted list of activities falling into artificial and noble categories, such as “sporting” or “cultural” activities, ignoring “boules”, “aperitif”, tanning, siesta, barbecue or karaoke, which thus do not seem worthy of interest. It is a way of prioritizing the springs of tourism, praising discovery and denigrating rest, gambling or shopping.
READ ALSOSaint-Paul-de-Vence, Arcachon… Here are our 100 stopovers for the summer of 2022
Although a phenomenon of society for a long time, “mass tourism” serves as a foil in order to promote forms of tourism that are more in tune with the times, such as ecotourism. Even the busiest destinations are trying to get away from it! Devastating and gregarious, the tourist crowds are mocked when they engage on congested highways during holiday departures or on the crowded beaches of tourist resorts with prefabricated leisure activities, because, in our imagination, “The people are at the top and the crowd is below,” as Victor Hugo wrote. One can remain perplexed on the denigration of the mass whereas it corresponds to a democratization.
Quotas in Corsica
The fact remains that heavy traffic has negative impacts on certain destinations and many initiatives are now seeking to preserve certain regions. Latest example: the Assembly of Corsica voted to introduce quotas this summer.
Three emblematic sites are concerned: the Lavezzi islands, the Bavella needles and the Restonica valley. To visit them, it will now be necessary to book in advance with priority given to residents. Even if these quotas are effective, we can only observe that they exclude those who spend the least in tourist places, that is to say day-trippers. We are not going to chase the very rich off the island of Cavallo and destroy the port to make it more “natural”!
Similarly, since June 26, access to the Calanque de Sugiton, in Marseille, is by reservation. The strong media coverage of this measure shows that it is in tune with the times, but we are not fully in a tourist logic because the creeks are mainly frequented by natives. Extremely telling, these quota policies are often part of communication operations, even greenwashing, which divert attention to what is happening elsewhere.
“Tourist hordes”
Nostalgia is also a powerful driver of tourismophobe. The “it was better before” fuels the bias of negativity, which is all the stronger in this field as the tourist experience is sometimes based on the shock of discovery. The “first time” that one visits the place then becomes the benchmark for judging its evolution.
We can take the example of the geologist Edgar Aubert de la Rüe who in 1935 deplored the arrival of tourists in French Polynesia in his book The Man and the Islands (Gallimard editions):
“In many islands, the arrival of tourist hordes [sic] largely contributed to the disappearance of the picturesque and the local color which were one of their great attractions. This is how in French Oceania the natural beauties remain, and islands such as Tahiti, Moorea and Raiatea still display their splendid landscapes to the wondering eyes of the traveler, but the mores of the inhabitants, their ways of living have changed profoundly and have lost all originality. »
READ ALSOTake the time for the train
However, the number of tourists, seen as invaders on these islands, did not exceed 200 per year!
The urbanization of the place is then considered as an irremediable degradation. This urbaphobia, a component of tourismophobia, stems from the belief that tourists should flee the city, whereas the vast majority of tourists are city dwellers who frequent places with high urbanity (seaside resorts, metropolises, amusement parks, etc.).
[Près de 70 000 lecteurs font confiance à la newsletter de The Conversation pour mieux comprendre les grands enjeux du monde. Abonnez-vous aujourd’hui.]
Wouldn’t we forget that tourism has become an essential component of happiness in our societies?
The Côte d’Azur, which still attracts millions of tourists each year, is often the subject of criticism from various backgrounds. Thus, to explain the evolution of the meaning of the word myth, the Nathan dictionary of Greco-Roman mythology calls on the Côte d’Azur by contrasting “the ‘myth’ of the Côte d’Azur (coves with clear water lined with pine forests where the cicadas sing) to its concrete and polluted reality”.
We may not appreciate Benidorm or Surfers Paradise, their attendance proves that this rejection is not universal and that tourism is not necessarily a rejection of the city. Too many tourism commentators proselytize and wish for reality. Wouldn’t we forget that tourism has become an essential component of happiness in our societies?
*Agrégé in geography, scientific director of the Côte d’Azur Tourism Institute (ITCA), university professor at the IAE of Nice, Migrations and Society research unit, Côte d’Azur University.