We knew about sustainable, ethical, cultural tourism, green, ecological or organic tourism, rural or river. This is not new, more and more French people no longer want to “sunbathe idiot”. But 360,000 curious to see the Rance tidal power plant work, 60,000 others to discover the Perrier factory in Vergèze, that is what we call a phenomenon: in its Guide to industrial sites, Bertrand Labès notes the incredible growth of what is called industrial tourism and shows the extent of it. No less than one thousand four hundred businesses, heritage museums and industrial sites annually attract nearly twenty million visitors, who come mainly in groups, during their leisure time (80%) or for professional purposes (20%). Their motivations: to know the products and services they consume on a daily basis, to discover the economic heritage of a region, to learn …

All sectors of the economy are represented, but food and crafts are the most attractive. “This phenomenon testifies to the strange relationships of the French with the market economy and capitalism,” laughs Bernard Giroux, at the French Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Eh yes! Our fellow citizens distrust employers, but ultimately, they like their businesses. The proof, one in three enters each year in a factory or on a production site. A hybrid species which does not hesitate to devote its leisures to visit a nuclear power station, a center of sorting of waste or a foundry, to go to see a glass blower or an industrialist of the food industry between bathing and stroll.

It is primarily a school audience (38% of the clientele) who seeks to reinvest the knowledge acquired, to discover outlets and the realities of professional life. Companies therefore target this type of audience with the aim of recruiting and raising awareness of certain professions or sectors of activity: the visit highlights a trade and know-how, especially in the branches experiencing a shortage of labor. of work. It is also a public of the third age, which thus finds the means to occupy its time. Between the two, individuals who are simply curious.

The origins of industrial tourism – 3 questions to Bertrand Labès, author of the Guide to industrial sites

Several sectors claim the so-called economic discovery tourism initiative, the first manifestations of which surely date from the post-war period. “To look good, especially with the Americans, French employers have carried out some open house operations, in the automobile for example,” explains Bertrand Labès, author of the Guide to industrial sites. Only a few initiatives have persisted, and industrial tourism has only really restarted in the 1980s. In 1985, the Ministry of Tourism created the association “Une France à savoir” to bring tourists to businesses. This type of approach has gradually developed in all sectors, from heavy industry to

Why publish a Guide to industrial sites?
There are several reasons: personally, I have hiked a lot in France during my holidays. Throughout the thousands of kilometers I have traveled, I have met many artisans, and more than once, I have pushed open the door of a factory to discover the exciting things going on there. I’m curious about the skills, the way the most common objects are made and quite nostalgic for the “object lessons” that used to be taught in school. And then I think, and this is nothing new, that many people no longer want to “sunbathe silly”. This guide gives them leads to practice a different tourism.

Which companies can we visit?
They are very numerous, and in all sectors of the economy! From petroleum and sugar refineries to hydroelectric or nuclear power plants, including knife and porcelain factories, cooperative wine or cheese cellars, postal sorting centers or treatment plants. Sometimes museums are integrated, which present a know-how which has disappeared as a counterpoint to current techniques.

Are the visits paid?
Company visits are chargeable in around a third of cases, for two reasons. Firstly, because the opening of a site to the public imposes standards to be respected and that bringing it up to standards sometimes has a non-negligible cost for a small business, because it may for example have to buy special equipment. In the heavy industry sector, the constraints imposed by the security requirement for visitors also come at a price. The second reason is that employees of the company are posted to serve as guides, and that this creates a shortfall for the company.

In every region?
There are still fairly large disparities. The North, Brittany, Normandy and Rhône-Alpes are champions to show their know-how, while departments such as Sarthe, the territory of Belfort or Eure-et-Loir have less experience.

From heavy industry to trendy creators: the different faces of industrial tourism

Do you know how we make a felt hat? Do you have any idea what happens before a tender piece of Roquefort ends up on your plates? Or an espresso in your cup? Do you know how homeopathic medicines are made? How is waste sorted? The mail? How do we forecast the weather? These are some of the questions answered by industrial tourism by leading visitors behind the scenes of economic life.

Large-scale initiatives
Tourism of “economic discovery” has become one of the hobbies of the chambers of commerce and industry. Several departments have set up, for several years now, open weeks and special operations to try to unite initiatives and encourage companies to open up to the public. Those of Angers and Seine-Saint-Denis, among the oldest and most important, perfectly illustrate the diversity of industrial tourism which takes very different forms.

The “Made in Angers” event, created and implemented by the Angers tourist office, thus started in 2000 under the name “Industrial Tourism Week”. Since then, its success has not waned and the 60 companies participating in the operation this year again welcomed more than 15,000 visitors this year. Anjou is perhaps moreover historically a land favorable to this type of tourism. Already 150 years ago, Édouard Cointreau was already doing it without knowing it, shouting to visitors: “Tourists, don’t leave Angers without visiting Cointreau house!”

“The scents that emanate are fabulous. You must have seen the unloading of the pots, the moment when the smoky and fragrant orange peels are removed.” Made in Angers, which takes place at the beginning of each year, reflects the multiple realities of industrial tourism: from the visit to a site normally forbidden to the public to the saga of liquor, via the very trendy workshops of Hiroyuki and Agnès Yamakado, cutting-edge designers.

