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Critical approaches to tourism quantification

Deadline for submission: December 15, 2024

Editors: Valérian Geffroy, Université du Littoral Côte dOpale (France) and Mathis Stock, University of Lausanne (Switzerland).

Figures and statistics on tourism are used in different ways in different countries, at different times and in different fields. Historically, they first resulted from the desire to measure the economic weight of this sector of activity, as the legitimacy of the leisure society has been questioned from the outset (Pennel, 1987; Stock et al., 2020). But with the success of the neo-liberal paradigm from the 1980s onwards, the idea of widespread competition between regions has brought to the fore the notion that the attractiveness of regions and localities guarantees their good economic health (Bardet and Healy, 2015). Thus, attracting tourists became a strategic goal, a way of providing jobs as well as revealing a quality of life that ensures the well-being of the population. This quantophrenia leads to the centrality of measurement and to a contemporary culture of ‘benchmarking’, ‘ranking’ and KPIs (key performance indicators) for companies, cities, regions, and so on – what Mau (2019) calls the ‘metric society’.

Recently, the notion of ‘overtourism’ has revived the idea of quantifying the number of tourists in relation to the carrying capacity of destinations – as if this were simply a quantitative issue (see Colomb and Novy, 2016). In reaction to these issues, the field of statistical production on tourism is evolving rapidly: in particular, it incorporates digital traces, which add a third form of quantification after registers and surveys (Boullier, 2015; Desrosières, 2005), and extends to new aspects, such as the local measurement of the acceptability of tourism or the assessment of its ecological costs.

The investigation of the quantification of tourism includes the following questions: how is statistics-based knowledge about tourism constructed? What categories are used to measure, classify, and think about tourism? What exactly is being quantified? Are only border crossings quantified, or are ‘domestic tourism’ and day-tripping taken into account? How, i.e. using what methods, is tourism quantified? What organisations (institutions, businesses, etc.) produce quantified knowledge about tourism? What professional categories are involved in this production, with what skills and what objectives? How are these ways of quantifying evolving, particularly with the increasing use of digital traces? What role do tourism statistics play in the economic, political, and social changes taking place? What role do statistics play in foresight analysis? As the concerns of decision-makers evolve, have statistical systems been reformed to provide new insights? Have, for example, local statistics been developed to assess the attractiveness of regions? Have specific survey modules been commissioned to capture occurrences of overtourism? And conversely, what do changes in statistical information systems reveal about changes in the way human societies are governed? Is it possible to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of contemporary systems of public action through recent developments in tourism information systems? To what extent does it make sense to compare internationally heterogeneous statistical systems at international level, even though they are subject to the standards of the World Tourism Organisation (UN Tourism)?

The aim of this call is to use tourism statistical information systems as a lens through which to observe contemporary changes in the governance of societies. Such a reflexive, social science perspective on the tools of statistical observation of societies is rooted in a now well-established tradition. In particular, it draws on the pioneering work of statistician and statistical sociologist, Alain Desrosières (1993), and statistical historian, Ted Porter (1995), who laid the foundations for a field of study now recognised as ‘critical quantification studies’ or ‘critical data studies’ (Kitchin and Lauriault, 2014). According to Alain Desrosières (2014, p. 38), quantification refers to “a series of preliminary conventions of equivalence, involving comparisons, negotiations, compromises, translations, inscriptions, encodings, codified and foldable procedures, and calculations leading to numbering”. Studying the quantification of tourism therefore involves retracing the ‘production lines’ of tourism figures, including the elaboration of conventions and methods – which are inevitably biased and reductive, since the quantification of social phenomena always involves a simplification of reality (Desrosières, 1993). This perspective makes it possible to examine in depth the issues involved in producing figures on tourism. It allows us to look beyond the technical issues, such as the accuracy, validity or reliability of the figures, and to consider the political, social, economic, and epistemological issues involved in producing these figures.

These issues are the focus of this special issue of Mondes du tourisme. In this perspective, the present call also encourages the study of all the initiatives taken in recent years to gain a renewed understanding of contemporary tourism issues, such as the overtourism already mentioned, or so-called ‘sustainable’ (Torres-Delgado et al., 2023), ‘eco-’ or ‘responsible tourism’, or even ‘alternative’ or ‘marginal’ tourism (Hascoët and Lefort, 2015). Such approaches have been developed at different levels, from localities to international governance.

