he emblematic Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region of France has been especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 crisis: and like other global tourist hotspots, PACA is facing difficult questions about its preparedness for short- and long-term environmental challenges. Fortunately, PACA’s regional response indicates that public and private sector actors are closely working together to create a more resilient tourism sector and their model could serve as a roadmap for other tourism-focused regions as they prepare for 2021 and beyond.
For Nice and the Côte d’Azur, tourism makes up 15% of the local economy—more than twice the national average in France. Developing, communicating and executing a successful tourism plan will be crucial for Nice and other tourism-focused regions not just for their short-term economic recovery, but also for their long-term resiliency in the face of other environmental risks, including future pandemics or environmental degradation linked to climate change.
From the PACA region, we can identify the following short-, medium- and long-term best practices for tourism resiliency that other regions can adopt to their local context.
In the short-term, tourism actors should use simple and visual communications to reassure travelers and locals that travel is safe and all measures are being taken to ensure a safe environment. In Nice, local public and private officials coordinated one of the earliest responses to the fear and uncertainty sparked by COVID-19 with the confiance sanitaire label: an easy-to-recognize symbol that businesses could display if they respected the sanitary and social distancing measures outlined by French health authorities. The public-private partnership was intuitive, visible both online and in physical locations and ultimately reassured both business owners and customers that health and safety was the number one priority.
In the medium-term, the tourism sector will need to reallocate resources to establish a communications strategy for tourism promotion that fosters a more sustainable and local industry that is less exposed to extreme global fluctuations. Accordingly, the region has heavily invested in local resources for businesses and customizable communications campaigns that local partners can use to more effectively reach the domestic market.
For example, Nice’s municipal website outlines the exceptional measures the government is taking to support business owners in the city and links to an entire microsite dedicated to reinforcing the local economy. The site also details measures to reinforce the visibility of business owners, through enhanced communication campaigns.
One such campaign focused on the “re-entry” time frame, referring to the return to the worlds of school and work following the summer holidays. This campaign was more focused on the local population and provided a centralized hub for citizens of Nice to see what cultural activities were offered by various associations in the fall. This initiative appears to be the local government’s effort to stimulate local activity even after the tourists leave and reflects a growing realization that long-term resiliency will have to increasingly rely on local economic activity.
The regional government has also heavily invested in supporting the tourism industry during this uncertain time. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur website includes a detailed plan for 1.4 billion euros worth of investments in everything from tourism, transportation infrastructure, renewable energies and education to restructured international tourism offers and cooperative regional initiatives.
This summer, the regional tourism authority also invested in the most expensive communication campaign in its history (2.3 million euros) when it launched “On a tous besoin du sud” (we all need the South). The campaign’s objective was to compensate for the loss in international visitors in the medium-term (40 percent of all tourists to the region come from abroad) by stimulating domestic travel to the region. This strategy strongly focuses on expanding and reinforcing tourism-adjacent partnerships throughout the region and the campaign was designed to be highly visual and customizable for each territory within the wider region. Moreover, the campaign dovetailed with the nation-wide tourism campaign this year, #CetÉtéJeVisiteLaFrance (this summer I’m visiting France).
In the long term, tourism actors should work with government agencies to invest funds in regional partnerships and take chances on innovative initiatives. Nice and the PACA region are working together with businesses to secure low-interest lines of credit for tourism-dependent businesses while simultaneously launching calls for new ideas to achieve long-term resiliency, including:
- A virtual hubinar that gathered all of the business leaders across various economic sectors in the PACA region to discuss economic resilience in the face of the COVID crisis.
- A public-private partnership between the regional tourism authority and Vinci Autoroutes to support increased local tourism in the region;
- A call for proposals for innovative projects that promote responsible and sustainable tourism.
The tourism industry in Nice and the PACA region is still facing challenging times, but has ultimately reacted quickly to the challenges posed by COVID-19 and are organizing themselves around innovative solutions for the future. The PACA region highlights numerous measures that local and regional governments can enact to support tourism, notably in the medium-to-long term as tourism actors realize that they cannot solely rely on international tourism and must boost engagement with domestic audiences to ensure the more sustainable, long-term resiliency of the local economy.
The deliberate focus on large-scale, long-term partnerships that use regional, sectorial and public-private collaborations as a way to plan for an uncertain future is a compelling model for France as a whole and for other tourism-focused regions seeking to plan for a post-COVID future.
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Digital Ethnographies: Long-term Resiliency and Solidarity in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
November 17, 2020
France's tourism hot spot Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur has been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also could provide a template in long-term resilience.
