1.1.2.1. Too general a definition
The criticism of the sources of so-called international tourism is, in a quite justified way, a theme often addressed [CAZ 98, VIO 00, DEH 08]. However, we believe that an overview is necessary because of the lack of scientific consensus on the definition of tourism, the persistence of dregs in the analyses, and because the data produced influence the perception of the object studied, which is hastily qualified as âinternational tourismâ.
In the yearbook published by UNTWO, it is in fact travel that is recorded â in the sense that the same person who makes several trips in a year will be counted for each trip â and is defined as travel including departure and return to a so-called country of residence, or sometimes to an issuing country. This poses a semantic problem, suggesting that the tourist is forced, projected, with little to no involvement. As a result, the global departure rate is not the ratio between the number of trips and the world population. The calculation must take into account, in the numerator, this number divided by the average number of trips per person including border crossings. Moreover, the number of people who have left a country of residence is not equivalent to the total number of people welcomed to the destination countries, as Jean-Michel Dewailly and Ămile Flament [DEW 93] have already noted. This is because, during the same trip, a person who visits3 several States will be counted as a unit at each border crossing.
Second, and as mentioned in the introduction, the definition that the UNWTO has been working to disseminate includes different forms of mobility. And this option leads us to use the word âtravelerâ rather than âtouristâ when referring to the flows counted by the UNWTO, or to use the word âtourismâ in quotation marks, whenever we use it in the sense given by this institution. The question of the definition of tourism or tourists was not a scientific issue until the late 1990s, but was raised by the MIT team [MIT 02]. For us, in fact, the UNWTO proposal is too broad to justify the use of the word âtourismâ as a scientific concept. According to this institution, a âtouristâ is a person who travels outside his or her main residence for a period of between one night and 1 year, regardless of the reason for travel. Moreover, these publications do not distinguish individuals according to the reasons given in the definition used by the institution. One piece of data was published by the UNWTO, on a global scale, which indicates a breakdown into three categories for 2012: âleisure and holidaysâ, to use the terminology used by the institution, would show 52% were trips, visits to relatives and friends, 27% and professional purposes, 17%. Intention is not specified for the remaining 7%.
Our analysis [MIT 02, KNA 03, DUH 13a, DUH 13b] has modified the approach by questioning the moving individualâs intention and, by giving to the question of changing location, content that is neither objective distance data, a variable capital endowments disqualify, nor a simple form of data today in the sense that the social diffusion of a polytopic habitat [STO 06] makes the approach complex. For us, the tourist is an individual who moves to rebuild herself or himself by implementing practices of rest, discovery, play and sociability. Tourism is also distinguished from other forms of mobility by the increased flexibility individuals have in choosing the destination and the practices they deploy there. We consciously use the expression flexibility rather than freedom in order to emphasize that we do not ignore that abilities influence choices, particularly through the habitus, i.e. the different processes of socialization â notably family education â at the origin of the distinction [BOU 79]. On the contrary, business travel involves the company exercising control over the individual, in the choice of locations, in terms of schedule and in organization, with the counterpart that the company takes full responsibility for the travel. Contrary to the statement made by Jean-Michel Dewailly and Ămile Flament [DEW 00], incentive travel is indeed a management technique and is the responsibility of companies. Beyond that, the possibilities of temporarily escaping from the fixed framework, either as leisure activities, the end of the day, or as opportunities that individuals know how to seize, do not fundamentally change the nature of the movement, which is indeed a hierarchical decision. As much as these times can be qualified as tourist moments, since the individual finds some flexibility in a space outside daily life, they do not fundamentally call into question the more constrained nature of these business trips. School trips, even if they open up much more exciting prospects than confinement to the classroom, nevertheless imply that they are part of an intertwining of rules that are as justified from the point of view of the institution as they are more or less demanding. Pilgrimages are also part of a slightly more constrained system. Rituals must be observed. The places are part of a prescribed program within the framework of the religion concerned4.
In all forms of mobility, the individual can break away from the rules and use the opportunities offered by tourism to engage in a wide range of strategies. This is the case for migrants who use customs facilities related to tourism. For their part, the authorities are stepping up procedures to discourage them and force people to return to the country of departure. However, at individual level, it is the observation of practices that makes it possible to distinguish between what tourism is and what refers to other forms of mobility. For example, in the case of pilgrimages, the program separates religious and tourist instances. Beyond that, a very great diversity of behaviors can be observed, because the believing individual remains so when he or she becomes a tourist. In fact, there are tourists, and a continuum of practices will be established between those who adopt only tourist attitudes and those who, on the contrary, are totally oriented toward the contemplation afforded by pilgrimages, and between the two extremes, a rich palette of varied combinations.
It is indeed the quality of the break with everyday life that distinguishes tourism from other forms of mobility. As Norbert Ălias and Eric DĂźnning have proposed in the spectrum of leisure activities, which includes in the category of the most âofftrackâ practices, âtravelling during holidays⌠devoting oneself to non-daily physical care such as sunbathing, walkingâ [ELI 94, pp. 131â133]. It could be argued that such an approach ruins any statistical enterprise in advance, but is it important to count or to understand the world? Therefore, we also do not share the analysis of Dehoorne et al. [DEH 08] who contest the status of individuals who frequent Algeria as tourists on the pretext that they are Algerians of origin. In addition to the fact that some of them rightly claim their attachment to the country in which they were born, more than, or in addition to, that of their forefathers, there is nothing that allows such a global approach. Many of them reside in France, work there and ...