A tourism professional promoting his destination shouldn't say that... This is essentially the harsh criticism that Lætitia de Ménibus-Gravier received from her agency for social networks, for her posts on the Gouffre de Padirac (Lot ).
On the third message from the CEO of the speleological exploitation company of the site on LinkedIn, the agency broke its contract.
In question ?
His parallels with the strike of the Parisian garbage collectors to mark his dismay.
The agency has no humor.
“
It's Spring!
Leave the city rats for the field rats by coming on March 31,
”writes Lætitia de Ménibus-Gravier in the 3rd post which set fire to the powder.
Already in the first the tone was set: "
Friend of the cities, leave the hell of the garbage cans for the Devil's Hole
"... As for the second, he threw a stone into the pond, recalling that the abyss was first a dump.
“
Historically, people dumped their trash in caves and chasms.
A practice halted thanks to Edouard-Alfred Martel, the first explorer of the Gouffre
“, writes the one who took over the reins twenty years ago of the abyss that her family has owned and operated for five generations.
The story speaks for itself.
In the 1890s, Edouard-Alfred Martel drank spring water and fell ill.
The work of Louis Pasteur helped him prove that the sullied sinkholes were the source of many epidemics.
In 1902, the Martel law prohibited the throwing of corpses and rubbish into the abyss.
Today Lætitia de Ménibus-Gravier is fighting to protect the quality of the water in the underground river, while a factory located ten kilometers away transforms agricultural waste and duck carcasses into biogas and fertilizer...
Read alsoRats, these improbable “waste management auxiliaries”
LinkedIn account of the Gouffre de Padirac Screenshot
On LinkedIn she concludes: “
In recent days, garbage is piling up in our cities and the risk of bacterial diseases is growing and exposing part of the population to health risks such as leptospirosis.
“And to
Figaro
she confides:”
My social network agency broke the contract, because they don't like to say that France is not a trash can!
".
Without wanting to take a position on the strikes against the pension reform, the leader insists on expressing her "sadness", and is sounding the alarm, on the consequences which "do not only impact hoteliers and restaurateurs
,
and
not only Paris
”.
Just before the Covid, Padirac had welcomed 530,000 visitors in 2019, a record since its official opening in 1899. The foreign clientele was 8% that year, before dropping to 4% after the pandemic, then returning to the height of 9% in 2022. Long-term work to bring them back... But what image do foreigners now have of France as a destination?
She is sorry: “
the statistics are distorted: we no longer come to France, we cross it
”.
“We do not have the right to leave Paris like a huge trash can”
Laetitia de Menibus Gravier.
Personal collection
“
During the Rendez-vous en France show on March 21 and 22 at Porte de Versailles in Paris, travelers were invited to visit a giant trash can,
” the manager further laments.
Because most tourists pass through the capital, before discovering the regions.
"
We don't have the right to leave Paris like a huge trash can
," she insists.
I am sad for my country and for the image that we send back to the whole world.
How can you ask to have a patriotic feeling when you are ashamed of your country vis-à-vis foreigners?
It's the mess as de Gaulle said
.
No offense to those who would like to sing to us that “Everything is fine, Madame la Marquise”, Lætitia de Ménibus-Gravier is preparing a 4th post for LinkedIn.
A form of accepted resistance.
The first underground heritage site in France is also opening its archives: more than 1,500 documents accumulated over 132 years can be consulted online on the "Padiracothèque", the album of the scientific and tourist epic of this natural monument in the valley. of the Dordogne.
Without selective sorting.
Read alsoIn the Dordogne, gourmet weekend at a time when the countryside is whitening
