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A vision for 2020 and seven axes of influence on mountain tourism Francesco FRANGIALLI - Secretary General of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO)
Madam Minister,
Mr President,
Mr Mayor,
Ladies and gentlemen.This is my first visit to Chamonix this year and I would like to express my special feeling of solidarity and affection that I hold for your town and its people.
All those who love your town were moved when they heard about the misfortunes that have befallen your community since last winter.
Chamonix holds a special place in the hearts of all those who love mountains. Following the example of the heroine in "Retour à la montagne" by Frison-Roche, it is difficult to break the spell and go away if, one day during our youth, we experienced its mountains, its valley and its inhabitants.
* * * Ladies and gentlemen,
This Congress comes, I believe, at a good time. It is a time when winter sports are entering a new phase in their development.
Initially, just before the Second World War until the 1950s, snow and ice sports were considered elitist. These sports were then faced with a wave of democratisation of found winter sports affordable.
This historic evolution was accompanied by a second major change in the type of customer. Progressively, access to winter sports is no longer restricted to those living in countries where there are mountains and who are able to enjoy these sports near where they live ; it has extended to northern Europeans who come to the Alps and to the Pyrenees for skiing. According to the European Travel Monitor, 24 million holidays were spent in the snow in Europe during the winter of 1997-1998.
This double movement of democratisation and diversification of European customers has led to an explosion of the winter sport tourist industry. In France, the wide SEMA METRA study at the end of the 1980s showed that the national market was becoming saturated, but that others, particularly in Great Britain and Spain, were opening up, which proved to be true during the next decade.
Today, a new phase is beginning, for in the field of mountain recreation as elsewhere, the competition is becoming world-wide, which was shown by the work of the first World Congress of Snow Tourism and Winter Sports organised last April by OMT in Andorra. At this congress, the largest delegation came from China! Tomorrow, a country such as China will be a major destination for winter sports. It will also be a major market force, like Japan, which has around 14 million skiers, or Korea. We must get used to this change in dimension immediately, both mentally and in our financial decisions.
After Europe and North America, the Cordillera in the Andes and the mountains in north east Asia are becoming popular for winter tourism.
Tomorrow, this will probably also be true for the Caucasus. Here too, the global market is knocking at our door: at the moment there are 4000 ski lifts in France, 3500 in Austria, 3000 in Italy and 2000 in Switzerland ; but there are also 3800 in the USA, 3000 in Japan and 1000 in Canada.
"The Summits of tourism", ladies and gentlemen, are not only to be found in Europe, far from it !
* * * However, before considering the conditions of this new stage of development, let us look for a moment at the conditions under which the previous growth took place.
The countries that took part followed different paths, and I would like to welcome the Director of Tourism in Switzerland, Mr. Keller, President of the Commission of the OMT for Europe. Countries like Switzerland or Austria followed very different development strategies from, for example, France. In Switzerland and Austria, the development of winter sports was most often carried out in traditional villages. Priority was given to the quality of the welcome, but also, with justification, to the après-ski, to all those activities of commerce, of sport and relaxation, that accompany skiing. Hotel accommodation is dominant, different from France where a large proportion of the accommodation is in holiday homes and rented furnished accommodation that take up a great deal of space.
Perhaps this is the reason why, according to a recent study by the European Travel Monitor, Austria is easily the first choice of winter holiday destinations for Europeans, followed by Switzerland, while France and Italy lag behind.
A country like France, with its second and third generation resorts, built during the 1960s and 1970s in the framework of the "plan neige" (snow plan), has, on the other hand, mainly and perhaps too exclusively, given priority to the development of skiable areas including those at very high altitude. This step is probably enthusiastically received at the sporting level but undoubtedly has less value in economical, social and cultural terms. It is also a policy whose environmental impact was only considered very late, particularly with the 1977 "mountain rules of conduct", the creation of the specific decision process for the Unités Touristiques Nouvelles (UTN) (New Tourist Units), and later the "mountain laws" of 1985 and 1991. The later development of "village resorts" was partly a reaction to certain excesses in the "plan neige".
* * * Ladies and gentlemen,
The new stage that is coming for mountain tourism appears in the global context of past and future growth in world tourism that I will now illustrate with a few images.
Everyone will measure the likely impact of such forecasts on infrastructure, training organisations, and above all the environment and the sites. A tripling of world tourism in 25 years, at the same time as a doubling in Europe, cannot be ignored. The idea of "sustainable development" applied to tourism, introduced in 1992 at the "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, is more urgent than ever. This Conference has therefore chosen it as its central theme.
In this context, a number of axes of influence may be revealed, particularly concerning mountain tourism. There will undoubtedly be growth, an increase in the number of arrivals, shorter stays and a diversification of the type of visitors.
