Publish at July 06 2020 Updated April 22 2026
Adding up the kilometers traveled and multiplying visits in a limited time: that's what many tour operators offer. Yet many of us don't share this vision of tourism. Economic and health constraints, as well as the urgency of climate change, are prompting us to change the way we organize our vacations.
And the good news is that digital technology is helping us to transform this constraint into an aesthetic and human experience!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" said Oscar Wilde. There's no need for record-breaking natural beauty or a collection of three-star tourist sites. The traveler's pride is no longer built on the splendid landscapes visited. Rather, it lies in having seen the beautiful where others, less attentive or creative, would only have glimpsed the banal.
In a succession of photographs, Mauro Toselli gradually introduces us to a hut, pretty but ordinary, which takes on a strange, wild character as the lens approaches. This fragile construction, which bears the marks of time, becomes alive and skinned. A camera or a sketchbook stimulate the traveler's gaze, sometimes bringing out the extraordinary in the seemingly banal.
At the extreme, notebook artists trapped by confinement in large cities have produced watercolors that help us discover the beauty of architecture, rooftops and streets crowded with rare passers-by.
When you're forced to look out the same window over and over again, you have no choice but to learn to see! Instagram has made it possible to share these images, attentive to the ordinary and collected through small windows. The hashtag #uskathome for "urban sketch at home" are invitations to see one's immediate surroundings.
Learning to see means practicing slow tourism, rather than scanning the 700 pages of a tourist guide in 5 days. It means getting to know people and places, and sometimes getting a little lost, giving serendipity and surprise a chance... A territory becomes a place where stories are told. They have been inhabited, they bear the traces of successive human occupations, they have a geology, a fauna and a flora that make them unique. The traveler who knows how to see and share them will have experienced a moment as powerful as if he or she had taken the thousandth photograph of a tourist site.
Online applications help us to combine territory and history. The useful blog outilstice offers a list. They combine narration and cartography for stories, historical explanations or itineraries. From this selection, we'd like to highlight theIGN application for its clear methodology, StoryMaps for its visual rendering, and the narrative and visual quality of its examples, and Expedition for its relevance to local tourism communication.
The Musée de l'école en Bretagne is rooted in a territory. Its visitors are passionate about the history of schools in a rural environment, or are interested in the region. From March 2020 to June, the museum was closed, but its staff kept in touch with visitors.
Every day, through social networks, they proposed a type of activity:
Showing and disseminating ideas for activities is a first step. But exchanges are a two-way street. Local residents and Internet users have also been invited to contribute content. We're thinking of the canteen memories collected and presented on the networks.
Our local roots are also reflected in our links with medical and social establishments, particularly those that house elderly people, some of whom are dependent. They are the bearers of the know-how that was developed when the school of... was in operation. The museum's embroidery activities are showcased on the Internet.
The catalog of the Musée de l'Ecole Rurale en Bretagne's activities is far from exhausted. It shows an inventive use of digital technology and networks to promote a region, a tourist area and its traditions. Once the epidemic has passed, there's no doubt that this inventiveness will continue to be deployed alongside traditional tours.
A number of service providers specializing in e-learning and corporate digitalization are offering their services. The brochure by Nell et associés, Nell Museum, clearly explains the potential of digital technology to enhance the visitor experience.
Local travel can be an economic or health constraint. But it can also be the result of a reflection on our effect on the environment and on the meaning we give to travel. Slow tourism praises slowness, gentle means of locomotion and discoveries that are not a frenetic collection of "things to see".
Apps offer new tourists the chance to get involved, and to combine local with sustainable development and ethical tourism. "Tech for good" presents two of them, Tookki and WeGoGreenr.
Staycation is a young company targeting the niche of short trips close to home. The concept focuses on stays of just a few days, often on weekends, playing on the unusual and close to home. In an article by Florian de Paola , L'écho touristique refers to this trend: the boundaries between work and vacation are sometimes less rigid. Vacation resorts are being equipped with teleworking spaces and third places, a professional stay can be continued over a few days of visits, and the virtual is invading the world of tourism, allowing you to explore areas from your sofa...
Instead of trying to collect all the tourist sites we've seen, we can stop and reinvent the way we look at things, share our experiences on the spot and on our return - that's what we're hoping for this coming vacation!
Illustrations: Frédéric Duriez
Resources
Nell et associés - cultural brochure consulted on July 5, 2020
https://nell-associes.com/wp-content/uploads/C1_plaquette_culturelle_site_compressed-1.pdf
Fidel Navamuel: narrative mapping tools - June 2020, viewed on July 5, 2020
https://outilstice.com/2020/06/outils-cartographie-narrative/
The Good Good magazine - Ethical and unusual local travel
https://www.thegoodgoods.fr
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