The Grand Tour, undertaken at the end of the seventeenth century and especially throughout the eighteenth century by young English aristocrats wanting to complete their education, took them to celebrated European cities of culture, in France as well as Italy – the two main destinations on these travels that lasted for several months, or even years. The word “tourist” first appeared in English at the end of the eighteenth century and was made official in French by Stendhal, with his Mémoires d’un touriste, 1838. It generally applied to a privileged social class or those who had a “bohemian” lifestyle, with the benefit of connections that would ensure places to stay. Tourism grew thanks to the train, which made travel easier, enabling faster and more punctual journeys in considerable comfort (with sleeping and restaurant cars, porters, left-luggage facilities and so on). The perfect tourist’s kit included custom-made suitcases (marking the beginning of unostentatious luxury), as well as clothes and boots designed for walking. New destinations were offered, mostly for short trips, such as spa and seaside resorts, and indeed doctors even began to prescribe swimming cures… It would be incorrect to speak of the “democratisation of tourism”, since at that time it was only available to a tiny leisured set who frequented the same hotels and gambled in the same casinos. Nevertheless, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the first “package tours” catered for those who would become known as the “middle classes”.

In parallel with the first travel agencies (such as Thomas Cook, whose first package tours were launched in 1841) came publication of the first “tourist guides” (Baedeker in 1828, Murray in 1836, Joanne in 1851– this last published by Hachette, and later called the Guide Bleu). These not only suggested “panoramas”, important “monuments” and “local specialities” but also provided practical advice. World Fairs, beginning with London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, took place regularly in big cities, stimulating tourism, which took several different forms that could easily be combined, such as leisure, business and sex tourism. Such “events” required the construction of hotels, restaurants, places of entertainment (theatres, cabarets, museums, department stores, swimming pools, racetracks, skating rinks, parks and gardens…) as well as urban transport networks. These cities gradually embraced electricity and were improved and modernised. Tourism contributed to the city’s economic growth which, to a greater or lesser extent, spread to its surrounding region. More visitors (sixty million) attended the 1900 Paris Expo than there were people living in mainland France (forty million). A significant proportion of these were tourists who had sometimes come from considerable distances rather than as day trippers. After trains came the cruise ships, followed shortly thereafter by aeroplanes. These means of transport competed to deliver luxury in order to attract a wealthy clientele. An American economist, Thorstein Veblen, set out his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), describing those seasonal tourists with private means who imposed their way of life in the luxury hotels of capital cities and other fashionable resorts. Thus, the “Grand Hotels” were furnished with hairdressing salons, laundry and dry-cleaning services, news kiosks, tobacconists and so on. Breakfast became a self-service affair, in the latest style. This high-end tourism, with its specific rhythms and activities (summer in the mountains for the fresh air, winter on the Mediterranean coast – not as yet known as the Côte d’Azur – to take advantage of its clement weather) was insulated from a new kind of popular tourism, which came out of legislation that brought paid holidays. However, through mimetism (the famous Laws of Imitation that were so well analysed by Gabriel Tarde as early as 1890) the “holidaymakers” belonging to the working class (the same class whose workers were occupying French factories in June 1936) hoped to emulate the “bourgeois” who were so minutely examined by Jean Vigo’s camera, as if by the eye of an entomologist, in his film À propos de Nice (1929).

