dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

Political scope
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Political scope
1. The policies for tourist development: very different stories
and objectives
The situations in the Mediterranean countries are too varied to put in specific categories for
analytical purposes. Depending on the case, specific criteria can be favoured:
• Political criteria: countries of the European Union and applicant countries, countries of the Arabian
Maghreb Union;
• Geographical criteria, according to their closeness to the emitting markets that largely conditions the
type of tourism: countries of the north-west close to the clients of Western and Northern Europe;
countries of the north-east close to the preceding ones as well as to those of Central and Eastern
Europe; countries of the east and of the south can potentially combine visitors from Europe and the
Middle East; island countries depend on air transport;
• Criteria relating to the speed of tourism development that distinguish countries that are already
tourist countries but that are developing less quickly nowadays; countries that are growing rapidly and
countries where tourism is either very scarce or which have suffered a crisis that has engendered
moderate growth. These criteria indicate the needs and priorities of these countries: the need for
stability and quality growth, the need for supportive measures and growth management, the need to
initiate investment and/or to improve the tourist offer;
• Criteria concerning the importance of tourism in the economy and of its contribution to
development, expressed for example by combining the evolution of tourism receipts per inhabitant and
the evolution of GNP per capita. This category distinguishes the countries for which tourism is a
priority from those where it is of secondary importance, and it also gives the possibility to analyse over
the long term the strategies carried out by the countries in order to know if the growth in tourism has
contributed or not to improvement in the standard of living of the populations in question.
Over the last fifty years, even before this for the mature destinations in France and Italy, the
Mediterranean region has encountered rapid tourist development with two dominant types of
reasoning.
The first is based on « spontaneaous » development, i.e. not planned, created as an immediate
answer from SMEs to individual demand; it is little organised but develops quickly. This leads to
the creation of widespread tourist regions that receive no public aid in which tourism is very
diversified, accommodation being mainly made up of holiday homes or furnished rentals, and an
explosion of urban development. Many mature destinations belong to this category.
The second implements more voluntary national policies, carried out with various objectives: to
find solutions to growing demand for domestic tourism, to attract international visitors or for both
reasons at the same time. Many incentives and direct aid have been put in place for tourist
operators to strengthen this development. More often than not tourism is aimed at a seaside
simple model, with accommodation in hotels or in large rental residences in tourist resorts in
specific areas. The national situations demonstrate the amplitude of the State’s intervention. In
Turkey between 1983 and 1990, more than 450 million dollars of investment aid for tourism,
together with 1.1 billion dollars from the private sector, helped to create 100 000 beds in 1309
tourist areas (297 projects). Loans were given between 1989 and 1994 to create 75 000 extra
beds. In Tunisia, 540 million dinars were invested in tourism between 1962 and 1994. The State
provided 35% of these investments, private Tunisian capital 55% and foreign capital the
remaining 10%. The planning of tourism development required the implementing of a number of
tools: code for tourism investments, land agencies to regulate the allocation of land (Tunisia),
tourism investment banks (Morocco). In Greece investments in the hotel industry rose to 256
billion drachmas (751 million euros) between 1982 and 1995, 38% of which were public
investment and other indirect aid (loans at zero interest rate and subsidies).
This period corresponded to a period of involvement by international institutions in the financing
of tourism development. Morocco, for instance, received several loans from the IBRD and from