Winter Tourism

After many years as a lever of economic development during the 20th century, alpine winter tourism has encountered many uncertainties and factors of structural, sectoral and global change. These factors include a decrease in the numbers of skiers, rising competition between resorts, the emergence of new recreational activities and an ageing skiing population. Climate change both reveals and accelerates these transformations by highlighting the contradictions and vulnerabilities of a system whose development from a localized bricolage of ski stations to a globalized industry in just a few decades seems to have lost its knack, as well as the ability to face future obstacles (Bourdeau, 2009a).

French ski resorts are a classic case study of these issues as they are built on a significantly large infrastructure of tourism based upon a principle of monoactivity centred around alpine skiing and the tourist property market. Over the past 30 years, the industry has been heavily criticized for excessive standardization of offerings, as well as a chronic inability to adapt itself to evolving demands. The end of the first-degree touristic equation: ‘winter sports = uniqueness (skiing) + uniformity (resorts) + repetitiveness (annual holiday)’ (Chevallier, 1996) has meant a rupture that is particularly difficult to grasp for resorts. As a recent parliamentary report points out, ‘Those French ski resorts resulting from the snow plan are often criticised for offering standard activities that do not give the consumer the possibility to broaden their range of activities and discover new ones’ (Masson-Maret and Vairetto, 2014).

Numerous scientific studies conducted over the past 10 years document the conditions in which the winter tourism sector in the Alps and the Pyrenees is more or less voluntarily – and very slowly – giving way to conditions imposed by socio-cultural change and touristic demand, environmental and economic sustainability and the impact of climate change (Gauchon, 2010; Achin and George, 2013; Clivaz et al., 2015) in order to conceive and put into place policies of adaptability of destinations that go beyond new developmental models.

On a larger scale, this sectoral perspective can of course be replaced within the wider Anthropocene framework (Steffen et al., 2015), in which tourism is clearly identified as fully contributing to the ‘peak everything’ (Heinberg, 2010). The tourism sector is confronted with transformation requirements that involve reorientations and redefinitions characteristic of transitional situations, in which previously legitimate activities of the sector can no longer be maintained, creating strong uncertainties and potential future crises. In that respect, the following text refers to long-term observations and research carried out in different touristic environments in the French Alps over the past 30 years. Focusing on dilemmas and challenges of tourism policy and engineering facing climate and cultural change, it examines and discusses the processes and conditions in which the sustainable winter sports transition operates and does not operate. Indeed, on the territorial and professional levels, both very creative dynamics and logic of inertia and (mis)adaptations can be observed at the price of strong functional contradictions and strategic tensions. This contribution to the book attempts to show that the challenge of this tension between creativity and inertia is the exploration and affirmation of new development models that are better suited to local and global changing context. Beyond a necessary proof effect based on sourced data and facts, it includes a speculative dimension motivated by an attempt to contribute to the debate on the transformation of mountain economies and identities in contemporary societies.

36.2 Climate Change as Accelerator of Contradictions

As a key variable in the evolution of winter tourism, climate change accelerates structural contradictions and increases the amount of threats for the winter season as it is understood today. In the 20th century, the economy of winter sports was structured around particular times in the year when skiers would gather at the bottom of the ski lift ready for the snow season. Climate change has meant that the synchronization of these events and social rhythms and norms (holidays), heavy infrastructure (equipment and services), as well as environmental resources available in stock and flow (water, snow, energy) has become more and more complex and costly. It is indeed why we have seen, since the 1990s, the development of artificial snow production in response to the incertitude of natural snowfall and thus the winter tourism economy’s exposure to the hazards presented by climate change. In France, 30% of the slopes are fitted with snow guns, as opposed to 48% in Switzerland, 60% in Austria and 70% in Italy. This means that we now must create €3/m³ of snow¹ that used to fall without any cost. Not only is this snow-covered area likely to increase (15% of French skiing areas in 2007, 30% in 2018 and 70–80% estimated for 2030 according to the operators’ forecasts), but the cost of production will increase in parallel to the price of energy and the need to produce snow in above-freezing temperatures. Without mentioning the increasing tensions surrounding water and energy resources, the fact that the winter sports system is running at increasing costs means it will have an impact on the economic model of resorts. Indeed, this extra cost is partly due to the upscaling of winter sports, reducing the demographic scale of participants to offer more niche sports. Only 8% of French people go skiing at least once every 2 years (Hoibian, 2010), a participation rate that has been stagnating for several decades, and is lower than other alpine countries like Switzerland and Austria, where more than 20% of the population participate in skiing (Vanat, 2018). The consequence of this niche is further emphasized if we consider that 2–3% of skiers consume nearly 80% of skier days (Berlioz, 2006). In so doing, we are moving further and further away from the ‘skiing for all’ utopia, a government policy implemented in the 1960s and 1970s to democratize the access to winter sports, to socially justify the developments of ski resorts in France, which doesn’t prevent the apparent fully open access to winter sports from prevailing in some cities close to the Alps and in media discourse.

