Wider institutional environment (EU and beyond)

It is relevant to our study to look into the jargon and propositions generated by the regional and global institutional structures that promote, manage and regulate tourism and travel inasmuch as “tourism landscapes are often developed and marketed under the aegis of national and international economic and political institutions which lie outside the control of local residents who work and inhabit these spaces.” (Leite and Graburn, 2009). The wave of mass city tourism that is identified by residents of certain European cities as a driver of undesired transformation is not just happening, and definitely not in an institutional and policy void. To various extents, it has been designed, actively promoted or at least allowed to occur. For one, tourism imaginaries, which frame tourists’ expectations, are “embedded [...] in regional and global institutions of power” that “favour or restrict some tourism practices and not others, some imaginings and not others” (Salazar and Graburn, 2014, p.14).

This section looks into some policies and strategy formulations which are part visions of the United Nations Tourism World Organization (UNTWO) and the European Commission. Our sources are documents published online by the Commission and the statements and debates recorded by our team during the European Union Tourism Day (EUTD) 2017. Because this is a recent event that brought together a diversity of actors around the theme The Future of Tourism in the EU in lively debates, we consider the terms and narratives emanating from this event to be fairly indicative of the overall position of both the EU and other sector stakeholders represented in this event..

Overview of Tourism Economic Significance

Tourism worldwide has experienced a more than 40-fold increase, from approximately 25 million tourists in 1950 to more than 1.1 billion in 2014. One out of six people in the world made an international trip in 2016 totaling 1.2 billion international travellers, while for 2030 1.8 billion tourists are predicted worldwide. Cities in particular are a major driver of tourism growth. For instance, a recent industry report suggested that the volume of city trips increased by a staggering 47 per cent from 2009 to 2013. (Cfr. Colomb and Novy, 2016; Rifai, 2017)

In 2017, tourism represented 10% of the EU GDP. With an annual growth rate of 2%, it is the third largest socio-economic activity after the trade and distribution and construction sectors and in 2017 it provided 13 million jobs (Bieńkowska, 2017; Juul, 2015). Europe is the number one tourist destination in the world and cultural tourism is estimated to account for 40% of all European tourism which is significant as it is estimated that 4 out of 10 tourists choose their destination based on its cultural offering.

Overview of the EU Tourism Policy

The Lisbon Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), 2007, states that the Union’s actions regarding tourism should be aimed at: “(a) Encouraging the creation of a favourable environment for the development of undertakings in this sector and (b) Promoting cooperation between the Member States, particularly by the exchange of good practice.” After the Lisbon Treaty came into force in 2009, the EU put together a tourism strategy geared at retaining Europe's position as the world's number one tourism destination.

While the above points to a will to articulate a formal agreement, the EU treaties exclude any harmonization of tourism laws, only allowing the EU to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of Member States. It is only through the EU’s shared or exclusive mandate in areas related to tourism such as transport, agriculture, environment, security, etc. that the Union may indirectly affect tourism by means of legislation (Cfr. Juul, 2015, p.17). Tourism does not have its own commissioner or its own budget due to it not being a remit of the EU (Ujhelyi ,2017).

We have briefly paid attention to the limited policy codification of tourism within the EU structures to make sense of the institutional landscape that may be influencing the recent growth of mass tourism. Moreover, such structures, through the visions they pitch and the policies and organizations they support, act as both a force city residents contend with and a possible interlocutor in and forum for the conversation about the sustainability of urban tourism.

The Official Discourse

Former UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai, in the already mentioned EUTD 2017 video address, stresses that the 1.8 billion tourists predicted for 2030 “should be transformed into an opportunity to make the world a better place” by promoting tourism along five pillars:

• Economic sustainability: inclusive growth
• Social sustainability: decent jobs and empowerment of communities
• Environmental sustainability: preserving and enriching the environment and fighting climate change
• Cultural sustainability: celebration and preservation of diversity, identity and tangible and intangible culture
• Peace and Stability: as essential prerequisites for development and progress.

