Future scenarios: green tourism districts

Introduction

Foreseeing the future is a risky business and we will try as any rational agent to minimize our risk.

Two options are possible: Foreshowing long-term scenarios impossible to

contradict since the future is always tomorrow. So who knows?

Analyzing the current trends and presenting the blooming initiatives that may become a pattern in the tourism market.

The second option is the best since the topic of green tourism districts is rooted in two major trends in current consumer behavior and is already taken into account by major players in the business.

IntroductionWe made the choice to emphasize the difference between a green tourism resort and a green tourism district.

The resort is a place where we go for a leisure purpose, resort comes from the old French and means literally to go out again

The district is a specific area of a city or region with sometimes a main activity (business and shopping districts) or more often a territory usually under a jurisdiction as an administrative unit (Albena is in the Dobrich district).

These definitions are important because for now the common view of green tourism is related to the respect of nature (eco-tourism) and to sustainable accommodations often branded as resort.

Therefore the green resort is a sort of an empire within an empire sometimes disregarding of the sustainability of its environment.

The green district ask the necessary question of the outskirts of the resort and of its integration into a holistic sustainable approach of the region or area

Which leads to a crucial question: why would we have to go in and out if we can stay in a place that have no borders with the outside ?

Introduction

These two questions are the beginning of an answer to the emerging needs of consumer

Green tourism has matured as the tourist, we have now the possibility to see what succeeded or not and foremost the opportunities we missed

Some markets are still very young or barely exist, it is our task to understand them and to provide new forms of value to our consumer

Ecotourism’s evolution and Economic Impact

Ecotourism captures $77 billion of the global market and experiencing double-digit gains that are likely to accelerate as concern about global warming rises

Ecotourism could grow to the point where it makes up for 25 percent of the global travel market until 2018

Since the 1990s, ecotourism has been growing 20% – 34% per year

Analysts predict a growth in eco-resorts and hotels, a sector already growing at 20% a year — and suggest early converts to sustainable tourism will make market gains

Evolving Consumer Demand

20%-30% of travelers are aware of needs & values of sustainable tourism

10%-20% of travelers look for ‘green’ options.

5%-10% of travelers demand ‘green’ holidays.

A survey of U.S., British, and Australian travelers revealed that 70% would pay up to $150 more for a two-week stay in a hotel with a “responsible environmental attitude.

More than two-thirds of U.S. and Australian travelers, and 90% of British tourists, consider active protection of the environment to be part of a hotel’s responsibility.

Center for Responsible Travel - www.responsibletravel.orgCarbon Consulting Company Maldives - cccmaldives.com

Green tourism: a consumer behavior approach

Tourism has the singularity to market several items: goods as souvenirs, maps; services as in restaurants or hotels, experiences as in a theme park or a rafting trip and also places as cities, regions or countries.

Apparently separated these items often merge as in theme parks like the Disneyland resorts

At the same place people can find all these items through a personal and global experience within a delimited area.

Disneyland can package an experience because with hotels and restaurants that belongs to its imaginary, meticulous reproductions of a real city of the 19th century and even the possibility to use “Disney Dollars” , it became a territory on its own

The results is more days and money spent in the park and the feeling for the consumer that he was elsewhere for nothing could remind him the outside world

Green tourism: a consumer behavior approach

A full experience would be impossible to live if the tourist had to go out of the park every day to eat or sleep. There would be what psychologists call a cognitive dissonance ,an excessive mental stress and discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs or feelings at the same time.

Indeed how can you truly and fully experience the magic of Disney if you have to cope with a wake-up call every evening when you go back to real life, to your “disenchanted” hotel, three days in a row.

Casinos in Las Vegas and Macau followed this idea and created as well this kind of autarkic territory.

This is not only a marketing device meant to create the optimal conditions to sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts or poker chips, it is an answer to a modern demand to escape an everyday life without wonder or magic, to a modern expectation to find in tourism a way to live a re-enchanting experience (Ritzer, 2009)

Green tourism: a consumer behavior approach These resorts were the labs of today marketing that transform every purchase into an experience

Flagship stores for brands like Nike or Louis Vuitton are capitalizing on this pattern, giving a symbolic added-value to purchased goods through the place they are bought in

In services, franchises like Subway or Starbucks do the same by using senses, the basis of a purchase experience, (smell of fresh bread or roasted coffee) and through a one-to-one customer relation based on our freedom to make an individualized sandwich or coffee, “ I only went to buy a coffee but the second I entered the shop I started having an experience”

Customer value become disconnected from the product in itself to be more and more immaterial

The values of green tourism and marketing are at first sight completely the opposite to this model of over-consumption and communication that build modern « cathedrals » of waste and bad taste or disseminate thousands of similar shops in our inner city selling identical products and at the same time a unique experience

They are the opposite if green marketing is not green washing but a commitment to elaborate, produce and promote sustainable goods, services and experiences.

