Sustainable Tourism Law

376 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW However, the significant development of newly created ski resorts based on integrated infrastructure has been the subject of numerous criticisms since the late seventies. The main criticism concerns the absence of environmental considerations. With the Snow Plan, the French State granted developers the right to create buildings and ski infrastructures in new ski resorts in an ‘integrated manner’. In other words, huge buildings were put together using controversial architectures and designs, to arrange in a same place, accommodations, shops, hotels, equipment, as well as the skiing location itself. This concept was really innovative at that time. However, such constructions became less popular with time from an environmental point of view, given their size and the way they aged and attracted criticism. A new issue appeared recently linked to the “cold beds phenomenon”. In fact, most of these buildings are second homes for persons who only spend in the mountain a few days out of the entire year. The rest of the year, such accommodations are not occupied by their owners nor are they rented because of their poor conditions and their age. This can represent 30% to 40% of empty beds out of the millions of beds available in ski resorts. This causes further problems in terms of infrastructure management, as well as in terms of local populations or seasonal workers housing. Another criticism can be directed at the fact that the local population was rarely consulted in terms of the development of such projects under the Snow Plan, not to mention they sometimes were evicted from their own lands. The local populations thus became more suspicious towards the State, which imposed huge construction projects without consultation beforehand. Finally, these ski resorts were developed focusing exclusively on skiing activities. However, the lack of snow during some years caused further economic difficulties in the mountain tourism. It has become more challenging to develop other outdoor activities during the remaining seasons, because of the specific ecosystem in mountains and the inadequate, aged infrastructures. II.2. Changing attitudes and laws In the late seventies, criticism relating to the mountain development enabled a change in the attitude regarding tourism development. It was thus decided to put an end to the Snow Plan 6 . 6 Discours de Vallouise, 1977, where the French President V. Giscard d’Estaing declared that environment in mountain should be preserved and the local population has to be involved. The development of tourism programs in mountain should be environment-aware and more accessible.