“It’s heartbreaking, but from now on, it will be each one’s own
. ”
The words of Vincent Rolland, Savoie MP and resigning co-president of the Savoie Mont Blanc Agency are strong, when he talks about the crisis that this tourism promotion structure has been going through for several months.
Led by the two departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie, the agency has seen its two co-presidents resign since December, and is approaching a dissolution which seems inexorable.
Created in 2006, this bi-departmental structure originally had a clear project: to make the two Savoies exist on a national and international level for tourism, and to try to be on an equal footing with the major mountain and ski destinations, which are Tyrol in Austria. , the Dolomites in Italy or North America.
Endowed with 9.8 million euros each year, 98% matched by the two departments, the agency carried out major communication campaigns, in France and abroad, to promote the 112 ski resorts of the two departments and more generally mountain areas, summer and winter.
It was part of a broader context of attempts to bring the two departments closer together, such as the Savoie Mont Blanc Council, created in 2016 to pursue common policies in different areas: tourism, agriculture, higher education, culture, etc.
“Unraveling”
But the joint project fizzled out.
And the two camps are now firing at each other.
At the heart of the problem: a request from Haute-Savoie to reform the agency's statutes so that its presidency does not automatically fall to an elected official, but is open to tourism professionals.
“It is a very simple modification that we are asking for because at the level of Haute-Savoie, it seems to us that it is no longer possible for a departmental councilor to chair an association which receives 5 million euros from the departmental council”
, explains to Le
Figaro
the president of the department, Martial Saddier.
A legal question which would only be a pretext for an
“unraveling”
of the joint project, according to Savoie:
“What is happening at the agency is only an extension of the dissolution of the Savoie Mont Blanc Council at the beginning of 2023. We has the feeling today that for tourism promotion, it is “Haute-Savoie first”.
We have a project divergence
,” laments Vincent Rolland.
A divergence which now seems insoluble: in a letter dated March 15, Hervé Gaymard, the president of the Departmental Council of Savoie thus supported the need for an
“amicable dissolution”
of the agency, to put an end to this crisis.
“We clearly responded that we did not agree on this dissolution
,” insists Martial Saddier.
There remain the consequences for the tourist influence of the two departments, and in particular of their ski areas, at a time when global warming makes their operation more and more difficult, like this winter season marked by a snow deficit. important in mid-mountains:
“Now is the time to show solidarity, when we are going to see a return to square one.
Not to mention the loss of the strike force that the agency had to promote the territory on an international scale
,” regrets one of the administrators of the structure.
The dissolution, which could take place in the coming weeks, should give way to two distinct structures, in which the forty employees of the Savoie Mont Blanc Agency would be distributed, who will now carry out distinct tourist projects.