dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

The tourist offer
Growing competition between enterprises and destinations and sustainable development
Even if the objective of competitiveness between enterprises is an essential component for the
insertion of Mediterranean tourism on the world market, all the types of tourism and all the forms
of competition between destinations and enterprises are not directed at sustainable
development in the Mediterranean.
Indeed, exacerbated competition that is carried out by the host countries under pressure from
tour operators, as well as the desire of the latter to standardise the tourist products to have
better profitability in the short term, have contributed to the vulgarisation of the destinations and
to the degradation of the environment. Differences are therefore made with regard to the price
and not the value added or the specificity of the product. Consequently, this more limited offer
compromises the competitiveness of the Mediterranean resorts on the world market. And the
latter also encourages cuts in the services offered with the risk that the services no longer meet
the expectations of the tourists.
Over the long term, « internal » competition between Mediterranean operators could, therefore,
penalise the Mediterranean compared to its « external » competitors in the Caribbean for
example, especially since there is no real regional strategy to promote the Mediterranean in
order to attract other clients, notably American and Asian ones.
Stabilisation of the Mediterranean market over the long term
At regional level, the Mediterranean depends on one type of client and on a restricted market in
this category : the middle classes from Northern Europe who are looked after by the big
European tour operators. In 1999 the international tourist flow in the Mediterranean was 84.5%
from Europe, the main visitors coming from Germany and the United Kingdom.
Although this market is growing thanks especially to arrivals from Central and Eastern Europe, it
is not stretchable. Apart from the fact that some emitting countries have reached or are reaching
their maximum departure rates, the demographical and sociological evolution in Europe, with
ageing populations and a drop in birth rates will strongly affect the intensity and the means of
tourist consumption. In the emitting countries like France, England and Germany, there has
been stabilisation in the number of overnight stays by residents (spent in the country or abroad)
since the beginning of the 1990s. A greater number of trips can also be observed: people travel
more but for shorter stays. This could have positive repercussions for travel companies but
could give accommodation managers problems to fill up.
The question is to know the direction of tourism stabilisation in the Mediterranean over the long
term. The potential for international tourism in this region is not inexhaustible but it is difficult to
know where one really stands. The question is to know if the countries will be able to manage
the stabilising of international tourism without problems or whether, on the contrary, if the
current high rise merely hides a certain fragility (over-capacity of hotels, growth encouraged by
real estate speculation and the building industry, etc.). In the latter case, the door is open to
serious economic difficulties. Questions also concern the possibility to substitute domestic
tourism with international tourism in some destinations, the demands of which are not the same.
These questions about the number of tourists to expect in the long term, and about the means
to anticipate a slow decline in some destinations can be strengthened by environmental
arguments: coastal areas cannot be stretched and a strategy for tourist development that
concentrates solely on quantity will lead to the coastline becoming irreversibly artificial,
denatured (see below, page 48).
Need for a rise in quality and variety
The current destinations are confronted with changes in the clients’ demands and they will have
to adapt to these changes.
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