After the Second World War, tourism expanded. In the name of economic growth, many government policies were enacted that found favour with local authorities. Mayors all wanted their own festivals, carnivals and fairs, under the pretext of investing in the tourist industry, which was thought to be a real money maker. In fact, the tourist economy rapidly became internationalised, and local benefits were lost. There was of course some spillover, but in the end it was quite modest, since ice-creams and postcards are also supplied by multi-nationals. Tourism seemed to be a solution to many issues: it would encourage Third World development and would be a substitute for decommissioned factories. “Fair”, “sustainable” and “responsible” tourism were invented, which were supposed to contribute to local wealth creation without disrupting traditions and altering landscapes. Despite the good intentions of the “actors” in these new types of tourism – as often the local residents as the cosmopolitan tourists – the returns remain limited and tourism contaminates the host society to the point of transforming its very character. Tourism, like technology, is not “neutral”: just as a rolling mill demands three eight hours shifts, even in a society regulated by five daily prayers, so does tourism generate condescension, submission, a tipping culture, a role-play situation in which a number of the players sell their souls… Tourism is unable to correct itself on its own, nor evolve into travel; it establishes an intrinsic hierarchy. The traveller discovering a culture respects its time and space, while the tourist moves around in a constant here, detached from elsewhere. Tourists enter the space that belongs to others without actually being present and in accordance with their own sense of time, without a care for the rhythms of those they force to take the role of hosts. Making a claim for travel as opposed to tourism reflects the ethics of the contact. The traveller welcomes the unexpected and the surprising as a benefit, while the tourist sees it as a malfunction, grounds for dispute. Travellers leave without knowing their date of return, tourists buy return tickets and stick to their timetables come what may. Travellers take time to acclimatise as they explore – often on foot – and their bodies become used to different food, climates and time zones, without their health suffering. Tourists catch cold because of the air conditioning, or because of its absence, and self-medicate to avoid “holiday tummy”, that familiar complaint, or to reduce the effects of being in a different time zone. Travellers learn to discover themselves when they discover a new site or meet new people. Tourists only interact with others when they eat at the same table or sit next to each other on the coach taking them on excursions…

In 1950, 25 million tourists were recorded worldwide. In 1980, they came to nearly 300 million, in 2000 more than 680 million, in 2012 a billion and by 2020 they will certainly reach two billion. The expansion of the tourist sector has accelerated over just a few years, and at the same time tourist flows have changed. For a long time, the three most important destinations in terms of tourist numbers have been France (83 million in 2016), the United States and Spain, but these rankings must be revised with the advent of huge numbers of Chinese and Indian tourists, who primarily travel in their own countries: out of 750 million tourists in India in 2015, the vast majority were Indians (98%). Here too, the tourist economy is disconnected from the regional economy. Some cities (New York, London, Paris, Venice, Istanbul, Shanghai, Rio, Tokyo, etc.) attract floods of visitors so prodigious that they exceed the number of regular inhabitants. So, for instance, there are 26 tourists for every Venetian, 16 for every Parisian, 15 for every Amsterdammer, 12 for every inhabitant of Prague, and 10 for each person living in Barcelona, Rome and Munich… The overall average for European cities was 7.14 in 2014. As a result, in some places the inhabitants no longer feel that they are at home, but instead are playing a part in a sort of “human safari” in which tourists armed with cameras and cell phones have no qualms about photographing them and never think twice about entering courtyards, cul-de-sacs and gardens…

Eduardo Chibàs’ documentary, Bye Bye Barcelona (available on the internet) describes the discontent felt by local residents in the face of an uncontrolled influx of arrogant tourists. On one day in March 2014 (but it could equally well have been today) several giant cruise ships, as big as tower blocks, unloaded 64,000 – yes, 64,000 – visitors onto Barcelona’s quayside. Every single one wanted to visit the Sagrada Familia, the Torre Agbar, the Parc Güell, the huge Aquarium, the Miró museum, the Ramblas… In 2015, Barcelona was host to 29 million tourists. Created in November 2015, ABTS (Assemblea de Barris per un Turisme Sostenible – a collective representing local neighbourhoods who want to see sustainable tourism) agrees with the proposals of the mayor, newly elected under the banner of the coalition Barcelona en Comù, which aims to drastically reduce the number of tourists. A “hotel exclusion zone” has been established in the city centre, and henceforth it will only be possible to build hotels on the outskirts. Equally, rooms and apartments rented via Airbnb or one of its twenty-one partners will be more strictly regulated: in the central neighbourhoods, “normal” housing for Barcelona’s resident population represents only half the total stock. It is enough to say that annual leases on apartments are rarely offered… This excess of tourists has forced the establishment of quotas for visits to most of the over-popular sites such as the Parc Güell, which from now on will admit 400 visitors per half hour… Processing the tourist troops in shifts allows each group to visit in turn without spending time loitering or daydreaming. It means a brisk visit, as is also the case in other prominent sites that it is vital to see, or more accurately glimpse. But this is hardly a tragedy, because tourists prepare their journeys in detail and have already seen and stored away all the sights before arriving in situ. And how does all this end up? With the spectacle of stencilled slogans on some walls: “Tourists = Terrorists.” This speaks of a suppressed anger, showing that the exasperated residents of Barcelona are refusing to play the role of Mickey Mouse in a theme park.