As ski resorts gradually lose national, regional and even local visitors, they are forced to look much further to find a new international clientele. This approach also comes with an increasing advertising cost at a time of growing competition between resorts given the stagnation of the ski market and the fact that ski destinations covet the same clients – notably those coming from the two major European markets: Germany and the UK (Vanat, 2016). This leads many observers and actors in the field of winter sports to suggest that resorts ‘run the risk of running out of skiers before running out of snow’. We can assign the non-renewal and abandonment by skiers to a combination of several factors:

• Demographic: the ageing European population limits the number of practitioners of the sport, despite the continuation of a minority of the most passionate skiers.

• Social and economic: the increase in costs and the upscaling of ski resorts excludes a growing number of former skiers and population, including young people and residents of mountain areas not able to afford tourist stays, ski equipment and passes.

• Cultural: the charming aspect of winter sports is no longer as noticeable as in the 1960s to 1970s, led by novelty and properties of social distinction. The already existing weak skiing culture in France is eroding little by little with public interest shifting towards less sporting destinations and activities, more focused on wellbeing, culture and heritage.

• The media: according to our repeated observations (Bourdeau et al., 2007) the media publish less and less material about winter sports, or rather deal with the more problematic aspects in the sector, such as climate change or the controversy surrounding development projects of snow culture.

In this context, winter sports resorts are likely to be seen more and more as emblems of the excesses of the 20th century: culturally lagging behind and out of touch with issues surrounding sustainability. This is likely to emphasize those controversies linked to development projects and the constant large-scale financial support from communities and the state, further weakening – including at the local level – the longheld general consensus on this subject (Bourdeau et al., 2007). At the same time, the ideal of upscaling resorts with a focus on luxury tourism is mostly contradicted by the development of budget winter sports packages driven by tour operators who negotiate discount prices with the resorts, further weakening their economic model.

As the work of Bonnemains (2015) shows, the current bias of an almost exclusive investment in ‘large-scale artificially produced snow’ has negative long-term effects by reinforcing tourist monoactivity based on snow sports: industrially produced snow increases the short-term resilience of the alpine winter economy yet decreases it in the long term by reducing its ability to adapt to a diversified economy, giving the illusion of a perfect and definitive solution that prevents the investment of ideas and money in alternative projects. Much like the desalination of seawater in littoral zones, artificially produced snow can be understood as maladaptation (Barnett and O’Neill, 2010). We can also consider an extractivism analysis (Burchardt and Dietz, 2014), insofar as the exploitation of the snow resource is pushed to its maximum, at the price of growing cost of energy and tensions surrounding the water supply. Here we can find the idea of a ‘temptation of immunity’ (Garcia, 2015) designed to ensure the continuity of a system through seeking exoneration from adapting to change. The snow resource then appears as a socio-technical lock-in (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1995) fundamental for winter tourism.

Considering that the amplification of ski lift equipment and artificial snow might slow down the decline of winter sports seems to be a risky calculation taking into account the investments to be made and the increase in the costs it entails, notwithstanding the demand for more diversified leisure activities by the public, and the sensitivity of natural environments to the impacts of human activities and climate change. These projects seem primarily related to communication issues between resorts within the context of increased competition, shown in a report by the French Senate: ‘There is a general trend over oversized tourism projects or their aberrant distribution, most often within a spirit of competition as opposed to complementarity’ (Masson-Maret and Vairetto, 2014). In France, the giant cableway project intending to link the resorts of l’Alpe d’Huez and Les Deux Alpes illustrates what some observers consider as a ‘leap forward’, which has more to do with a communication operation than a development strategy.

