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  The Public/Private Partnership Issue in Tourism Management Methods in France

Prof. Françoise GERBAUX - CNRS Research Associate CERAT-CNRS-IEP, Institut d’études politiques, Grenoble ,France

 

 

Operation Summary

Management issues in tourist towns have made the news in tourism columns.

• They especially made the news in parishes that act as a support for ski resorts : The local management of tourism policies is an issue since all players acting in the ski resort are unequally linked to tourism decisions: there are no set up negotiation tables.
• They are key issues in coastal tourism challenges, and lead to conflicting relationships between the State and local governments, because of the tourist and urban pressure, and recent efforts from the State to limit urban development.
• The management of rural parishes that are opening to tourism also constitutes an issue since the increasing significance of outdoor sports, and the implication of local governments in terms of security and liability: The coordination of tourism growth for outdoor sports, for instance, has yet to be resolved.
• As far as city tourism is concerned, negotiating places between private and public partners are not visible enough or are limited to public locations where private players are not represented as such.

The financing for tourism growth, public and natural space planning and/or conservation, maintenance and development of public space is not specifically targeted, and also irritates all players..When assessing the management of tourist towns, especially mountain towns, we have an overview of the various conflicts existing between partners.

1 - Assessing the tourist management in ski resorts

The 1985 law for the mountain, which makes the Mayor of the town in charge of tourist planning, has provided a solution for an enhanced local control of growth. However, implementing a true local partnership and the issue of locally financing tourism growth have yet to be answered by this law or by the numerous initiatives conducted afterward, as shows the attempt of proposing a pool of tourist assets or proposing a development of middle mountain resorts in July 2000, in order to implement a local union for tourist assets that would enable the setting up of a real negotiating table between private and public players. As well as a financing process by extending the local tax method to sales, that both ski lift companies and all private players that show interest in tourist growth have to pay.

The first assessment of public management shows several direct relationships between the Mayor and local operators :

• The Mayor, the City Council and technical services from the parish are more or less involved in tourism growth. However, they are often an arbitrator and a party in tourism growth when the town has, under direct management of State or in any other legal form, a number of activities enabling the ski resort business such as ski lifts.
• The tourism bureau or the association for the promotion of tourism directly reports, for the most part, to the parish. Financial relations or their reliance on political boards do not allow an independent operating of the political body for a business that should be directly linked to professional activities.
• Ski lifts are central players: it’s often the biggest local business. Whether public or private, they often drag all local resources through needed investments and services related to the ski business. Their weight in local decisions is even more important since the ski lift companies are private companies and huge group subsidiaries.
• The lodging professionals: Hotel managers form a pressure group that’s weak in number, but key to local negotiating processes. They are grouped into a hospitality union, and often strongly active in the City Council. However, the overall hotel business situation is not thriving. Some resorts are often loosing beds. Other lodging professionals are often active, but on a much more random basis, and above all are fragmented since local action is not organized on a regular basis.
• Sport professionals are well organized. But they are not always a significant group within resorts. If they are recognized reputation-wise, they are not always given the opportunity to make a point unless to enter into a partnership with other professional groups.
• Other players, including merchants, are hardly organized, and in a standby position relative to the local government. The strong seasonal nature of their business impairs their ability to become involved.

This first assessment of a system of players shows, at first sight, a simple structure. But these links are much more complex. Three other kinds of assessment should be added to this first approach.

The Public/Private Conflict Approach, so crucial since it governs our public laws, and the policies applying to local governments, show the importance of a confused boundary between two sectors, especially in the tourism industry. The French public law has been initially built against the mercantile logic, and still shows the signs of this conflict. The law developed public virtues by tarnishing the image of the market and companies. Furthermore, part of the public service business is provided by private companies: transportation, water utilities… Part of the private business is provided by the public sector: especially, ski lifts.

As a result, such a conflict is no longer relevant in local tourist management, while it is harmful to our French law, including the laws that govern how our local governments work.

This first point emphasizes the crisis that often involves parishes with respect to local tourism growth. As show local ///, their management is often carried out by local political magistrates : deontology issues have been addressed regarding this matter.

A sociopolitical assessment: relationships between parishes should, no doubt, be interpreted as relationships between legal representatives of tourism growth, since the mountain law made them competent jurisdictions, but above all, since it is where their relevance lies, as relationships of political representative to citizens.

