STUDY DISSERTATION | Tourist attraction initiatives in French ultra-marine territories - focus on their territorial brands

SUMMARY

Mahée PEYRUSSE - Master 2 "Attractiveness and New Territorial Marketing" - Academic year 2020/2021

The French Overseas Territories (territoires d'Outre-mer) correspond to territories of the French Republic that are remote from the territory of mainland France. The majority of these territories are islands, with the exception of French Guiana.

The characteristics of these territories - both natural, with their insularity and remoteness from mainland France, and historical, with a past marked by slavery and colonialism - are factors that partly justify their structural backwardness. Indeed, they have always experienced numerous economic and social difficulties, resulting in living conditions that are more difficult than those in mainland France.

Overseas France lags far behind mainland France in terms of GDP per capita. Unemployment rates are also higher on average. The cost of living and rising prices are due to a lack of competition and remoteness, leading to tensions and large-scale social unrest. In an attempt to overcome these difficulties, these territories receive assistance from the State and the European Union via transfers in the form of various forms of aid and social benefits. Numerous specific tools have also been put in place to help them, notably the tax exemption policy to encourage investment in these territories.

However, this public intervention does not fully resolve the problems that persist, and consequently does not allow for the development of a dynamic local economy.

However, the most important sector for local economies in these areas is tourism. Indeed, tourism plays a considerable role in the economies of the overseas territories, accounting for 10% of their GDP, according to a report published by the French Senate in 2021 entitled "Urgence économique outre-mer à la suite de la crise du Covid-19".

The pandemic crisis linked to Covid-19, which is affecting the economy worldwide, is placing the overseas territories in great difficulty. 
Restrictions on confinement, travel and curfews have had a major impact on the tourism industry in these territories.

For several years now, faced with new economic and social challenges such as the urgent need to take sustainable development into account, the French overseas territories have had to rethink their tourism and, in particular, their approach to attractiveness.

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So it's interesting to ask how overseas territories are reinventing their tourist appeal in the face of multiple economic and social challenges, and what impact their territorial marketing strategies are having?

The aim of this study is to outline the various challenges facing the French overseas territories, in order to better understand the importance of tourism for these destinations. It is also important to know the attractiveness strategies implemented by the territories and to compare them via different points of view (professionals and tourists) in order to be able to analyze the impact of the steps taken by these destinations.

To carry out this study, it was therefore necessary to define the context and the various characteristics of the territories through a literature review, enabling us to better visualize the various issues that characterize the overseas territories. Qualitative and quantitative surveys were also carried out to provide a more in-depth analysis of the destinations' territorial marketing approaches.

The first part of this study will address all the different issues that make up the overseas territories. The first part will deal with the insularity of these territories, which has become a key feature of their tourist appeal. The importance of opening up the islands to external markets will be developed, in order to combat this island paradox, but also against a collective imagination that is countered by a more brutal reality and a population that is resistant, and thus understand the very great dependence of these territories on tourism, which has a considerable impact on their economies. Secondly, we'll look at the impact of mass tourism on these territories, and how they're becoming aware of the need for a new lease of life. This involves making these territories responsible destinations in economic, ecological and social terms, through precise territorial marketing strategies. The impact of the pandemic crisis will also be presented, putting the insularity and isolation of the islands back into perspective, forcing destinations to reinvent themselves and relaunch their activities through intensive promotional and hospitality procedures to combat this feeling of inertia.

The second part of the study will focus on an analysis of the attractiveness strategies implemented by ultra-Marine territories, and the impact of these strategies on their destinations. This analysis will be explored from the tourist's point of view, but will also go a step further, by focusing on the example of an overseas territorial brand, that of L'Île de La Réunion Tourisme.