“Two years later, the giant liners are refueling”

On had almost forgotten their massive silhouette which blocks the horizon and crushes the houses of the port. The liners are back, in Barcelona, ​​Marseille, Miami or Fort-de-France. Again, the population of the ship – comparable to a city of 3,000 people – crowds to the bridges to surge into the city and the surrounding area. Buses embark passengers in shipments of forty. The health crisis began on a boat, when the Diamond Princess inaugurated on 1^er February 2020, in the Japanese port of Yokohama, the era of repeated confinements and dramatic quarantines. We feared, then, a decisive stop to this popular activity, an absolute metaphor for mass tourism and its practices that are not very virtuous for the planet.

It is not so. Two years later, the giant liners are refueling, like an entire sector which is regaining color with surprising speed. Airports are overwhelmed, as are campsites, museums and hotels. Because travel and tourism, whether floating or on land, is much more than an economic activity: it is an aspiration.

In a society which, as sociologist Jean Viard reminds us, only works 15% of his life compared to 40% in 1900, travel touches the essence of the human being who needs to decenter himself in order to find himself. “Despite an ever-increasing ecological awareness, despite returning from vacation closer to home, the desire for elsewhere and for others will not leave us”he writes in Year zero of tourism (with David Medioni, Ed. de l’Aube, 168 pages, 17 euros).

An advantage: predictability

And elsewhere, it can be in a boat similar to a city which would be reserved for leisure only with its swimming pools, its sports halls, its cinemas and its restaurants, even its gardens. Urbanity without the stress of work, and in each port new landscapes. A city that runs on heavy fuel oil and which also illustrates the risk of overcrowding when it dumps 2,000 consumers at once in the alleys of Dubrovnik or Venice.

The promoters of this activity have pushed the industrialization of tourism to its maximum. Illustration of the current paradox of a considerable economic sector, but often unloved and criticized for its nuisances. It represents almost 10% of France’s gross domestic product – much more if you add culture – and is the main activity in many regions of the world.

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However, this liner tourism has an advantage: its predictability. We know precisely the circuit, the times and the dates, which allows a fine management of the flows. A form of optimization like the big museums and cities do with quota and reservation systems. The opposite of old-fashioned travel, nourished by the unexpected, and the ransom of the democratization of leisure.