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Tignes - from a “White” to A

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Tignes - from a “White” to A Tignes - from a “white” to a “green” summer A study of Tignes’ development in alpine summer tourism Tignes – från en ”vit” till en ”grön” sommar. En studie av Tignes utveckling inom alpin sommarturism Linda Stridh Faculty of art and social sciences Tourism studies 15 ECTS Supervisor: Marcus Ednarsson Spring 2014 Abstract This study focuses on Tignes’ development of their summer season. Tignes is a tourist resort in the Northern French Alps. Tignes has long been known for their glacier and tourism, which, as an industry, has been the major focus since the original village of Tignes was put underwater by the development of a large dam. Tignes is also known for its connection with Val d’Isère, together creating the Espace Killy ski area. The summer in Tignes used to be known for summer skiing on the Grande Motte glacier, 3656 meters above sea level. However, like many other winter resorts, Tignes has seen the effects of global warming and climate change and these effects were especially evident in the summer. A decision was thus taken to diversify attractions and try to create a different, yet more classic, summer season. Through interviews with resort management and access to visitor statistics as well as other qualitative data it has been made clear that Tignes has developed the summer season according to a well-planned business strategy and has step by step implemented new infrastructures, new attractions and other marketing strategies in an effort to develop and increase summer tourism. So far these strategies have resulted in a great increase in visitors and in their diversification. More detailed data is needed for further studies and analysis of visitor demographics. However it is clear that the summer season still is very much reliant on the winter season for its existence. There still seems to be a larger potential for the summer season and Tignes Développement, the resort management, appears to now be working proactively in favor of this. Clear links can be done to theoretical models and concepts as well as previous studies and this has provided another dimension and a clear view of where Tignes stands in its development as a successful alpine summer resort. Keywords: alpine summer tourism, tourism development, climate change, management, visitors. Foreword I would especially like to thank Sébastien Mérignargues, director of Tignes Développement, (director of the resort) for his time and effort in helping me gather material for this study and for the interview, as well as Coralie Deschamps. Without the collaboration of Tignes Développement this study would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Marcus Ednarsson, my supervisor at Karlstad University for answering my questions and helping me in the writing process. Linda Stridh, Tignes 2014 Contents 1. Introduction 6 1.1Background and research area 6 1.2 Purpose 7 1.3 Research questions 7 1.4 Limitations 7 1.5 Other definitions 7 1.6 Outline 7 2. Methodology 9 2.1 Scientific approach 9 2.2 Choice of Method 9 2.3 Qualitative interviews 10 2.4 Statistical Analysis 11 2.5 Validity and Reliability 12 2.6 Limitations 12 2.7 Sample selection and evaluation of sources 13 3. Theoretical background 14 3.1 Seasonality 14 3.2.1 Attractions and attractiveness 14 3.2.2 Attractions as a commercial product 15 3.3 Tourist types 16 3.4 Destination development lifecycle 16 3.5 Climate change 18 3.6 Previous studies 19 4. Results 20 4.1 Results from interview and other qualitative results from document analysis 20 4.2 Statistical results 21 4.2.1 General statistics overview 22 4.2.2 Tignes’ development compared to other resorts 24 4.2.3 Bike park statistics 25 4.2.4 Carte Sportignes statistics 27 4.2.5 Winter vs. summer statistics 28 5. Analysis 30 6. Conclusions 34 7. Reflections 35 8. Bibliography 36 9. Appendix 39 9.1 Questionnaire for interview in original language, translated version in italics. 39 List of Tables Table 1. Developments within the summer season 22 Table 2. Tignes visitor statistics 23 Table 3. Tignes vs. other resorts 24 Table 4. Time series analysis: Tignes vs. other resorts 24 Table 5. Index calculation Bike park vs. visitors 25 Table 6. Time series analysis: Bike park vs. general number of visitors 25 Table 7. Index calculation: Carte Sportignes use vs. distribution 27 Table 8. Times series analysis: Carte Sportignes use vs. distribution 27 Table 9. Index calculation: winter vs. summer frequentation 28 Table 10. Times series analysis: winter vs. summer development 28 Table 11. Summer vs. winter frequentation percentage 29 1. Introduction 1.1 Background and research area Tignes is located in the French Alps and is widely recognized as a skiing destination and winter resort. The village of Tignes was previously located in what is now known as the Dam of Chevril. Due to a need for power supply, the dam was built and finished in 1952, at which point Tignes was relocated to further up the mountain.1 