In my opinion, there are seven axes of influence. After the elitist development stage, then that of democratisation of snow leisure activities, these seven elements allow the stakes and parameters of a third stage to be identified: that of worldwide spread of the competition between the mountain tourist destinations of the various continents.
* * * 1. First, the arrival of new clients.
In the neighbouring valley of Haute-Savoie, which I visit regularly, Russian and Arabic were to be heard on the slopes last year. Here are new clients ! In a few years, in European mountains, we will hear Chinese spoken, just as we already hear Japanese in Chamonix in the summer.
OMT predicts that in 2020, 100 million Chinese will visit the rest of the world. We can see the coincidence and convergence of three phenomena: the appearance of new clients in traditional countries concerned by winter sports activities, the emergence of new countries interested in snow sports throughout the world, and a more rapid growth in long distance intercontinental trips in comparison with the average tourist movement. These three elements combined will shape the face of tomorrow's mountain tourist market.
It is obvious that such foreseeable changes in the structure of clients give rise as much to deep thought about the range of services on offer, and on their quality, as to making the leisure accommodation provision meet the expectations of new clients.
I would add that the worldwide spread, as much with regard to generating markets as to mountain destinations, presents a special problem for traditional resorts. They do not have the capacity, as do the "integrated" resorts, to offer extensive and homogenous accommodation nor packages intended for commercialisation by the big international tour operators.
They must consequently join forces to establish an active policy of commercialisation and marketing, following the example of those French and Swiss resorts that have joined forces in the "Portes du Soleil" ski area. Above all, they must force themselves to innovate in marketing, particularly where rented furnished accommodation is concerned, and it is possible to imagine that, over and above traditional methods such as "central reservations", a new tool such as Internet can provide a real commercial opportunity.
2. The second evolution that I would like to mention, is a result of the end of the break-up between downhill skiing and cross country skiing and the appearance of new sports and leisure activities.
A country such as France today boasts 5 million downhill skiers and 1.5 million cross country skiers. In the USA, the figures are 10.5 and 3.5 million, respectively. These numbers, although different, are of the same order, and, in some resorts, some people do both types of skiing.
However, cross country skiing is already often being replaced by other methods of discovering the mountain or the environment, such as snowshoes or trekking, with or without skis.
New snow or ice sports appear and disappear simultaneously. Some, such as the telemark, have existed for many years and are now coming back into fashion. Others, such as curling or bobsleigh have never succeeded in making their mark because the restrictions were too great. Others such as snow bike appeared on our slopes a few years ago, to disappear almost immediately - I would say that, personally, it does not upset me greatly because I find it an extremely dangerous activity for other people on the slopes ! Today, the "new snow sports" are arriving : monoski, skiing (if it can be called that - sliding would be better) on "big foot" (not "big feet" as English grammar would require !), mini skis, and other instruments of torture ! Of course, above all, to symbolise this new style of skiing, there is snowboarding or snow surfing, which essentially belongs to a new generation and has its own style of clothing and cultural behaviour, sufficiently strange to cause concern among parents and justify the curiosity of sociologists. In the USA, snowboarding has around 4 million followers, and its popularity has been accompanied by a slight decline in downhill skiing.
These changes are not without practical consequences, but also economical. "Snow parks" are appearing; the slopes must not have the same configuration, and the co-existence of several sports in the same place presents a number of difficulties, and even risks. However, at the same time, it is how new categories of people, particularly the young, start snow sports. They are taking over from the "baby boomers", experienced downhill skiers, and this is therefore an important consideration when carrying out a prospective analysis.
3. The third element for consideration, only concerns a small number of resorts, but is worth considering. It concerns the appearance of groups, practically of industrial proportions, in the winter sports industry: the Compagnie des Alpes, the Compagnie des remontées de Val d'Isère and many others, have now become extraordinarily large operators. When, for example, a company such as Pierre et Vacances, gives up the lifts of the resort of Avoriaz to another group, we are in the presence of a sort of industrial engineering, as can exist in the world of finance or in that of big industry. Of course, it does not concern small resorts or those at lower altitudes, but we observe increasingly, with this phenomenon of integration, the appearance of a central structure of large companies around which the rest of the snow sports industry tends to gather. It is a change that could have positive aspects, but also others that are more worrying, and to which, it seems to me, we should pay attention.
4. There is a fourth element whose implications and extent are still difficult to ascertain: these are forecast changes in climate.
The stakes are not negligible. The average temperature increase of 2°C that is often forecast for the end of the next century corresponds to the altitude with snow cover increasing by about 300 metres.