Moreover, this policy of overdevelopment seems to neglect the long-term rebalancing of the seasonal, geographical and economic distribution of tourist numbers to the mountains, a large number of whom favour the summer and areas located outside of ski resorts. For the French clientele, summer has become the most significant period for mountain tourism with 51% of overnight stays representing 45% of touristic expenditure, as opposed to only 33% of overnight stays and 40% of touristic expenditure in winter. Summer is also ahead of winter in the proportion of overnight stays in commercial accommodation (45% versus 39%) and for the duration of stays (7.2 days versus 5.3). In addition, 74% of summer overnight stays and 49% of winter overnight stays take place outside of ski resorts. We can forecast that this evolution will be exacerbated by the lengthening of the summer season due to climate change, while winter will become shorter. In addition, the sharp decline in the amount of French families taking part in winter sports (down 17% between 2008 and 2013) is three-fold in ski resorts as opposed to trips outside of these regions (ATOUT France, 2016).

36.3 Between Creative Dynamics and Inertia of Alpine Winter Tourism

Mountain tourism in winter is both destabilized and stimulated by a series of interacting changes whose climatic, cultural, technological and economic factors are not easily separated. In this mutation under the constraint of uncertainties and threats, the logics of adaptation observable in various destinations, sectors and trades are incredibly variable and often contradictory. Multiple change signals and transition indicators can be found in practices and experiments undertaken in the field, while at the same time strong inertia and resistance illustrate the difficulty of changing models.

36.3.1 Transformative practices at the heart of the tourism system

Transition dynamics are active at different geographic and social scales. They operate first within tourism and sports practices themselves. Special attention can be paid to mobile kinds of sport tourism that re-examine the ‘fixity’ of the polarized development model on tourist resorts (in both winter and summer). This is the case for hiking, trail running, Nordic walking, snowshoeing and back-country skiing, but also for cycling (Pechlaner et al., 2015). These practices constitute powerful leverage for the transformation of mountain tourism by reorienting the activity of tourist destinations, by reorganizing tourist spaces from very limited and widespread facilities and equipment, and by extending the constricted seasonal framework, which seemed to be a given. This is also the case for a growing number of forms of ‘nomadic skiing’: alpine and Nordic ski touring, snowshoeing, snow-kiting and skijoring. This vagabond, opportunistic and frugal ski experience develops outside the equipped areas almost without any infrastructure, and allows strong spatial and temporal reactivity with snow fluctuations. It is a revival of the spirit of early skiing as a means of movement and ascent, and it is developing in a completely unexpected way to meet the needs of skiers in a context of both cultural and climate change.

This creative act then operates within professional sectors where various experimentations with new ways of living and working on a daily basis appear through a profusion of initiatives. In doing so on an individual, through couples or on a collective scale, people experience work and life projects marked by ethical voluntarism and a search for existential coherence, in phase with a set of values of environmental and social responsibility. The common characteristics shared by these professionals are self-limitation of income intended to privilege the search for an art of living over economic success; a tendency to go beyond categories by crossing sectors such as sport, heritage, art, literature, agriculture, manual or intellectual work; a priority given to the quality of relationships with both people and the environment; and the combination of strong local roots with external networks (Corneloup and Bourdeau, 2015). In this model, innovation is a form of daily deviance on the part of ‘ordinary’ people who transgress rules or codes to achieve objectives that are not legitimate or expected, and can thus contribute to an inversion of norms (Alter, 2000).

At a crucial moment of transition of sporting activities, individual initiatives, and professional and territorial sectors, the case of Nordic skiing is exemplary. Its development in secondary massifs and low-lying sites exposes it to the full impact of climate change, while its weak economic base does not allow for heavy investment in artificial snow installations. However, it is currently undergoing change by redefining its geographical, seasonal and sport parameters. By promoting various local initiatives, as well as in peripheral massifs, it has also incorporated practices such as Nordic hiking, snowshoeing, ski-hok (a hybrid of snowshoeing and Nordic skiing) and biathlon, not to mention winter trails, fat bike, Nordic walking and roller skiing. These activities are easily adapted to snow cover variations either directly (trail, fat bike, etc.), or by offering the possibility to ‘switch’ between practices such as dog sledding/cani-hiking, Nordic skiing/Nordic walking. They are ideal for very attractive off-piste enjoyment, and their multiple combinations allow seasonal overlaps, or even an almost continuous practice during the year. Sporting events that may otherwise be cancelled because there is not enough snow can go ahead anyway, regardless of the conditions. The development of roller skiing has led to the opening of a summer ski school, employing several instructors in Corrençon in the Vercors massif, with the slogan ‘a world where skiing never stops’ (Vercors Tourisme, n.d.).