It has to be recognised that the seasonal aspect that characterised early tourism no longer exists: it is a year-round activity. There is no respite, no breathing space, no quiet moments, not even to repair the damage caused by excessive numbers, for “too many tourists kill tourism”. This aphorism is now common in other tourist locations such as Berlin, where since 1 May 2016 Airbnb has no longer been allowed to offer furnished apartments, to counter the increase in short-term rentals and the reduction in long-term accommodation. The authorities in Amsterdam have reduced the number of festivals (three hundred a year) so as to discourage some categories of tourist. Brussels and Bruges are tempted to do something similar… The thoughtless behaviour of these tourists, in cities that are not their own, must be acknowledged: the drunk festival-goers cause mayhem, yelling in the streets in the middle of the night, while some of them even turn up naked to stock up on drink in the shops that open late. Others think nothing of organising parties with loud music in rented apartments, showing no concern for neighbours who keep different hours. In Paris, an unexpected outcome of Airbnb’s growth in the Saint-Paul neighbourhood has been the closure of two schools, but it would also be interesting to know to what extent some types of shop (bakers, butchers, hairdressers, dry cleaners) have been replaced with others aimed at passing trade, at least in some neighbourhoods. In 2018, Airbnb’s Paris site advertised 65,000 places to rent, at least 10% of which were illegal because they were “on permanent offer”. A study of these Airbnb offers, conducted between April 2012 and May 2013, established that there were twenty renters a year for each advertised apartment. This makes for an unreliable connection between “occasional” landlords and “tourists”. I might add that these lodgings are usually furnished without any originality, with kit furniture bought from Ikea (which with its 340 shops in 28 countries in 2016 is homogenising tastes and making accommodation impersonal and interchangeable).

The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is banking on a growth in tourism. New hotels are indeed being built in central Paris, as well as right on the edge of the capital, a surrounding wall of graceless buildings, all glass and reflections, bordering the ring road… In Mon combat pour Paris (My Fight for Paris), a manifesto produced at the time of the municipal elections, written in platitudes, the candidate – this was in 2013 – enthuses about the 29 million annual visitors and is thrilled to announce some good news: “Here is a heartening prospect – the World Tourism Organization estimates that we will be able to double the number of visitors within the next fifteen years.” The strangest thing about this publication is the contradictions that jostle together without perturbing her. She wants a city that is “green”, “sustainable”, “intelligent” – all toxic but fashionable words in the cool world of technocracy. She also wants “density”, “tourism” and “high build” (“Let’s celebrate towers!” she declaims, without worrying about their energy costs or their negative effect on urban life). The catch-all text is dominated by the socialist ideology of productivism, sprinkled with statistics, so there is no downside in seeing tourism as an opportunity. She does not demur at quoting Keynes: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” In that case let us begin by discarding well-worn certainties (such as “tourism is an economic driver”) and instead embrace new ways of doing things, based on an ecological vision for the world, a vision for every set of circumstances, properly planned, cross-disciplinary and interconnected. If we start from there, our critical understanding of urban and other forms of tourism will result both in new attitudes on the part of travellers and new arrangements for hosting them… But outdated mindsets cling fast to old ideas, as evidenced by Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs during François Hollande’s presidency, who proclaimed that France should aim for 100 million tourists a year. Can the president himself really have declared, on 27 August 2013: “Tourism must become a great national cause”? It is far from a question of demonising “tourists”, but rather of pitying those who put up with a standard consumerized experience of a place and time without truly approaching it as individuals. It is the mass aspect of this type of tourism that I deplore, knowing that there are a thousand and one other ways to visit a country and to explore its history and its present moment. I am referring here to “mass tourism” and not “tourism of the masses”, because in the current climate of socio-economic inequalities, the “masses” are excluded from consumerized tourism, which is confined to a solvent population travelling around in an indistinct “mass”, repeating the same stereotypes.

