2023-06-30 08:55:57
Shortening the summer holidays would benefit neither vacationers nor tourism professionals. Questioned by BFM Business, players in the sector raised several problems: overtourism, rising prices, falling profits… A bad idea, therefore, unless, some tell us, we change the rules.
Emmanuel Macron put on the table at the start of the week a subject which promises to divide: the shortening of the summer school holidays which are, according to him, too long.
Although no timetable was unveiled following this announcement and its implementation is therefore far from being finalized, this prospect does not please tourism professionals for whom the summer season is crucial.
“I don’t know if the game is worth the candle,” said Jean-Virgile Crance, president of the Confederation of Tourism Actors (CAT).
That said, such a measure, if it is judiciously applied, would not serve them, qualify some.
Overtourism and rising prices
“If we reduce the summer holidays, we will mechanically concentrate tourist flows over a shorter period” explains Jean-Virgile Crance.
Overtourism would therefore be the inevitable consequence of a shortening of the summer holidays, he said, which would go once morest the plan recently unveiled by the government to better regulate the flow of holidaymakers and in particular the peaks in attendance at certain tourist sites. France is the world’s number one tourist destination and some sites are overwhelmed with visitors, especially in summer.
It is “extremely important to keep 8 weeks of summer” he says once more. The president of Umih Paris Île-de-France, Frank Delvau, agrees.
“We are rather for spreading out” because, he underlines, restricted holidays would, among other things, “have an inflationary effect”.
The prices of hotels, restaurants, transport and activities would increase in the face of higher demand over a shorter period. Vacationers would pay more.
“The less we spread, the less we make turnover”
A handicap for households but also for the sector which would see its profits drop, explains Christophe Souques Bonnet, vice-president of Umih (Union of trades and industries of the hotel industry) Nice-Côte d’Azur Cafetiers Restaurateurs, to BFMBusiness. Shortening the summer holidays, which currently lasts 8 weeks in France, would necessarily lead to a drop in turnover for catering establishments and hotels, he says. “The less we spread out, the less turnover we make,” he explained. The drop would be weighted by the rise in prices but real because “we will not be able to put more people in the same place”.
This is all the more true in Nice, where Christophe Souques Bonnet is located. Second most touristic city in France following Paris, according to its tourist office, it welcomes five million visitors a year and 40% of the people of Nice work, directly or indirectly, for tourism.
Cropped profits but also increased recruitment difficulties, explains the president of the CAT Jean-Virgile Crance. For seasonal activities, companies employ a lot of high school and university students, but if they have fewer vacations, recruitment problems will necessarily be amplified, he says.
“Zoning has proven itself”
Shorten the holidays, a bad idea therefore … unless they are reorganized intelligently, said Didier Arino, managing director of the consulting firm Protourisme. He thinks of “zoning”.
“Zoning has proven itself […] Even if it means having a reduction in the duration of the holidays,” says Didier Arino. It would be, like other holidays such as winter or All Saints, to have a back to school shifted according to defined geographical areas. Thus the holidays, although shorter, would not start the best season for tourism professionals.
This is done in Germany, where the start date differs by region, and would make it possible to lower prices which, on the contrary, would increase if tourist demand were more concentrated, notes Didier Arino. “Tourism professionals would lose nothing and vacationers would gain.”
Jean-Virgile Crance considers, however, that this would make family reunifications more difficult. Open to discussion, the president of the CAT calls for the establishment of an exchange body between the tourism and national education sectors to agree on developments, he said.
A debate that dates
“We are in a mind-blowing fatalism in our profession, we spend our time adapting,” launches Christophe Souques Bonnet.
If there is resignation in his words, he nevertheless tempers the possibility that such a measure will see the light of day soon. “It’s not one of our concerns at the moment,” also says Frank Delvau, while for Didier Arino, this subject is even “an old sea serpent”.
Indeed, the debate is not new. During the last presidential campaign, the environmental candidate, Yannick Jadot proposed to shorten the summer holidays while Vincent Peillon, Minister of National Education from 2012 to 2014, advocated a six-week break between July and August.
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