These creative processes, largely neglected or unthought of by tourism engineering, perfectly illustrate alternative models for innovation: innovation based on culture (KEA, 2009) and uses (Parsons and Rose, 2009), niche innovation (Schot, 1998), innovation under constraints (Caniëls and Rietzschel, 2015), frugal innovation, reverse innovation (periphery – centre) and innovation through subtraction of resources (snow) or equipment (ski lifts, snow guns). Through establishing ‘bridges’ connecting activities and certain periods during the year, these processes contribute to a welcome seasonal adjustment of tourism in the face of uncertainties regarding the climate. Their emergence is at the crossroads of a strong cultural autonomy of practitioners, the competence and abundant inspiration of the professionals in the field, as well as geographical and cultural contexts favourable for experimentation. All of these factors provide the perfect environment for recreative laboratories (Falaix and Corneloup, 2017), all of which are not tied in to habitual marketing and communication practices. Areas outside resorts, such as in mountain passes and refuges, which for a long time have been considered as mere transit points, are now becoming fully fledged tourist destinations driven by the increasing convergence of half-organized, near-spontaneous practices, in both winter and summer. These include access to the first snowfall, snow-kiting, ski hiking, tobogganing, trail running, contemplation, cycle tourism, nature education, scientific tourism and artistic residencies.

36.3.2 Inertia and maladaptive rational

‘Ski bashing’ has become commonplace in the media over the past few years with titles such as: ‘at skiing you hardly ski any more’; ‘there’s more to life than skiing’; ‘Is transporting snow by helicopter really acceptable?’; ‘skiing or drinking water: will we soon have to choose between the two?’; ‘too posh to be green … they chose to boycott skiing’; ‘stop going on about skiing’.² Often presented by the media as ‘addicts’ or as those clinging on to a supposedly waning tourist model, winter sports actors freely express their distress and irritation when it comes to the misunderstandings they are faced with. Yet there is nothing illogical or illegitimate about their wait-and-see policy, resistance to change or conservatism given a number of economic, cultural and political factors. It should first be noted that key sectors of the winter economy such as real estate, ski education, and some shops and accommodation continue to enjoy comfortable economic income through upscaling, driven by the import of foreign customers with high purchasing power. At the local level, we can also see the determining political weight of operators (shops, accommodation, special services, etc.) who are anchored by an income-driven economic model – in both land and property – that is often inherited and therefore can withstand seasonal climate and economic threats. Field observations show that they are therefore resilient during bad seasons and do not feel the need to change their business operations. On the other hand, more recent operators whose presence is less anchored locally and who are often driven by innovative projects find themselves much more vulnerable to similar threats.

If most of the professionals working in winter sports resorts freely express the difficulty they face in terms of ‘mourning the snow’, they go on to say that despite the difficulties they are driven by passion. Winter sports bear a certain social and cultural responsibility that is rather distinctive, as well as rewarding, particularly with strong identities attached to professions such as the ski instructor, the ski patrol rescuer or the snow groomer driver. This charm is also manifested in a strong symbolic attachment to winter sports resorts as emblems of modernity and the attractiveness of the mountains of which these regions have long been deprived. This often goes hand-in-hand with a strong developmental mythology based on our faith in technology: ski lifts, snow ploughs or artificial snow production. This powerful image continues to fuel the epic tale of ‘the resort which saves the mountain’. During the past 60 years, winter sports are usually considered to have been a decisive engine for the economy and mountain societies. Largely based on the property sector and the tourism of ski resorts, this industrially designed model has occupied the entire physical, economic and symbolic aspects of alpine massifs. Faced with the threat of change, professionals and local elected officials tend to reason in terms of ‘total substitution or nothing’. According to field observations and interviews, we can point out that since no diversification activity available to date can offer an economic model comparable with winter sports, they are only able to see the lack of a credible complete replacement model. They therefore feel that they are being asked to accept an even more uncertain future, which largely fuels a ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA) syndrome: ‘If there’s no skiing, there’s nothing’ (Place Gre’net, 2015).