The nature of tourism, when it comes to tourist masses, involves energy intensive transfers of people from place to place, and is often time consuming and standardising, without delivering the boons that the country visited anticipates. A study of worldwide tourism’s carbon footprint, published on 7 May 2018 in the journal Nature Climate Change, analysed the flow of tourists travelling by air between 160 countries from 2009 to 2013, naturally taking account of emissions linked to the transport of tourists (aviation fuel and petrol for cars) but also the transport of everything they need (food and drink, hotel operations, consumables…). The findings speak volumes: the tourist sector was responsible for the emission of 3.9 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2009 and 4.5 billion tonnes in 2013, that is to say 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (maritime transport has peaked at 3%). Since mass tourism grew by 7% between 2016 and 2017, according to the World Tourism Organisation, and will grow by 5% between 2017 and 2018, it is clear that its carbon footprint will increase at the same rate. Amerisubject cans are responsible for a quarter of this 8%, followed closely by the Chinese, who are heavy consumers of package tours, then predictably by those countries whose populations share a fondness for taking trips: Germany, India, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Russia and Great Britain. The study also notes that island countries (the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Cyprus…) have a disproportionate carbon footprint because of the tourist influx. Since there is no imminent prospect of aeroplanes using less fuel, and the number of tourists being transported is set to rise further, it is likely that tourism’s carbon footprint will go through the roof! On average, there are 100,000 daily commercial flights worldwide, servicing 17,700 airports. To give an example, if the carbon addition is difficult to digest, passengers arrive in private cars or taxis, by bus or metro, all of which involve polluting fuels… A reduction in flights, including those taken for business, has turned out to be an ethical necessity and demands an effort from everyone. For example, in my own small way, I choose train travel and refuse long-distance invitations, even for thesis examining boards, which can be conducted via Skype. But this is only a drop of water in the ocean of oil…

Despite its mass nature, tourism today takes different forms, and it would be an exaggeration to see all tourists as simple consumers of the tourist industry, inevitably witless and vacuous. There are still little-visited byways, appreciated by travellers attentive to the sense of time and space that pertain to the populations they have come to visit and wish to meet. However, “elsewhere” seems to be sought out less and less, replaced by an unlimited “here”, always available, reassuring, continuous and globalised. The word “elsewhere” comes from the Old English elles hwaer, meaning in another place. But the elsewhere that concerns us here has a further dimension, related to “another” in the sense of “different”, as in the expression “being in another world”. The term “elsewhere” can have a positive and life-changing connotation: to go elsewhere precisely for the purpose of leaving here and becoming “another”.

