The quantification of tourism is a political, economic, social, cultural and statistical issue for destinations and governments. The difficulties for the tourism sector in determining the number of tourists are not new. They are mainly due to a non-exhaustive census of tourist accommodation because of the existence of a non-commercial sector. These difficulties have been amplified in recent years by the development of accommodation resulting from the collaborative economy, which raises numerous socio-economic and environmental issues and, as a result, raises questions in terms of planning. This research focuses on the development of informal tourist accommodation in Wallonia, i.e., tourist accommodation for which there are no visitor statistics, and on the impacts generated by the new forms of accommodation from collaborative platforms.
In the first part, the research looks at the potential of big data, particularly data from mobile telephony, to overcome the difficulties of quantifying the sector encountered by traditional methods. We track, locate and quantify overnight tourists in all forms of accommodation. We study the extent to which these digital traces reflect tourist activity in Wallonia and, in particular, the behaviour of tourists in terms of frequenting informal tourist accommodation.
It turns out that mobile phone data are a promising source of data to quantify the tourist activity of a territory. They reveal an underestimation of the official statistics on tourist numbers in Wallonia by a factor of three, and by as much as a factor of four if we consider accommodation with family and friends as tourist accommodation. It thus appears that informal accommodation is captured by this data source and represents about three quarters of Wallonia’s tourist activity, with a significant share linked to collaborative accommodation. Mobile telephony has also enabled us to identify new polarities of tourist overnight stays in connection with collective accommodation, peer-to-peer accommodation from platforms other than Airbnb and Vrbo, and major seasonal events. Nevertheless, the operational definition for extracting these nights considers certain forms of mobility as tourist nights when they are not, such as hospitalisations, night owls or occasional night workers. We have estimated the resulting overnight stays at one fifth.
We have also highlighted how the new collaborative practices have redistributed tourism in Wallonia, particularly by reinforcing the existing offer of local accommodation. Indeed, they spread tourist accommodation in rural residential areas in a lucrative form. Therefore, in the second part of the research, we addressed the impacts generated by collaborative accommodation from the point of view of three categories of stakeholders (the residents, the actors of the traditional tourist accommodation and the representatives of tourist areas), and gathered from various qualitative methods (the survey by questionnaire, the focus group, and the telephone interview). The literature has demonstrated the complementarity of these different points of view to consider the management of the phenomenon globally.
From the residents’ point of view, half of the panel was unaware of the existence of collaborative accommodation in their immediate environment, which raises the question of both the disappropriation of space and the invisible nature of these accommodations. It seems that the multiplication of short-term rental listings resulting from the success of the platforms and the large capacity accommodation are more the source of the impacts perceived by the residents than the means of the rental itself. The positive impacts mentioned are oriented towards the economic aspect of the destination, while the negative impacts concern the social aspect and, in particular, the alteration of the quality of life due to noise pollution. From the point of view of traditional tourist accommodation and the representatives of tourist areas, the main problem concerning collaborative accommodation is the lack of a census, which creates an imbalance between the two sectors that is considered unfair and distorts the general statistics of tourist activity, which raises many issues.
Based on the material collected from these groups of actors, the existing legal framework and the regulatory recommendations in the literature, we propose a series of recommendations for the Walloon context regarding the management of these accommodations. In particular, we work at two levels. Firstly, the regional level in order to set common guidelines for all these accommodations in terms of definition, census, taxation, control and sanctions. Secondly, at the local level, to take account of specific territorial characteristics by identifying the impacts observed on the territory and by working with the help of three regulatory regimes (relaxed, moderate or restrictive) adapted to these impacts and to the destinations’ tourism development level. 11. Sustainable cities and communities