In this context, it is enough to enjoy a particularly prosperous year every 3–4 years –and, if possible, an Olympic medal! Our long-term observations show that this restocks the coffers of the resorts, as well as encourages operators not to give up on snow tourism as long as they can persuade local officials and the banks to continue to support ambitious plans to revive the industry. This process is not only played out on the local level, but also often results from the weight given by corporate and sector lobbies (National Union of Ski Instructors, National Association of Ski Resort Mayors) to maintain the status quo. It is under their influence that the tourism policies of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions have shifted their focus in massive support of winter sports resorts, thanks to changes in the political situation in 2016. In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, it was the president of the National Union of French Ski Instructors, Gilles Chabert, nicknamed ‘the most powerful man above 1,000 m’, who is responsible for coordinating mountain policy. At the launch of the ‘Plan-neige station’ campaign in May 2016, he said: ‘In this region, the words “snow” and “snow guns” aren’t known at all; I will make sure this changes’. While addressing the president of the region, Laurent Wauquiez, he also said: ‘You should know that we will need a lot of money’. In addition to the abandonment of the previous ‘Mountain 2040’ plan, which sought to effectuate a real transition, Mr Chabert took a ‘turn back 50 years’ at the time of the ‘Pompidou snow plan’ because ‘it worked like a dream’. He concluded by saying: ‘All we want to do is ski; the rest is some blah blah blah’ (Shahshahani, 2016).

In the prevailing cultural and political context, many initiatives promoting alternatives are largely ignored or even invisible, and local development practice continues to be obsessed with winter sports. For example, in Villard-de-Lans, in the Vercors Massif, a rescue archaeology company was discreetly set up in the commune employing around 37 people, exceeding the amount of year-round jobs of the skiing industry by 17, with the latter still considered as the main – or even the only – employer of the region. We can also observe many residential transitions in metropolitan areas, where the economic weight of year-round residents is more and more significant in the sports tourism sector (Bachimon et al., 2014). We can also see a clear lack of attention paid to the fact that the summer season is taking over the winter season in terms of tourist numbers and financial figures. Because global warming is lengthening the summer season while it shortens the winter season, we might observe a larger polarization in a small number of resorts. More generally, field experience shows that all forms of tourism that are flourishing outside of resorts are most often neglected or misunderstood.

In many ways, these positions are echoed in what Banergee and Duflo (2012) show in their analysis of maldevelopment in the form of three toxic ‘I’s’, reinforcing each other in the maintaining of a biased relationship to the ‘real’: ideology, ignorance and inertia. While the concern for mountain territories was that there would be a move away from skiing altogether in the 1990s, making way for snowboarding or snowshoes, then moving entirely away from snow-related activities in 2000s and finally abandoning all tourism in 2010, we might consider that they have somewhat fallen behind in this cultural and economic reorientation model. This is highlighted by the report of the French National Audit Office published early in 2018, noting that the rationalization and diversification recommendations it had previously issued in an audit in 2011 for the resorts were not really heard, highlighting the increasing vulnerability of ski resorts in the northern Alps due to global warming, and pointing out the inadequate responses of their managers (Cour des Comptes, 2018).

36.4 Discussion: ‘Practices Change More Quickly Than the Climate’³

Should we perfect the past or prepare for the future? Faced with challenges maintaining employment in the mountains, the use of industrial snow is undoubtedly an indispensable tool for overcoming the shortage of snow caused by climate change, as long as the long-term plan over the next 20 years also creates favourable conditions for practices and tourist models able to do without the snow. However, industrial snow seems to be considered as the definitive solution to the effects of climate change, preventing real diversification policies. Similar to the risk of a decreasing number of older skiers due to the development of niche practices, resort managers are hoping to see the imminent arrival of rich Indian and Chinese tourists, justifying the optimistic drive of considerable investments in the ski industry.

We often come across the notion of ‘accelerated inertia’ (Rosa, 2015), which is illustrated by privileging technological innovation and marketing to the detriment of entirely unthinkable social innovation. However, change in winter tourism is ‘already there’. It operates visibly or discreetly in the interstices and on the periphery of the system, where sectors, destinations, organizations and individual operators reposition themselves in niches more conducive to multi-seasonal continuities. At the very heart of the winter tourism system, skiing is no longer as central as in the past: despite its own contradictions, it has long been the real estate sector that carries a major part of the economy, and a feeling of imagination linked to the wellbeing and festive practices slowly taking over from a traditional, especially sporty, mountain holiday concept.