As for myself, I still do not really understand why a warm air current on the Pacific coast prevents snow falling on the Pyrenees, but it is apparently the case. In the Haute-Savoie village where I live, seeing the snow arrive late last year out of season, a shopkeeper told me : "winter has to happen", and I found this phrase was the expression of a popular wisdom, perhaps stronger than the caprices of the El Niño or the incertitude of the "greenhouse effect". It would, however, be interesting to know whether the fact of getting less snow at low altitudes and more at high altitude is a passing phenomenon or lasting. It is important to be able to analyse the middle term impact on the winter sports economy.
Finally, it is useful to appreciate the implications and the limits of using artificial snow to respond to these new climatic data. It seems there is now a "snow culture", just as there are pearls of the same name.
Depending on the country, this technique is considered an opportunity to extend the period of exploitation, as for example in France where 160 sites and 2500 hectares are involved, or, as in Switzerland, as a potential attack on the environment, which incurs the opposition of ecologist movements.
5. Another set of data - the fifth - seems to me to be necessary. We have observed over the last few years a great deal of imprudence in the ambition of local groups who have launched themselves into the development of skiing, without having sufficient experience or potential.
In your valleys, most villages have lived for generations with mountain agriculture as the only resource, which is often a poor agriculture. Now, some of them benefit from this manna, this treasure of winter tourist activity, and others, two or three hundred metres lower do not.
Populations suffer feelings of injustice, and this has sometimes resulted in the temptation for those who did not have the necessary geographical and climatic advantage, to invest in the winter sports industry. As the Audit Office has noted, there have been many disappointments, which recent changes in climate, mentioned above, could make even worse.
How can we allow, within a single natural region, a local solidarity in development confronted by manna, but also by the risks of exploiting the "white gold", This is another point for consideration for this Congress.
6. There is another area that is changing. It results from an attack of conscience concerning what the winter sports resort represents today.
As SEMA METRA emphasised ten years ago in their comprehensive study of the economy of winter sports, the snow sports resort may be compared with some aspects of a company. It is a company that produces a service that it commercialises, or rather a range of services comprising skiing and other leisure activities and snow sports and, of course, accommodation and other associated services.
In the USA, ski resort development is clearly modelled on that of commercial or estate companies, which are not only the promoter but also the guiding element. It is not very different, for example, from a resort devoted to golf. In Europe, on the other hand, the difference between this business and another, in the industrial or commercial sector, is that it has no general direction. It consists, in fact, of a conglomerate of different groups, public such as the municipality or the Tourist Office, and private such as the ski monitors, shops and accommodation. Sometimes alone and still incompletely, the private or municipal company in charge of running the lifts may play the part of central organizer. How, if it is not an "integrated" resort, can a unified management and commercial policy be given to this conglomerate ? How can it be sure to have a common view of its future and plan its development jointly ? These are the main problems for the evolution of this industry, above all if it concerns the traditional resorts, to hold their place against international competition.
7. Finally, I will briefly finish with a seventh consideration. As mentioned above, skiing cannot be considered alone: there is après-ski and there is the rest of the year when there is no snow.
Mountains are increasingly attractive destinations in summer, and Chamonix is a good example of this, an exceptional resort in this respect.
Everyone, of course, does not have the resources of the Mont Blanc mountain range, but everywhere, the development of summer activities connected with mountains, including at lower attitude, is extraordinary as much by their proliferation as by their diversity. Sports that did not exist a few years ago are today attracting thousands of people. Mountain bikes ride everywhere along mountain paths, rafting boats glide on rivers and hang-gliders pattern the sky with their colours.
One question is asked: does mountain tourism, or ski resort tourism, outside the ski season, simply resemble rural tourism ? Is there something original and different about it ? How much flexibility is involved for workers, particularly seasonal, and for accommodation ? Is it unique to lower mountain altitudes or is it also a significant solution to the restrictions of the exploitation of high altitude resorts, eager to diversify ? Although much more modest, is the investment for summer provisions globally cost effective for a resort, seeing that the daily expense of commercial accommodation is a third less in summer than in winter ? The answer to these questions is important on the macroeconomic level in the choice of development strategies and at the microeconomic level in the search for a global balance of using accommodation or a shop throughout the whole year.
* * * Here, ladies and gentlemen, are a number of trains of thought, which are not original, but which appear significant at the time when we are about to enter a competitive phase that is generalised because it is world-wide.
A competition that will not be restricted to the mountain countries. For the latter, even in winter, are coming more and more into competition with other types of holidays, such as cruises or the "winter sun". For Europeans who go away in winter, mountains represent only 17 % of holidays, after beach destinations and city tourism. Other market niches are growing faster than winter sports.
These are some of the main questions that I ask you to consider and which I know will be dealt with in the reports that will be presented during the Congress.
Your conclusions will be of interest to our Organisation, and I am grateful that you have requested our contribution to your work and I wish you all success. Thank you.