This side of things is never addressed. It is however eminently present in all local negotiations: the Mayor is the political representative of citizens, and resort professionals are voters. This last point is crucial because “it feeds” on all local negotiations. This sponge effect becomes stronger since there is no negotiating table between public and private partners other than the City Council or outside commissions such as that of certain resorts.

The reliance of the tourism bureau on the City, and its abilities most often limited to promotional operations, do not make it today a negotiating spot separated from the City board.

Could a political representative body also be a negotiating place where operating methods for tourism business would be defined ? In a few words, could we safely combine operational and political management ? Operating issues in ski resorts are they not rooted in this type of management ?

The assessment of financial relationships between the City and professionals shows that some of the private players contribute highly to the resort business :

• Ski lifts through taxes collected on sales
• Other professionals through business tax.

Complex relations are resulting from that. In some resorts, such taxes contribute to create mutual dependence links often concealed and implied. In a way, if the City collects taxes, professionals think it should repay them, in any form whatsoever. In some resorts, we see the same repayment enforced in the form of aids that more or less represent the financial contribution of local players to the City’s budget.

• Finally, the visitors’ tax is a local tax that is poorly managed. Today, this resource is very unpopular. It is directly collected by lodging businesses from their customers. The tax varies from $ .20 to $1 per night. Surveys show that the efficiency of this tax collection is far from being fulfilling : it ranges from 20 to 30 %. Today, the tax basis, all lodgings, is poorly controlled and known. The insight is random. All these make this tax one of the most obscure and unfair, and therefore rejected by most lodging professionals..The financial issue is thus a difficult one to resolve today. Attempts to implement new taxes to challenge the weakened public resources will face the resistance of players, as shows the failure of pools of tourist assets.

The confusion between the public and private sector that however remains a key rule in our laws, the financial relations through local taxes, and finally the “political customerism” relationships since the City represents citizens (therefore professionals) who live in the city, are three highly significant variables that are never considered. However, they all blur local relationships : a management approach is thus entirely insufficient to consider local relationship methods. Could the relevance of the Mayor in charge of tourism growth be insured even though he is often both an arbitrator and a party of the growth, and even though the financial relations through local taxes are questioned and the political relevance of the Mayor is challenged ?

2 - The path to which local governance ?

A better local tourism management that allows moving forward and implementing a true local governance should take into account all the items above to in order to solve them. The governance is Anglo-Saxon and refers to the interactions between the political authority and local players, and the coordinating methods required to enable local action.

The success of governance is rooted in the development of new forms of public action. It enables us to question a major part of biases on which is built the traditional French public administration. The most prominent items relate to newly created partnerships for public management: institutions and players that do not belong to the public environment now act within local governments. They are more or less independent; they are influential. The notion focuses therefore on the principle that it is possible to act without relying on the authority of the Government. In the business world, it is therefore possible to talk about a negotiated economy: key players in local and regional economic environment, both national and supranational, are part of public decisions.

Nevertheless, this new deal should not omit the very nature of political work. Theoretical analyses tell us that the political work is focused on two major operations : aggregation and leadership. The aggregation of various requests and interests, the leadership printed on a local government.

The aggregating process is dual. We need to set apart two major types of arena :

• The electoral arena that assumes messages intended for an undifferentiated mass, with a low commitment and involvement level, that is all citizens.
• The issue arena is a mirrored since messages are intended for a specific audience (especially from economic environments), with a weight and an influence that are based on their involvement ability and their commitment level.

The existence of both arenas is not easily manageable. At first sight, one could think that political upper echelons are dominated in the first arena – that of electoral politics – by the game of competing for elective positions, but from the latter they will drag resources supposedly sufficient to weigh heavily in the second arena – that of issue politics. But in the.real life, the opposite is produced, and pressure from groups belonging to the second arena – groups with sector or local assets – is strong since these groups are better informed and involved. Hence the confusion of all local economic operations. The situation for the local tourism growth is an astounding example. The mediation of parishes based on their relevance in the control of tourism growth that the law for the mountain has made formal, is combined with the relevance based on the role of political regulation within the resort players system.

Considering the complex situation of the role of local political bodies in tourism growth, shouldn’t we then try to arrange the splitting of both arenas: the City Council is the place for political representation and regulation, another body should emerge to become the place of “operational” regulation, for a better local tourism management. Today, everything depends on the willingness of players to commit to, and get involved in such operations. But isn’t it in their best interest to become part of local policy making mechanisms and to invest in real methods of coordination in order to design this second arena that should become a negotiating place separate from politics?