Green tourism: a consumer behavior approach

Tourism is one of the best way to take into account the needs for experience and sustainability

A sustainable experience can be understood in different but complementary ways

1. The experience of the tourist in an area which follows the guidelines of sustainability (use of renewable energy, carbon footprint awareness, preservation of eco-diversity….)

2. An experience in itself that would be sustainable, that last enough to become an embedded experience

Marketing tend to create disposable experiences, never-ending attempts, short-lasting fantasies or dreams, that generally last solely in the pictures we take or the « souvenirs » we buy

A sustainable experience is a highly valuable item that green tourism marketing can offer, it is a leisure travel that gives you also awareness and knowledge eventually through the discovery of new technologies or the practice of new habits of consumption or living

Marketing tend to create disposable experiences, never-ending attempts, short-lasting

fantasies or dreams, that generally last solely in the

pictures we take or the « souvenirs » we buy

1.The experience of the tourist in an area which follows the guidelines of sustainability

2.An experience in itself that would be sustainable, that last

enough to become an embedded experience

Definition of a green district We can guess that the logic of the experience within a resort cannot fully embody our view of the consumer’s need to sustainability

The logic of the resort cannot escape the shadow of cognitive dissonance since it draws a heavy limit between the inside and the outside

The consumer will fatally live this contradiction that can be accepted for most of marketed experiences but with great difficulty in green tourism where an holistic approach is the key to any strategy of sustainable development

We assume that a sustainable experience has to tackle the central issue of the delimitation of the area and therefore fully assert an holistic methodology

We built initially our presentation on the distinction between resort and district and we see know that the relation of the area to its environment is decisive

In order to explain our vision of the green district we chose the lower discriminating item which holds in a simple question:

Do “real” people actually live there ?

The answer helped us to draw a line: A resort is a delimitated area with very few or no year-long inhabitants unrelated to its dominant tourism facilities A district is an area shared by tourists and year-long inhabitants mainly unrelated to the tourism sector

Green districts

We chose to study three different scales of districts with three different lines of separation with the outside

1. The State: The Qatar states in its national vision for 2030 that it will build a green state delimited by borders

2. The Village: The seafront eco-village and resort at the Porte des Deux-Caps (FR) whose leisure facilities will have a restricted access

3. The Neighborhood : Vauban in Freibourg im Breisgau (DE) without any built delimitations except a strong filtered permeability to cars

The State

The Village

The Neighborhood

1. The State: Qatar National Vision for 2030

Considering that in 2012, Qatar had the highest rate of CO2 emissions per capita in the world, environmental development has been wisely chosen as one of the four pillars of the 2030 strategy of the country

The Qataris decided to implement at a state level a holistic environmental vision that publicly and widely promote the balancing of the need of economic development and the preservation of air, land, water and biological diversity.

The founder and chair of Qatar Green Building Council and chairman of Qatar Tourism Authority Issa Al Mohannadi has an integrated view of tourism development and sustainability of the whole territory. He says that “ the role of the hotel industry is to lead the country towards sustainability”. As an industry regulator QTA urges the implementation of green technology into all developments and hotel operations.

He continues “Our overall tourism development strategy is not only aimed at lowering Qatar’s carbon footprint and its energy and water consumption, but also looks at protecting Qatar’s natural habitats, its wildlife and its marine reserves,”

1. The State: Qatar National Vision for 2030

Tourism is viewed by the Emirate as a means of diversification of its economy, sustainable accommodations are meant to be windows of the green housing and in second instance an added-value for the tourist

We cannot find in this vision a will to provide a sustainable experience within a green district but rather the logic of a resort ruled by a managing authority and free from any outside constraints

• The national territory and its borders

• The clear distinction between an inside and an outside

• The top-down approach

• The possibility to avoid a short-term business analysis

This strategy will result in a state-of-the-art sustainable wonder but maybe also in a green island enclosed in a sea of sand.

2. The village: The waterfront eco-village at the Porte des Deux-Caps (FR)

The Eurotunnel group has started the construction of an eco-village in front of the Channel including a golf and seaside resort, an hotel spa and a 40 ha real estate program of more than 500 homes.

The residential program will be integrated as an extension to the town of Sangatte located on the sea front

The term of eco-village is misleading since it is normally used for a rural community settlement with very high environmental standards but in this case architectural and technical innovation of buildings will be sought, with the objective of exceeding the energy performance regulations in force:

Beyond the « low-energy house » standards between 2012 and 2016

Beyond the « passive building » standards between 2016 and 2020

Beyond the « positive energy building » standards from 2020.

2. The village: The waterfront eco-village at the Porte des Deux-Caps (FR)

If we ask ourselves a typical marketing question, what comes first in mind when we see the brochure or hear about the project?

The answer would certainly be luxury and not sustainability.