If we understand environment as more than just nature, to include, for example, the urban environment; diversity as contrary to monoculture and the homogenization entailed by touristification; identity as comprising also that of city dwellers and as deeply connected to their sense of belonging to a locality, tangible culture as encompassing also the visuality, character and function of the built environment; intangible culture as applicable to how urban residents ‘do city and neighbourhood’ (perambulation, rest, encounters, navigation, shopping and eating out), and the empowering of communities as contrary to the erosion of liveability and loss of control over one’s surroundings, then these pillars could be invoked by citizens groups to further substantiate their claims and to demand consistency between discourse and practice through the observance of this commitment.

Oddly, during the EUTD 2017, in our opinion, issues of social sustainability were a far second to the topics of meeting increasing customer expectations and stimulating growth, while cultural sustainability was hardly mentioned, or only in the narrower sense of heritage destination management. The second discussion, promisingly entitled “the impact of changing tourism models and consumer expectations on local communities” did address issues of social and environmental sustainability with an emphasis on cities and towns’ carrying capacity, namely in terms of the insufficiency of their built infrastructure in the face of congestion and overcrowding. Michel de Blust (Secretary General of the Travel Agents and tour Operator’s Association) declared over-tourism to be a "non issue" and strongly advocates for the term “poorly-managed tourism” instead. He blames the latter largely on the informality of the sharing economy (e.g. Airbnb). There was talk of tourism-phobia, of tourism that locals like and do not like, of allowing communities to manage their own destination (‘human-scale’ and ‘relational’ tourism). Barcelona was mentioned by the Airbnb representative only to illustrate the failure of accommodation restriction measures to reduce visitors’ numbers and the ensuing switch to a spreading strategy. The Europe Cultural Routes and Crossroads of Europe initiatives were mentioned as ways in which dispersion and spreading of tourists is achieved by promoting lesser-known destinations.

Despite of the inclusion of the aforementioned issues we found that the wave of protests and overt anti-tourism sentiment sweeping across European cities, for all its extensive and ongoing media coverage, remained the ‘elephant in the room’ and that the prevailing tone of the sessions in this regard was business as usual...preferably in higher volumes.

The Holy Grail of Customer Expectations

We identified the tourism industry's goal of satisfying the ever-growing customer expectations as one of the leitmotivs of this event’s presentations and discussions. In addressing the need to meet consumer expectations, the issue of the uniqueness and novelty of the experience as provided by the destination itself occupied a prominent place.

At this point in our research we had already familiarized ourselves with the concept of tourism imaginaries and the ways in which the tourism sector as well as the media intentionally and professionally create and circulate them. We also considered the way non-professionals or those not involved in the tourism sector influence these imaginaries through film, books and entertainment. The power of policy and institutional discourses in reinforcing the creation and circulation of imaginaries could not have been made clearer. The customer needs to be offered more and more novel experiences. They have seen almost everything and so the industry must strive to innovate and produce new products, including destinations and attractions. This imperative, we argue, is in contradiction with the alternative discourse of sustainability and local community empowerment. Instead of departing from the ‘cultural sustainability’ pillar, it takes for granted the insatiable appetite of tourists for novelty and authenticity, validating and fueling the harbouring of unrealistic expectations. This approach informs the marketing of destinations and attractions and tends to be a driver of touristification and Disneyfication, some of the most notorious sources of cultural/psychological malaise amongst urban host populations.

Conclusions

Given the tremendous economic significance of tourism for the region it is no surprise that the EU should wish to aggressively promote the sector’s competitiveness. For example, in January 2018 the EU-China Tourism Year was launched, which includes negotiations on EU-China visa facilitation and air connectivity and will secure the EU a 10% annual increase in Chinese visitors, worth €1 billion. (EU-China Tourism Year, 2018).

The EU discourse presents tourism as a benevolent industry and a driver of sustainable development given its agency in job creation, the way it can come to the rescue of economically troubled rural areas, towns and entire sub-regions as well as because of how it becomes a means to preserve and enhance heritage and the environment. In addition, it is essential for the survival and prosperity of SMEs. Because of the great value of the tourism industry for the continent, economic matters take centre stage while residents’ concerns regarding mass tourism becomes an afterthought. Moreover, since freedom of movement is a fundamental freedom guaranteed by the EU and facilitated by the Schengen Agreement, it is very difficult to envisage any EU-level/EU-wide policy to regulate mass tourism happening.