The mechanisation of transport, which came after the general reliance on steam (for trains, ships and cars) and then the development of the aeroplane, has significantly shrunk geographical distance, allowing faster times between points of departure and arrival. As far back as the nineteenth century it was thought that the train brought two places closer together and altered perceptions of time. In fact, in 1891 a common time – l’heure républicaine – was established in France and its colony Algeria, in order to facilitate connections (between trains, ferries, hackney cabs, ships…). This ability to reach another place very quickly had a considerable impact on our concept of time and place. We no longer see obstacles created on the one hand by geography’s sometimes unpredictable aspects (trains use tunnels and bridges that eliminate all physical impediments) and on the other hand by a lengthy time commitment. With technical and technological advances, such impressions have multiplied. In the seventeenth century, the famous letter-writer Madame de Sévigné took several days to travel from one place to another, but now the same journey takes only a couple of hours. Without moving, we communicate in real time: we are simultaneously here and there. This ability to be in two places at once, which was a feature of the most daring science fiction novels only fifteen years ago, has become commonplace. It is precisely these new circumstances that militate against travel. When I take the RER commuter train to Paris, I see tourists chatting with relatives or friends they have left behind in their own countries. They are in Paris (at least physically, I can see them in front of me, I can touch them, they are not virtual!), and shortly they will arrive at the Palace of Versailles, but at the same time they are still at home, in another here.

The members of this Indian family visiting Paris may communicate with each other in Hindi, ask the museum attendant for information in English, and talk on their cell phones in yet another language. They are aware of time differences and are not wholeheartedly in Paris. But since they need to prove that they are, they send a selfie to their relatives, so far away and yet so near. The effect of this spatial contraction is to prevent this family’s eyes and ears from making any sense of the “elsewhere” where they find themselves. They all still remain at home. Or, more accurately, home remains with them. They carry their here with them, into an elsewhere that does not really interest them, especially as they have already seen it on countless internet sites while preparing their trip. They know everything there is to know about it. There is no room for surprises on this journey to a different place. They may be transported physically, but not in the emotional sense (the word “emotional” is itself linked to the idea of motion). It is as though they are treading water. Here is an adverb indicating a specific place, the opposite of elsewhere, which functions as an alibi. When they are elsewhere, people are not present when something happens: they cannot be implicated, their innocence is plain to see… But moving to a different place without being transported, this is something new: “I am leaving but I don’t have to leave, I’m going from here to here. It is true that I’ve travelled on an aeroplane and now I’m on a suburban train, but my cyber connections protect me from any disorientation.” Since all tourists are reduced to this expedient, I do not even realise what I am not experiencing, yet this ought to be the outcome as I am no longer at home, while remaining here…

Globalisation brings a uniform quality not only to landscapes, but also to the sense of place and time. Architecture, and construction more generally, actively contribute to this homogeneity of form which makes elsewhere look like here. Airports, hotels, museums, restaurants, buses: none of these disorientate the tourist masses who, wherever they are, follow the same routines and timetables, eat the same bland food, wear the same kind of clothes – in short, conform to the image they must present of themselves. For the duration of their trip, they belong to a club whose codes and values they master. The almost complete mapping of the planet Earth, with its toponymy, its different scales, its frontiers, its lakes, seas and oceans, its major and minor rivers, its towns and regions, which can be linked to other thematic and dynamic maps (demographics, religions, languages, natural resources, energy sources, agriculture and so on) provides us with a continually updated knowledge that makes any information collected in situ from the indigenous population obsolete. This erasure of elsewhere is surely one of the reasons why the genre of “utopian” literature has dried up and been replaced by science fiction, which explores beyond the dark side of the moon or imagines the world three thousand years hence… With no elsewhere there are no more utopias (since Thomas More, “utopias” have been stimulated by the travel tales of seafarers, missionaries, adventurers, merchants and so on); with no elsewhere there are fewer journeys to make. This has a bearing on our human condition which, when all is said and done, can only discover itself by discovering the other within itself.

The reduction in tourism that I am calling for is not a punishment. It is not a question of depriving ourselves of essential knowledge (we learn through communication, reading and travel) but of measuring the environmental impact and then choosing an approach that will not increase the challenges faced by the Earth and its inhabitants. A reduction in tourism is just one piece of the jigsaw in our whole approach to living in the Anthropocene Era, which calls for reductions in all aspects of our daily life. The trick is to discover unexpected pleasures in this, and not to regret that we will never climb to the top of Everest or go to the Tierra del Fuego, only to add our own detritus to what has already been left there by others…

*Translated by Emma Mandley / KennisTranslations