Contrary to the feverish dreams of officials in Brussels and our capitals, fuelled by the prospect of an exponential growth in the global flow of tourists, the EU will soon cease to be the world’s main tourist destination. We anticipate that, in 2025, Europe will lose its leading position to Asia.<\/p>\n
Over the next decade, the impact of a downturn, combined with the effects of increased competition, saturation and fatigue, and environmental considerations, all this in the context of a vast questioning of meaning, will lead to a complete repositioning of the European tourism sector.<\/p>\n
Reality has begun to remind Europe of the unsustainable nature of old-fashioned tourism in a century and a world that promises an explosion in the flow of tourists. Far from being able to continue to welcome half of this leisure travel, as is currently the case, Europe will have to protect itself from it.<\/p>\n
If this trend represents a crisis for all the players who will continue to rely on quantitative tourism, it will also provide a set of creative constraints that will allow Europe to carry out innovative experiences of high quality \u201cprotectionist tourism\u201d!<\/p>\n
Multipolar world: Market share decrease for European tourism<\/strong><\/p>\n European tourism will soon suffer from the consequences of the global multi-polarisation, as is happening in many other sectors of the economy. Indeed, whilst Europe has hosted more than half of global tourism in 2018 (713 million tourists in Europe out of 1.4 billion worldwide[1]<\/a>), it is not only because of the wealth of its heritage and the beauty of its sites. It is primarily because it has the capacity to accommodate these 713 million people \u2013 thanks to its huge number of restaurants, hotels, airports, rail stations, modern museums, and so on.<\/p>\n But now, the whole world is working hard to attract part of this huge flow of travellers!<\/p>\n For example, 15 years ago, who would have thought of putting Dubai on their list of travel destinations? Yet, in 2017, 15.8 million people visited this UAE city – corresponding to 1% of global tourist flow, creating both a new diversion for European tourists outside of Europe and an extremely attractive destination for the new tourists that the European tourist sector dreams of attracting \u2013 the Indians, for example.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n There are, of course, many other examples of new destinations \u2013 including in the EU where the countries of the former Eastern Bloc have been reappearing on global tourist maps for 20-30 years now: Prague, Budapest, Croatia, Ljubljana, Romania… Nevertheless, in the case of the EU, the potential for opening new hotspots is largely drying up,[3]<\/a> unlike the vast majority of newly developed or emerging regions of the world, such as Asia, South America,[4]<\/a> Africa,[5]<\/a> the Arab World and the Middle East. [6]<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Projections <\/em><\/p>\n