LaRochelle Urban Community 1st LocalStakeholderGroup meeting

On September 19th, La Rochelle Urban Community held the first Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) meeting for the Tourism4SDG project, face-to-face for the main participants, and with some online participants. This meeting brought together key stakeholders committed to aligning tourism practices with the Sustainable Development Goals and fostering local collaboration. Catherine Blanc, the Head of Tourism Service in La Rochelle Agglomeration, presented the T4SDG project (partners, objectives) and asked the participants about their needs regarding their operations and issues of interest in link with sustainable tourism topics.

Representative of the ‘Cabanes Urbaines’ highlighted the lack of coherence between regulations and innovative technical solutions to speed up the introduction of energy-materials and water-efficient solutions, as well as its desire to test pilot projects to speed up the introduction of new standards.

The Carbon Cooperative Director mentioned the 1st results of the study on the carbon impact of tourism in the La Rochelle urban area, using the methodology of the French Agency for Ecological Transition, underlying some issues :

• How to better localise the data (e.g. on tourists’ mobility choices, on cruise passengers' choices or consumption of tangible and intangible goods)
• how to assess the added value for the area (leisure, culture, etc.)
• how can we separate the tourist-related part from the rest in terms of capital goods?

The University pointed out that many M1 dissertation projects were devoted to sustainable tourism, with the introduction of a research methodology (an interesting approach but not directly usable for territorial data).

Charentes-Tourisme representative put forward 3 topics:

• Ecodesign of events (current tools not adapted)
• Short-term seasonal rental accommodation vs the local housing market : how to get the online furnished holiday accommodation platforms into the game?
• Assessing the ability of impact investors to raise funds

Cosy Hotels executive manager raised the following points :

• Which labels should be used (‘clé verte’, ‘ecolabel’…) ? How are they perceived by customers ? We need benchmarks, as there’s indeed no visibility on labels.
• The water and electricity consumption by hotels and the treatment of waste waters and grey waters : how can hotel owners share their data to find out whether or not they are over-consuming ? How can we get support to set up pilot projects (such as the ‘hotels of the future’ project) that take up a lot of time and investment ? We need experimentations.

The Representative of the Union of hotel trades and industries refered to the fear that labels and regulations on sustainable tourism could be punitive for the hotel industry as a whole, which is why he believes that these issues should also be of concern to local residents and other professionals.

A researcher from Excelia high school stressed the importance of tackling the water issue, a major research topic, through for ex. nudge tests in hotel rooms that can then be extended to the entire population (*editor's note: sustainable tourism as a way of test-bed projects for improving a sustainable way of life for the population as a whole? ).

La Rochelle Tourisme Evènement representative stressed the difficulty of involving tourist offices in actions and training programmes that would enable them to develop their skills in sustainability issues. It is difficult to involve professionals in the face of the realities on the ground, and many obstacles remain.

For more information on Communauté d'Agglomération de LaRochelle, please visit www.agglo-larochelle.fr