Articles may address the following themes in particular (as well as other relevant themes not mentioned here):

  • political framings of the quantification of tourism. The state and public statistics are only involved in clearly bounded areas of the measurement of tourism, and they seem in many cases to be reducing their involvement, against a backdrop of cuts in public fundings. In parallel, a rise of private corporate actors can be observed in the quantification of tourism. In what kind of state, or what governance model, is the measurement of tourism embedded? What are the political and strategic uses of tourism figures? Between the ‘growth coalitions’ that perpetuate the objective of continued development of the tourism economy, or at least its added value for regions and businesses, and the detractors of overtourism, we observe a variety of discourses that make use of tourism figures – or rather certain figures. It is important to understand the scope of these discourses in the public debate (Bardet and Healy, 2015), but also in the specialist spheres that work on quantifying tourism, because these discourses play an important role in defining and prioritising indicators.

  • the emergence of new sources of quantitative data on tourism. This emergence is partly linked to that of private stakeholders, and in particular companies that trade in digital traces and massive (‘big’) data. Can these data, as some of these companies promise, eventually replace traditional statistics, by providing exhaustive data that would be more reliable than surveys and registers? What new biases or problems do they introduce (Boullier, 2015)? Official statistics are also looking for ways to take advantage of these new sources (Cousin and Hillaireau, 2018; Ricciato et al., 2020), as well as to improve existing statistics with new methods and new sources specific to the public domain, such as the tourist tax.

  • the various efforts to create coherent and comprehensive tourism quantification systems. These efforts include the international harmonisation of indicators and statistical methods, led by organisations such as the UN Tourism and Eurostat. They also include various ‘platforms’, often created by public-private partnerships, which aim to promote and facilitate the circulation and interoperability of data within the tourism sector (such as France Tourisme Observation, a tool developed by Atout France). These efforts come up against the complexity of defining tourism, which is seen mainly as an ‘economic sector’, but which affects many other areas. They also have to cope with the diversity of needs in terms of data, particularly in terms of granularity (both temporal and spatial).

  • the geography of tourism quantification. The question of the relevant territorial unit (country, destination, tourist region, city, conurbation, site, etc.) is particularly sensitive for tourism, as it relies on mobility (Terrier, 2006; Stock and Geffroy, forthcoming). The national scale plays an important role in a field where international comparison is constant, at the risk of naturalizing this level of scale. At the same time, the bodies responsible for managing destinations have to deal with administrative structures that do not necessarily correspond to the scope of tourist activity and mobility. Measuring visitor numbers ideally requires the ability to go down to an intra-urban or site level, which is rarely possible with traditional statistics (Bauder et al., 2014; Camarillo-Naranjo et al., 2022). Finally, digital or mobile phone traces are announced as a revolution in the resolution of these data, a promise that needs to be examined critically (Geffroy, forthcoming).

  • the ‘new problems’ facing the quantification of tourism. The debates around ‘overtourism’ call for increasingly detailed measurement of visitor numbers and their impact, or even for the definition of quantitative regulatory models. The complex interrelationships between tourist accommodation and a housing market under severe pressure highlight the need for indicators that can inform the legislative process. The question of the ecological costs of tourism, which has only marginally been tackled by the tourism sector, is an integral part of the vast problem of the ecological quantification of mobility. Changes in tourism practices and supply represent an additional challenge for the quantification of tourism, which must constantly raise the question of the relevance of the indicators and even the concepts used to characterise the phenomenon.

Submission and review of proposals

Proposals in response to this call will be sent in the form of a long abstract (10,000 characters), written in French or English, including: title, research question, presentation of the methodology and empirical basis, key words, and bibliography. The proposal should clearly indicate the names of the authors, their discipline, their position and their institutional affiliation.

The proposal should be sent to mondes@mondesdutourisme.fr with the e-mail subject indicating ‘Critical approaches to tourism quantification’. The proposals received will be examined by the coordinators of the issue and by the editorial board of the Mondes du tourisme journal. Articles will undergo a double-blind peer review.

Calendar

Long abstracts are due by 15 December 2024.

An answer will be given early January 2025.

The final version of the articles, presented according to the standards of the journal (available at the following address: https://journals.openedition.org/tourisme/953), will be due on 31 March 2025.

Publication is scheduled for autumn 2025.

Bibliographie

Fabrice Bardet and Aisling Healy, “Les acteurs urbains et les promesses des palmarès internationaux des villes. Lyon à la conquête du ‘Top 15’ européen”, Métropoles, no 16, 2015 [https://doi.org/10.4000/metropoles.5136].

