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  Welcoming speech

Mr. Denis BOUCHET - General Councillor, General Council of the Haute-Savoie, Annecy, France

 

The mountain is an essential component of the patrimony of the Haute-Savoie.
It is an asset held in common by all of the inhabitants of our Department, and represents 2/3 of our territory.

Nevertheless, this mountain is a complex thing to comprehend, and presents multiple challenges which are often at odds:

• The mountain is a place where people live and work;
• The mountain is a place for leisure and tourism;
• The mountain is a natural space to be preserved and safeguarded.

The General Council of the Haute-Savoie, in view of its responsibilities for territorial development, solidarity and complementarity, cohesion, and proximity, has implemented a policy for Mountains, with the following principal objectives:

• Sustain tourist and leisure sitesGuarantee service levels
• Maintain a watch over the “Mountain” patrimony.

The General Council of the Haute-Savoie will therefore initiate a genuine project policy in the Haute-Savoie. It will tie its activities to target contracts, and it desires to encourage mountain-valley and mountain-town solidarity.

Each project, more or less, is led by one of the communities. The direct consequences of the investment and of the involvement of the private sector depend on the relevance of the development project and the profit perspectives which can be glimpsed.

The questions which are going to asked of those responsible, in particular the elected ones, over the next 3 days, are:

• How can we create synergies which can get private partners and investment more involved, alongside the communities?
• Do the communities still have to play a role as administrator of commercial facilities?

The public-private roles can be broken down into a binary logic (to do or not to do) which is too reductionist. This particularly tourist development operates on complex and necessarily transverse modalities.

The communities remain, (at least in France ) the organisers of economic development in their area. In this sense, they hold the responsibility for planning and selection.

It is important to differentiate between the logic of investments of a structural nature and the logic of investments with a competitive or commercial character These 2 logics do not possess the same status.

Public-private co-operation schemes should be fitted in together.

Unfortunately, the French legislature has not granted the mountains the means which match their specific characteristics, whether legal or financial.

The joint co-operation is not accompanied by a range of tools to support action. This constrains the participation of private investment in the communities’ public facilities and structural amenities of a commercial nature.

There are few financial instruments available for the mountains. The mountains have to be content with the classic legislative, fiscal, and financial framework, in spite of very marked seasonality (absence of subsidised loans, tax imposed on the group of participants, etc.)

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The Haute-Savoie is characterised by the strong presence of local communities in the management of sports facilities, for example the ski lifts. Our community-resorts are distinguished by their high level of investment (2 to 3 times more than the average).

The debate on the theme of public-private partnership for the sustainable development of tourism therefore is fully relevant in the Haute-Savoie.

I hope that the exchange of ideas here at the Chamonix Tourism Summits proves to be fruitful.