Moreover, if resorts remain at the heart of the tourist landscape, a less polarized model at the geographical, temporal and economic levels reinforces the development of tourism outside of resorts; that is, where the strength of legitimate models diminishes, and where a disengagement of dominant norms stimulates the ability to find arrangements, make exceptions and experiment with alternatives to overcome structural and functional handicaps. Field observations show that this creativity relies less on amenities than on the skill and passion of professionals and amateurs who take a new look at the environmental resources and the cultural codes of recreational practices, including relying on new materials. We can therefore observe the phenomena of games related to the slope in terms of inversions between descent and climb. The celebration of the ‘up-hill flow’ allows a rehabilitation of the climb, which takes place both in winter thanks to the craze for ski touring, and the summer thanks to the electric assistance bike. Inventiveness also relies on the creative potential of counter-cultures and recreational resistance (Bourdeau and Lebreton, 2013) that bypass, divert or return the norms and standardization of the recreational experience programmed by the facilities and the tourist industry: off-piste, ‘DIY’ of materials and spaces, nocturnal and experimental practices. It also makes the most of its environmental responsibility to bring (back) more localized practices and alternative modes of mobility. The NGO Mountain Wilderness has championed a ‘change of approach’ campaign since 2007 finding new ways for people to access mountain tourist destinations without a car.⁴ Still within the mode of ‘already existing’, the ‘amenity migration’ phenomenon (Bourdeau, 2009b; Perlik, 2011) is quietly contributing to the rise of a residential economy (Segessemann and Crevoisier, 2015), which decisively complements the conventional tourist economy.

In many mountain communities, tourism actors and local sportspeople work more and more with ‘new’ inhabitants and their families or visiting friends. The notions of residential tourism or visiting friends and relatives tourism (Griffin, 2013) continually express this largely unthought of, ignored or repressed diversification process. In many local contexts, an observation of the actual degree of the ‘already existing’ transition would be very useful, not only to measure these phenomena, but also to work to update dominant representations that are out of step with social and economic reality. The respective weights often now reversed between the summer and winter seasons could also be highlighted, while the usual representation is that in the mountains ‘during the winter we work, and in the summer we make our pocket money’.⁵ Beyond the strategic debates about the future of winter tourism, it is on the ground that a confrontation of wishful thinking and certain visions of the future takes place. It has sparked controversy over numerous developments, the linking of resorts and projects of expansion of the ski areas. Although the opposition coming often from urban nature protection organizations is standard, the novelty is that disputes also come more and more often from inhabitants, elected and local professionals, traditionally favourable to the facilities. The local collectives where they gather generate numerous petitions, legal action and press articles, as well as important demonstrations, on skis, on foot or on snowshoes. We can see the example of a meeting against the extension of the ski resort of Chamrousse (Isère) in the Vans sector, in March 2016, which brought together more than 600 people, and led – at least temporarily – to the abandonment of the project; or even the example at the Ratti Pass, which gathered nearly 700 hikers in January 2017 to denounce the project of a connection between the ski areas of Roc d’Enfer and Mont Chéry, in the resort of Gets (Haute-Savoie).

In other cases, there is also a mobilization of local collectives around participatory funding to allow associative management of small ski lifts that can be dismantled in order to maintain popular winter sports practice. But local mobilization also takes place to defend a resort threatened with closure, including challenging ‘after ski’ projects. The most representative case in France concerns the resort of Abondance (Haute-Savoie) whose closure in 2007 and the project of conversion to heritage and cultural tourism sparked strong local tensions, leading to the organization of a demonstration ‘For skiing … against pseudo-cultural development’ (Suchet and Raspaud, 2010). More than just an employment issue – which was not really threatened – the main fears expressed concern the loss of a local identity built around 50 years of skiing and the resulting sense of ‘symbolic death’, as well as on a negative vision of heritage – ‘Heritage is something for the elderly’ – and a doubt about its economic potential, including the fear of a collapse of property prices of secondary residents.

It is also at the local level that we find the very sensitive question in France of the central role of public funding of winter sports – whether this is in the form of direct or indirect subsidies, or by property tax exemption. A rational reorientation of this policy of quasi-permanent support would make it possible to make considerable room to manoeuvre in terms of jobs. This is exemplified by the opponents of the Hauteville-Valromey (Ain) plateau’s citizens’ collective,⁶ who objected to an industrial snow production equipment project: ‘and you, companies and inhabitants of the Hauteville/Valromey plateau, with €1 million, how many jobs are you going to create?’ (Descamps and Ortillon, 2016). In a context of dwindling public funds, and at a time when we are beginning to imagine that it will be necessary to subsidize ski passes to mitigate their price inflation (Clivaz et al., 2015), the political question of financial support from public authorities will therefore be increasingly important. And even if mountain officials are rightly paralysed by the question of maintaining jobs, they will be less and less able to avoid the debate that is widespread in the very heart of the territories concerned.