Without the residential program, the eco-village would be another luxury resort with a golf, a spa, an hotel and villas at the difference that the prefix eco would be attached to the word resort

In this case not for a green washing purpose since the project was sustainably designed from the beginning and as the construction of a golf eco-resort is a complicated and controversial environmental issue that allows no mistake

The emphasis on luxury shows that the area is only centered on leisure and designed first and foremost for the tourist, for the outsider

It lacks an real autonomy from the tourism sector and therefore one of the principal ingredient in the recipe of a fully green district, authenticity

3. The neighborhood: Vauban in Freibourg im Breisgau

The neighborhood of Vauban in Freibourg may seem paradoxically the most authentic and green district we study if we overcome the common association of green tourism and natural landscapes.

The neighborhood can be considered authentic since at the beginning it was sustainably designed without any interest in tourism or communication

The idea of this district bloomed in 1993 and meant to be a community-based project, with citizens sharing the same values.

The construction ended in 2006 and the houses are built at least with improved low energy standard and "passive house" or "plus energy" standard and are inhabited by around 5000 people

An ecological traffic mobility concept is implemented with a reduced number of private cars to be parked in the periphery (about 40% of the households agreed to live without an owned car) and it costs around 18 000 euros to buy a place in a car park of the periphery

Without any doubt Vauban is a green district fully integrated in one of the greenest city in Germany and where the limit between the inside and the outside is very thin (transportations mainly).

Ironically this district is named after the Maréchal de Vauban who designed famous fortifications under the reign of Louis the XIVth .

Nevertheless the main default of the district is the opposite of the one we found for the eco-village, mainly designed for housing, it cannot be considered as a place for leisure moreover as a destination.

Tourism in a green district

Though it would be untrue to assert that the genuine green district cannot be a place that people visit or stay in

At the scale of Vauban there is green city hotel with an eco-built facility :

The other advantage is that even if Freiburg does not share the same standards of sustainability than its district, it is recognized as one of the greenest city in Germany and sustainable accommodations can already be found under the brand name of famous Hotel Chains as Best Western Premier

The green district has to be studied as a part of an environment, it would have been possible to achieve such an ambitious project if Vauban was not supposed to be the showcase of Freiburg ‘successful green urban policy

We can assume now that the green district of Vauban can be part of a green city tourism package as a model of sustainability, as a part of a very attractive and green city, Freiburg, which is one of the main gateway to the Black Forest

Tourism in a green district

Vauban is an example among so many others neighborhoods, in the outskirts of cities and major capitals as Paris or London, where eco-building is now widely used to renovate or create urban areas particularly suburban

The limits of the creation of accommodations in green districts are mainly linked to the relation of tourism to its inhabitants

The success of Vauban lies in its nature, a project conceived for the people, by the people where everybody could participate from the start to the end

In existing districts, the biggest mistake would be to implement hotels and a tourism activity among inhabitants without consulting them and make them active players in their conceptions

Living in a green district goes often along with a strong attachment to your housing and your close environment , they define your lifestyle and eventually who you are

At their beginnings these projects do not usually take into account tourism and the wish for city tourist to settle for the duration of their stay in a green district

Therefore this question should be asked and debated during the process of conception where future inhabitants have to play a major role as it is the key to success for a green district

Tourism suffers from a bad reputation especially when it regards environment and sustainability

The promotion of a green district tourism has to aim the tourists and also the inhabitants keeping in mind that this particular area can be seen as an eco-system in itself that need to be preserved and respected

Conclusion

We had made the choice to emphasize the difference between a resort and a district in order to foresee possible scenarios for the development of green tourism

The preference for the district and the assertion of a need for a sustainable experience rely on the belief that the relation of the area to its environment, a real permeability between the inside and the outside are the key to an efficient holistic approach

A place where the traveler can discover new ways of life though the use of sustainable devices, the share of good practices, the experience of new technologies to a certain extent as in an open-air and small-scale science museums

Green districts are an opportunity to attract children and their parents if they get to understand simply how the technology works and if they are shown what will happen in the future, knowing that it can be a concrete leverage to raise awareness on what we can now call the sustainable shift of paradigm in urban design

Unfortunately the market of green city tourism is not yet developed in spite of the health of city tourism and the strong inclusion of cities’ sustainability in the EU agenda

• The EU 28 barometer on tourism tells us that on the people that travel a minimum of four consecutive nights in 2013, 23% went on a city trip (3% more than in 2012). Which is likely underestimated since an average city trip last 2 or 3 days.

• The EU 7th Environmental Action Program to 2020 stresses the need for more sustainable cities in the n°8 priority objective :To enhance the sustainability of the Union’s cities

At the horizon of 2020, 80 % of the union population is likely to live in urban and peri-urban areas and our future will be more and more correlated to the expanding sustainable urban solutions for housing or transportation

Many reproaches are made to tourism and maybe some of them can be proved untrue through the commitment to a sustainable city tourism which is not a way to take advantage of nature but to promote and enjoy ways to preserve it in our natural habitat, the city.

A sustainably conceived area, a green tourism district is where tourists and inhabitants share experiences and knowledge

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