It was not until after this that one started developing tourism activities. Tignes now consists of 5 smaller villages, Tignes les Brevières, Tignes Les Boisses, Tignes Le Lavachet, Tignes Le Lac and Tignes Val Claret, ranging in altitude from ~1550m to 2100m. In terms of tourism, Tignes is often referred to as part of the Espace Killy ski area, which it forms together with its neighbor resort Val d’Isère. Part of what is considered included in the Tignes ski area is also a part of the Vanoise National Park2 which comes with its own restrictions in terms of use and development. Tignes as a tourist destination is changing due to various reasons and particularly so in the summer. Lately within tourism there have been debates about climate change and how winter seasons are declining, and Tignes cannot exclude itself from this discussion. Within many winter resorts, one can observe “responsive” actions against effects of global warming and actions taken to reduce its effect on income from tourism. Irrespectively of what one believes to be the reason for declining winters, the summer season is starting to become more and more important as a way of reducing the pressure on the winter season and reducing seasonality issues. This also represents a sort of destination development that is very interesting and the focus on this phenomenon has fairly recently become part of scientific studies. However, these studies have focused on winter destinations developing a “green” summer attraction from previously not having a summer season at all.3 However, this particular study of Tignes will focus on the process of going from a “white” summer to a “green” summer, as Tignes used to be skiable all year round with the Grande Motte Glacier as the main attraction, something which is no longer the case. To an outsider, this is what seems to be the reason that has prompted a development in other summer attractions, but it is something that needs to be investigated further to substantiate the claim. Superficially, one can observe the creation of new attractions as well as the use of other incentives to attract new types of visitors. A search for other similar resorts with glaciers gave mainly results about how to preserve glacier tourism, sometimes with fairly extreme measures4, but do mention diversifying as an option5. The focus of these studies was thus different than that which I wish to pursue. Other studies, as mentioned above, focus on “regular” alpine resorts. The fact that Tignes is not developing a new summer destination but merely changing its attractions is what makes this study different from previous studies, meaning also that my study can then serve to give more light to destinations that do include glaciers as an attraction and maybe separate these from other mountainous resorts. Changing attractions can also mean a change in image and branding which may be relevant to destination attractiveness. When it comes to branding within tourism destinations, it is still however 1 http://www.tignes.net/en/practical-info/a-little-history-1213.html, accessed on 2014-06-04 2 http://www.parcnational-vanoise.fr/fr/documentation-en-ligne/doc_download/376-carte-presentation-generale- du-parc-national-de-la-vanoise.html, accessed on 2014-05-08 3 Flagestad, Arvid., Svensk, Göran., Nordin, Sara. & Lexhagen, Maria. (2004) Vintersportorten – året runt, Harkman, Linda. (2007) Det gröna sälen – En studie om sommarturism i Sverige. 4 Purdie, Heather. (2013) Glacier Retreat and Tourism: Insights from New Zealand. Mountain Research and Development. 33(4): 463-472. p.470 5 Furunes, Trude & Mykletun, Reidar J. (2012) Frozen Adventure at Risk? A 7 year Follow-up Study of Norwegian Glacier Tourism. p.345 6 largely dependent on the attractions in the resort. The same is true for visitors, who come there mainly for the attraction. It is then up to the resort to build a coherent image with the visitors. Thus creating a harmonized image of what they offer and what the tourists want to identify with. Tignes thus faces this challenge as well, going from unique summer skiing into a more traditional summer role including downhill biking, hiking etc. All of the above thus creates an interesting area of study. The goal will thus be to investigate the resort of Tignes, as a case study, in relation to this recent summer season development. 1.2 Purpose My purpose with the study is to investigate how Tignes has changed in terms of developing a multi-attraction summer season from being an all year round winter resort. 1.3 Research questions To answer the purpose above I have decided on three study questions that are worth pursuing in order to obtain relevant results: - Which actions have been taken to develop Tignes as a summer resort and why? - What are the consequences? - How has the development changed the number and types of visitors? 1.4 Limitations The study is limited to the sole resort of Tignes and focuses on the summer season development as this is judged to be the more substantial change in destination development.
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