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Les étrangers possèdent désormais 39% des établissements et 43% des chambres, les groupes multinationaux (où entrent des capitaux locaux) respectivement 10 et 20%. L'étendue du contrôle national demeure cependant exceptionnellement élevée pour la Caraïbe: 51% des hôtels, les plus petits puisqu'ils ne regroupent que 37% des chambres; ils dominent nettement dans les zones traditionnelles, Kingston et Montego Bay, niais ne s'insèrent que très peu dans les secteurs nouveaux, tels qu'Ocho Rios sur la côte nord, où les établissements, plus grands, plus isolés, plus luxueux, dépendent des capitaux britanniques, américains ou canadiens.

Pour bon nombre de pays d'économie attardée, mais favorisés par des conditions climatiques attrayantes, le tourisme apparaît de plus en plus comme une des chances décisives et un des principaux facteurs de la croissance nécessaire. Quelques réussites récentes, au moins sur le plan statistique, sont fort spectaculaires et la floraison simultanée, en de nombreux points du globe, d'ambitieux programmes touristiques ne manque pas d'impressionner. Pourtant, le jugement porté sur les effets économiques d'un tel choix demeure à la fois plus prudent et plus nuancé. La question essentielle peut ainsi être posée: les économies en voie de développement sont‐elles capables de retenir et d'utiliser sur place les revenus, parfois considérables, distribués par les touristes étrangers? Et ces revenus sont‐ils susceptibles de jouer un rôle décisif dans le «décollage» économique, en soutenant les objectifs nationaux essentiels, en ne détournant pas le pays des priorités et des contraintes de la croissance?

Prof. Georges Cazes of the Sorbonne University of Paris proposes the founding of a “geopolitical observatory for tourism”. He feels that this proposal is justified by the growing importance of tourism worldwide, and the fact that tourism is a sensitive barometer of the world's political climate. Tourism demand does indeed react to a variety of exogenous factors such as currency problems, environmental and political crises, etc. in a significant way and at an early stage.

This chapter demonstrates that despite an unfavorable disciplinary climate for new academic subjects in France, tourism found its place in the French geographical scene almost 40 years ago. The first part traces the history of tourism in French geography until the epistemological turn due to the research laboratory MIT in the mid-1990s. It also focuses on the absence of knowledge of the Anglo-American literature and of multidisciplinarity in French research on tourism. The second part focuses on the valorization of tourism geography research in France, emphasizing the development of multidisciplinarity since the early 2000s, including the creation of a multi-disciplinary tourism laboratory and two journals. The chapter concludes reflecting on the possibility of a science of tourism.

Au terme de notre 32e Congrès, j'éprouve le besoin de rendre hommage à tous ceux qui ont collaboré à la bonne marche collaborateurs de la réunion annuelle de notre association.

The report hereunder has been divided into the following sections:

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.

This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.