After a year and a half of health crisis and three confinements, 35 million French people have planned to go on vacation this summer.
Back to nature, “staycation”, teleworking from a resort, but also a sometimes lower budget than before the crisis ... The Covid has imposed its mark on our holidays.
"20 Minutes" paints a portrait of the different trends concerning vacations in a world that is not yet that of the coronavirus, but certainly no longer that of before.
"Yes hello we are very interested in renting your house in the depths of Périgord the second half of August but we have two questions: are the sheets provided and what is the speed of your wifi" is perhaps a sentence that makes you roll your eyes but is probably set to become very popular. And if you're a vacation rental company, you should be prepared. The telecommuting revolution, at least in the service sector, has given some wings to some: finally, if I can do everything I have to do for work from home very well, I can do it well. also from my resort.
The data released by online vacation accommodation booking giant Airbnb speaks volumes: in 2020, nearly one in five travelers (19%) used the platform to travel while working remotely.
A figure in clear increase affirms Airbnb.
The director of Protourism, Didier Arino, interviewed by
20 Minutes,
sees it more than a trend and speaks of "change in society".
For him, it is already something anchored and ultimately not so new: “Before the pandemic, 25% of people who left worked at one time or another on their vacation spot.
However, it is not necessarily the same reality after (during?) The pandemic.
Not accessible to all budgets
Interviewed by
20 Minutes
, Guy Raffour, a specialist consultant who produces an annual barometer where the tourist behavior of French and French women is measured, calls it “hybrid stays, leisure and work”. “Until then it was more of business travelers going abroad and saying to themselves' I'm taking myself an extra day or two to do some leisure tourism. It was typically that. Today, it's almost the opposite: it's because I'm on vacation in a nice place that I'm going to take one or two more days to enjoy it by telecommuting.
Didier Arino describes the textbook case "of a couple with children who are wondering what to do to occupy them during the school holidays and who can leave for longer by adding telework to the holidays".
Add a few days to long stays, or even go for a weekend from Thursday evening, only to return on Monday evening, having teleworked in his hotel / rental on Friday and Monday ... we quickly understand that this new type of stay is not within the reach of all budgets.
"We are talking about people who go on vacation and even who leave several times a year," warns Didier Arino.
Or you have to get organized with friends to share costs, but that's the story of another
20 Minutes
summer series
.
An opportunity for tourism professionals
In any case, these days more taken by people with a significant purchasing power, it can be a great opportunity for tourism professionals. Already because the average stay is getting longer: Airbnb has found that, since the start of 2021, 14% of reservations via the platform relate to stays of more than twenty-eight days. According to Protourisme, this summer, the average stay will drop from ten to twelve days. Its director nevertheless thinks that it is simply cyclical: those who have a strong vacation budget and were unable to leave at the start of the year spend more this summer and therefore leave for longer.
The opportunity to be seized would lie more in the possibility of improving occupancy rates during slack periods.
It is therefore less a question of lengthening stays than of increasing them.
A playing card also for traditionally less touristy areas.
Because this new demand is both more spread over time but also geographically.
However, tourist establishments will have to adapt because demand is necessarily different.
Don't forget to give yourself peace
“There is more and more demand for accommodation in which a place can serve as an office,” notes Didier Arino. Some people smell the right thing: you undoubtedly know these vans, such as the legendary Volkswagen combis, which are experiencing a certain hype return for road-trip mode vacations. Well Nissan presented a van designed for telecommuting in January. It's a concept car ... for now. Which brings us back to the question at the beginning of this article: Internet speed. For Guy Raffour, “this will become a basic demand”. The director of Protourisme even believes that in the years to come, "a seaside resort which does not have a good connection, which does not have fiber, will be a severely handicapped resort".
If ever the place you are renting does not have a good enough connection, Guy Raffour believes that local authorities who want to score points would be well advised to support the creation of village coworking spaces: “Transforming an old barn into a coworking n It's not that complicated with good craftsmen. »A good idea to separate professional and personal lives. Because, all the same, if the massification or even the generalization of telework in normal times can present a risk for our mental health, why the total mixture of the periods of vacancy and work would it not be contraindicated?
Not necessarily ... in an ideal world, believes Nicolas Magnant, associate director of the firm specializing in the prevention of psychosocial risks Alterhego, interviewed by
20 Minutes
.
The specialist, dubious, does not deny the advantages of "freedom and flexibility", but he warns: "This requires important conditions of maturity vis-à-vis the work, to separate the times.
A maturity that many people don't have, simply because they haven't had the opportunity to learn.
"Without taking these precautions, Nicolas Magnant sees in this trend a risk of" psychological fatigue ", via" a problem of invasion, of colonization of lived worlds "by work.
However, "we also need peace", concludes the specialist.
Isn't that what vacation really is?
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