36.5 Conclusion: ‘Reinventing’ Winter Tourism?

Following the themes of ‘reconquest’ in the 1990s and ‘re-enchantment’ in the 2000s, ‘reinvention’ is today a leitmotif when expressing the needs and aspirations for change in a context of climate, energy and economic crises against a backdrop of technological revolution. This adaptive injunction resonates all the more strongly in winter tourism as the system of winter sports inherited from the second half of the 20th century is an exhausted model, subjected to a peak of contradictions and destined for real reconstruction. Yet how can we consider models that are more flexible, diversified, creative and sustainable in the face of the triple challenge of the climate, energy and economic crises? This transition project involves an intellectual, strategic and political investment, avoiding any generalization to clearly distinguish the very different situations in which the mountain territories are located.

If we fast forward a few decades, we can begin to sketch out the scenario of an alpine skiing sanctuary in very large mountain resorts, suitable for communications and infrastructural investments, such as widespread artificial snow production, ski lifts, recreational resources, as well as prestigious commercial and festive facilities. The predominately international clientele will also redirect some of the economic activity around shopping and clubbing. This is while a growing number of small and medium-sized resorts near major cities will have converted to residential functions throughout the year, which in some cases will allow the continuation of the winter sports activity dedicated to local clientele, in a double process of amenity migrations and post-tourism. We can then imagine that winter tourism will continue as a recreational niche for a minority of the population, while the mountain becomes an attractive residential area: we will therefore live more in the mountains, but there will be less tourism, even if residential and ‘relatives and friends’ tourism will develop. The closest and most connected stations to the alpine metropolises could experience the strongest development while the more distant and less well-connected would decrease. It can also be imagined that small and micro stations based on minimal infrastructures will be maintained thanks to their ability to withstand the intermittences of exploitation related to snow cover variations, by relying on close attendance of a large public.

The more the winter atmosphere is altered by climate change, the more the aesthetic, symbolic and recreational attractiveness of snowy landscapes can be expected to become important to visitors’ expectations. A legitimate concern of operators and observers of winter tourism is the weakening of the imagination of the ‘pure white’ mountain, which may reduce the desire to take part in winter sports. Indeed, we can assume that ‘guaranteeing the winter atmosphere’ will be more and more difficult in the future because it is not a purely snowy one. The artificial snow production is adapted to the practice of skiing, but not (except at exorbitant costs) to the simulation of a winter atmosphere in the streets and the landscape of the resorts. The notion of a winter atmosphere must therefore be valued both in the case of snow, but also considered in its possible or probable absence. For low-altitude destinations, a radical repositioning of the rural mountain atmosphere ‘little snow’ or ‘completely snowless’ will be designed. The cultural heritage and traditions (Christmas, light festivals, bonfires, songs, shows, local crafts, woodwork, etc.) can be an aesthetic and experiential support for this atmosphere, playing on symbols associated with snow, even if it is missing. In addition, we need not overlook climate change: first because the milder and less snowy winters could allow for other activities as opposed to traditional winter sports, attracting urban populations for whom the snow is potentially dissuasive or has negative connotations; second, because – paradoxically – the adaptive injunction of climate change may enable some mountain regions to engage in a transition that provides alternative solutions and innovation. Finally, if the impact of climate change will be mostly negative for the winter season (lack of snow, extra cost of artificial snow production, loss of winter atmosphere), it may be positive for the summer season, which will be extended from April to October, offering visitors and inhabitants of the mountains increased climatic comfort compared with urban areas.

The highly speculative nature of this prospective vision of the future does not claim any certainties. At the risk of exaggerating for the purposes of demonstration, it is possible to express these uncertainties in the form of questions relating to the recreational nature of the mountain regions: A quest for peace and harmony or a bidding war? Contemplative or over-active mode? Immersion in nature or shopping and amusement parks? Intimate craft design or prestigious equipment? Celebrating heritage or unbridled clubbing? Family-friendly gatherings or raucous celebrations? Human mediation or digital technology? Digital detox or wi-fi everywhere? Luxury or social tourism? Ski tours or heli-skiing? Of course, these oppositions are not new but do carry with them the cultural universes and values under strain that underlie the multiple contradictory injunctions of contemporary societies: Should we go faster or slow down? Innovation or precaution? High-tech or low-tech? ‘Bigger is better’ or ‘small is beautiful’? Growth or degrowth? Hyper-connection or disconnection? The contours of an undecided dilemma are then drawn around contemporary societies, between those who refer to a ‘consumerist’ norm (Ballesta et al., 2016) and those who refer to a ‘pro-environment’ norm (Félonneau and Becker, 2008).