Michael Bauder, Tim Freytag and Maie Gérardot, “Analyser les mobilités touristiques à Paris en combinant enquête visiteurs et GPS”, EspacesTemps.net, 2014 [https://www.espacestemps.net/en/articles/analyser-les-mobilites-touristiques-a-paris-en-combinant-enquete-visiteurs-et-gps/].

Dominique Boullier, “Les sciences sociales face aux traces du big data”, Revue française de science politique, vol. 65, no 5, p. 805‑828, 2015 [https://doi.org/10.3917/rfsp.655.0805].

Juan-Mariano Camarillo-Naranjo, Ismael Vallejo-Villalta, Alfonso Fernández-Tabales and Enrique Santos-Pavón, “Where is tourist housing actually located? New approaches and sources for detailed scale analysis”, European Planning Studies, vol. 30, no 4, p. 744‑768, 2022 [https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2021.2002825].

Claire Colomb and Johannes Novy (eds), Protest and resistance in the tourist city, New York, Routledge, 2016.

Guillaume Cousin and Fabrice Hillaireau, “Les données de téléphonie mobile peuvent-elles améliorer la mesure du tourisme international en France ?”, Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, no 505‑506, p. 89‑107, 2018 [https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3706178?sommaire=3706255].

Stefano De Cantis, Anna Maria Parroco, Mauro Ferrante and Franco Vaccina, “Unobserved tourism”, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 50, p. 1-18, 2015 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.10.002].

Alain Desrosières, Prouver et gouverner. Une analyse politique des statistiques publiques, Paris, La Découverte, 2014 [https://www.cairn.info/prouver-et-gouverner--9782707178954.htm].

Alain Desrosières, “Décrire l’État ou explorer la société : les deux sources de la statistique publique”, Genèses, vol. 1, no 58, p. 4-27, 2005 [https://doi.org/10.3917/gen.058.0002].

Alain Desrosières, La politique des grands nombres, Paris, La Découverte, 1993 [https://www.cairn.info/la-politique-des-grands-nombres--9782707165046.htm].

Valérian Geffroy, “Du mouvement des cartes SIM aux mobilités touristiques : une analyse de Flux Vision Tourisme comme procédure de quantification”, Bulletin de l’association de géographes français, forthcoming.

Yannick Hascoët and Isabelle Lefort, “Au détour des barres et des tours”, Téoros. Revue de recherche en tourisme, no 1‑2, vol. 34, 2015 [http://journals.openedition.org/teoros/2768].

Rob Kitchin and Tracey P. Lauriault, “Towards Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data Assemblages and Their Work”, in Jim Thatcher, Andrew Shears and Josef Eckert (eds), Thinking Big Data in Geography: New Regimes, New Research, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2018 p. 3‑20.

Steffen Mau, The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social, Sharon Howe trans., Cambridge (RU), Polity Press, 2019.

Edmond Pennel, “Les statistiques du tourisme”, in Pour une histoire de la statistique, Paris, Economica-INSEE, 1987, p. 359-372.

Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers. The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995.

Stephen Pratt and Denis Tolkach, “The politics of tourism statistics”, International Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 20, no 3, p. 299‑307, 2018 [https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.2181].

Fabio Ricciato, Albrecht Wirthmann and Martina Hahn, “Trusted Smart Statistics: How new data will change official statistics”, Data & Policy, vol. 2, e7, 2020 [https://doi.org/10.1017/dap.2020.7].

Erki Saluveer, Janika Raun, Margus Tiru, Laura Altin, Jaanus Kroon, Tarass Snitsarenko, Anto Aasa and Siiri Silm, “Methodological framework for producing national tourism statistics from mobile positioning data”, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 81, article 102895, 2020 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.102895].

Mathis Stock, Vincent Coëffé and Philippe Violier, Les enjeux contemporains du tourisme : une approche géographique, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2020.

Mathis Stock and Valérian Geffroy, “Géographicité de la statistique. L’espace en question dans la quantification du tourisme en France”, in Fabrice Bardet (ed.), « La politique des grands nombres » a 30 ans, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, forthcoming.

Christophe Terrier, “Flux et afflux de touristes : les instruments de mesure, la géomathématique des flux”, Flux, vol. 3, no 65, p. 47‑62, 2006 [https://doi.org/10.3917/flux.065.0047].

Anna Torres-Delgado, Francisco López Palomeque, Berezi Elorrieta Sanz and Xavier Font Urgell, “Monitoring sustainable management in local tourist destinations: performance, drivers and barriers”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, vol. 31, no 7, p. 1672-1693, 2023 [https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2021.1937190].

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