T
he emblematic Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region of France has been especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 crisis: and like other global tourist hotspots, PACA is facing difficult questions about its preparedness for short- and long-term environmental challenges. Fortunately, PACA’s regional response indicates that public and private sector actors are closely working together to create a more resilient tourism sector and their model could serve as a roadmap for other tourism-focused regions as they prepare for 2021 and beyond.
For Nice and the Côte d’Azur, tourism makes up 15% of the local economy—more than twice the national average in France. Developing, communicating and executing a successful tourism plan will be crucial for Nice and other tourism-focused regions not just for their short-term economic recovery, but also for their long-term resiliency in the face of other environmental risks, including future pandemics or environmental degradation linked to climate change.
From the PACA region, we can identify the following short-, medium- and long-term best practices for tourism resiliency that other regions can adopt to their local context.
In the short-term, tourism actors should use simple and visual communications to reassure travelers and locals that travel is safe and all measures are being taken to ensure a safe environment. In Nice, local public and private officials coordinated one of the earliest responses to the fear and uncertainty sparked by COVID-19 with the confiance sanitaire label: an easy-to-recognize symbol that businesses could display if they respected the sanitary and social distancing measures outlined by French health authorities. The public-private partnership was intuitive, visible both online and in physical locations and ultimately reassured both business owners and customers that health and safety was the number one priority.
In the medium-term, the tourism sector will need to reallocate resources to establish a communications strategy for tourism promotion that fosters a more sustainable and local industry that is less exposed to extreme global fluctuations. Accordingly, the region has heavily invested in local resources for businesses and customizable communications campaigns that local partners can use to more effectively reach the domestic market.
For example, Nice’s municipal website outlines the exceptional measures the government is taking to support business owners in the city and links to an entire microsite dedicated to reinforcing the local economy. The site also details measures to reinforce the visibility of business owners, through enhanced communication campaigns.
One such campaign focused on the “re-entry” time frame, referring to the return to the worlds of school and work following the summer holidays. This campaign was more focused on the local population and provided a centralized hub for citizens of Nice to see what cultural activities were offered by various associations in the fall. This initiative appears to be the local government’s effort to stimulate local activity even after the tourists leave and reflects a growing realization that long-term resiliency will have to increasingly rely on local economic activity.
The regional government has also heavily invested in supporting the tourism industry during this uncertain time. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur website includes a detailed plan for 1.4 billion euros worth of investments in everything from tourism, transportation infrastructure, renewable energies and education to restructured international tourism offers and cooperative regional initiatives.
This summer, the regional tourism authority also invested in the most expensive communication campaign in its history (2.3 million euros) when it launched “On a tous besoin du sud” (we all need the South). The campaign’s objective was to compensate for the loss in international visitors in the medium-term (40 percent of all tourists to the region come from abroad) by stimulating domestic travel to the region. This strategy strongly focuses on expanding and reinforcing tourism-adjacent partnerships throughout the region and the campaign was designed to be highly visual and customizable for each territory within the wider region. Moreover, the campaign dovetailed with the nation-wide tourism campaign this year, #CetÉtéJeVisiteLaFrance (this summer I’m visiting France).
In the long term, tourism actors should work with government agencies to invest funds in regional partnerships and take chances on innovative initiatives. Nice and the PACA region are working together with businesses to secure low-interest lines of credit for tourism-dependent businesses while simultaneously launching calls for new ideas to achieve long-term resiliency, including:
- A virtual hubinar that gathered all of the business leaders across various economic sectors in the PACA region to discuss economic resilience in the face of the COVID crisis.
- A public-private partnership between the regional tourism authority and Vinci Autoroutes to support increased local tourism in the region;
- A call for proposals for innovative projects that promote responsible and sustainable tourism.
The tourism industry in Nice and the PACA region is still facing challenging times, but has ultimately reacted quickly to the challenges posed by COVID-19 and are organizing themselves around innovative solutions for the future. The PACA region highlights numerous measures that local and regional governments can enact to support tourism, notably in the medium-to-long term as tourism actors realize that they cannot solely rely on international tourism and must boost engagement with domestic audiences to ensure the more sustainable, long-term resiliency of the local economy.
The deliberate focus on large-scale, long-term partnerships that use regional, sectorial and public-private collaborations as a way to plan for an uncertain future is a compelling model for France as a whole and for other tourism-focused regions seeking to plan for a post-COVID future.