The recreational transition (Corneloup, 2017) appears to be a reorganization under tension (Vlès and Bouneau, 2016), which gives pride to hesitations and controversies over the legitimate ways to design the future of tourism and recreation in a changing world. The central challenge is to deploy a coherent set of approaches and actions through which practices and the tourism economy are transformed in a climate-compatible way, integrating cultural change and mastering technological change. In fact, if very rational criteria help to explain the inertia of tourist operators, one of the major problems of transition is above all a lack of representation of the future as a possible and desirable future. How to relay the force of the modern myth of the ski resort as a utopia ‘that has proved itself and its time’ (Knafou, 1991)? How to get out of a snow socio-technical lock-in that forces winter tourism operators to pursue unachievable goals while other achievable goals are neglected? It is the challenge of designing and implementing transition pathways (Geels and Schot, 2007) that propose reorientation, bifurcation and conversion patterns oriented towards low-carbon tourism practices and new tourism offerings (local tourism, residential tourism, leisure migration, staycation) but also redeployed in space (villages and sites away from resorts) and in time (to go away for longer, take it more slowly, or even less often?). In a transition approach, the role of niche innovations, like in the Nordic sector for example, is to propose alternative solutions that seem less and less marginal and radical as they contribute to structuring a new development model, or to deeply restructuring the existing model (Boulanger, 2015).

The first half of the 20th century witnessed a space–time revolution in tourism: the sea became the dominant summer destination while mountains established themselves as the most popular winter destinations; that is to say, a complete reversal of geographical and seasonal polarity with regard to the initial situation in the 18th and 19th centuries. This overturning of habits, which is linked to essentially geo-cultural factors (increase in heliotropism, evolution of our relationship with our body, development of skiing, mass recreation, etc.), has of course made great demands on the capacity to adapt for tourist operators and destinations. While it is at the origin of contemporary tourism, it is obvious that this geo-seasonal balance cannot be considered as an immutable fact. The current climatic shift, acting as a catalyst in the structural mutations of tourism, could eventually lead to a new space–time repolarization (Bourdeau, 2008). We would therefore witness a sort of ‘back to square one’ of tourism with summer flow turned towards the mountains as a natural ‘climatized zone’, and winter flow drained by the coasts offering a large selection of various swimming, sailing and wellness activities.

A phenomenon of this type occurring over several decades throws considerable light on the impression of uncertainty that has been hitting mountain tourism for the past 20 years. Itself a vector of an economy of substitution with respect to agriculture and mountain industry, from now on the tourist sector finds itself facing the limits of its own stability; indeed, of its durability. Without losing sight of the diversity of regional tourist topologies and destinations, or of the multiplicity of variables that influence the future of this sector, it therefore seems urgent to advance beyond a number of certitudes. This ‘step to the side’ cannot be satisfied with a simple tactical aggiornamento, in terms of marketing and communication, for example, but it must constitute an authentic turnaround in strategy. The preoccupation with diversification linked to the weakening effects of climate change does not therefore rest only on an offer of new recreational activities – of which a very rich variety already exists – but also on the interest shown in new spaces, new publics, new times and new meanings. This is thanks to the assertion of the legitimacy of a multiplicity of protagonists and operators, of working methods, of choices of professional life, of everyday life and recreational models. By going beyond the initial models of all-skiing, all-snowing and all-tourism, the living Alps can hope to assert themselves in the future as mountains of the ‘four seasons’ (winter, spring, summer, autumn), of the ‘four spaces’ (resorts, villages, high mountain, market town centres), of the ‘four activities’ (agriculture, crafts services, recreation, new information and communication technologies) and of the ‘four economies’: production, public, residential, social. The objective of such a highly speculative vision is to outline the project for a more diversified mountain economy and greater resilience to the uncertainties of the future. Empirical research must of course document the wide range of experiments and creative initiatives that fuel transformative transition paths as trajectories of diversification, reorientation or conversion of mountain economies and ways of living and working.

Acknowledgements

Several research projects valued in this text have been financially supported by the LabEx ‘Innovation and Mountain Territories’ (Université Grenoble-Alpes, Agence Nationale de la Recherche).

Notes

¹According to the DGEDD (2009), artificial snow cost in 2009 €2.5–3 per m³, of which about half in energy cost, i.e. a consumption of 0.6 kWh/m³ excluding pumping of the water, which accounted for 5–10% of the package price, with equipment amortized in 20–30 years.

³Quoted during an interview with Bruno Gardent, a mountain leader and ski instructor in Grave, Haute-Alpes, France.

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36.1 Introduction