“Today, we no longer enter the building sites, except by breaking and entering, and that’s a shame,” recognizes Christian Bachelier, secretary general of the Maine-et-Loire building federation and guide for the occasion. The crane peaks at 25 m and serves as a landmark in the rue du Docteur Guichard. Precast concrete panels, with an “elephant skin” appearance, form the framework of the walls; 2,000 m2 of offices are being built, under the amazed eyes of visitors.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, nearly 100 companies, industrial sites, laboratories and workshops are exceptionally open to the public. The Departmental Tourism Committee has designed a cycle of visits in an innovative spirit that immerses visitors in the heart of the know-how. Each visit allows a small group of visitors (from 10 to 15 people) to observe technical gestures, to discover trades, to get acquainted with advanced techniques, production processes, research work, without any other setting on stage than the actual conditions of exercise of the professionals met.
Since 2001, a program has been published every 6 months by the departmental tourism committee (tel: 01 49 15 98 98 / www.tourisme93.com)
Among these visits: PSA Peugeot Citroën, Air France Cargo, FedEx, the RATP workshops, the Reserves of the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, the restoration workshops of the Air Museum and Espace, the Louvre molding workshops, Christofle, the Fratellini academy.

Small tour of France of some essential sites
If you missed these events, you would surely come across a site that is worth a detour on your way to your vacation. Here are some suggestions.

Energetic

The Rance tidal power plant (La Richardais, near Saint-Malo in Brittany) is the leading industrial site by the number of visits to France: nearly 200,000 people each year come to discover how electricity is produced by force tides, which turns gigantic turbines. In the engine room, technicians ride their bikes and virtual images lead visitors to the galleries with a 360 ° panoramic view.

Germinal

Three centuries of mining, industrial and social activity could have ended with the closure in 1971 of the Delloye pit at Lewarde near Douai. Instead, the secretary general of the Coal Mines of the Nord Pas-de-Calais Basin has chosen to make it a historic center, a veritable conservatory of the memory of the mine in this region which is rather economically stricken. This mine museum, the largest in France with 7,000 m2 of industrial buildings and superstructures on an 8-hectare site, has already welcomed more than two million visitors.
Website: www.chm-lewarde.com.

Pharaonic

As tall as the Arc de Triomphe, measuring 490 m long and 250 wides, the Airbus A380 site at Saint-Nazaire is gigantic. “The guided tours total to date more than 66,000 paying visitors, ” said Patrick Arbey, director of Siren, the company that manages tourist facilities in Nazaire. The construction of the world’s largest aircraft increased visits by 35% in one year.
Website: www.saint-nazaire-tourisme.com.

Artistic

In the “engineering structure” category, the Millau viaduct is another Mecca for industrial tourism. The highest road bridge in the world, commissioned in December 2004, attracted 60,000 paying visitors and more than 500,000 curious visitors at the foot of the piers in two years. “The paid site visits started on June 15, 2002, we started with 17-seat shuttles from the city center, then we moved to 50-seat buses, ” says Sylviane Truchetet, director of the tourist office. “At one point, it almost became unmanageable, the phone kept ringing, we went crazy. “So, two people came to reinforce the four hostesses and pantry is now open on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/.

Some precisions

Note that quite often, companies do not allow visitors to take photos, just to preserve their little manufacturing secrets. In terms of security, the Vigipirate plan has forced some companies to stop their visits. This is the case, for example, of nuclear power plants. “Companies are more and more reluctant to show behind the scenes for reasons of security and confidentiality,” explained Sylvie Lahuna, director of the departmental committee for tourism in Yvelines, to the newspaper Le Parisien.

Between discovery tourism and communication operations

We understood that businesses have become a real tourism product. For their part, tourism is now a tool for economic development and communication for them. “All companies have focused their communication on visits,” recalls Bertrand Labès, author of the Guide to industrial sites. For EDF, for example, the process is even at the heart of its specifications, even if visits to power plants are prohibited under the Vigipirate plan.

Opening your doors is always a way to make yourself known. This is particularly true in the food industry where tours are a springboard for sales: Perrier, Kronenbourg and many others offer tastings and a shop where visitors can buy their products. It’s a perfect lesson in direct marketing. No precise study indicates the profit which the companies which open to industrial tourism draw from it, but Bertrand Labès estimates for example that the crystal factories make up to two thirds of their turnover during the visits (often those of senior citizens, who constitute a significant part of these new tourists). The survey carried out by the tourism department confirms this major commercial challenge, since 57% of the companies consulted have a point of sale at the end of the visit. And they are right! Because half of the visitors finally make a purchase, and even 67% in the food industry. On average, the sales of companies in this context still represent a third of their turnover.

Even if no sale is made at the time, it is a long-term advertisement for the company: thus Le Creusot, which manufactures all its casseroles and casseroles in cast iron in Normandy, strengthens its brand image by proving by the demonstration, the seriousness of the manufacture of its precious kitchen accessories. As such, an hour spent on a site contemplating the smallest mysteries of production is much more effective than an advertising spot lasting a few seconds. This is a smart way to build customer loyalty or enrich your file.

Getting known, gaining new customers, promoting each person’s business internally, acting transparently there are many motivations for opening up to tourism. And from the Ravennes cabinetmaking workshop in Bondues , which receives 600 visitors per year, to Arc International (the Cristallerie d’Arques) which welcomes 60,000, with a dedicated service and seven jobs generated, the return on investment can be fast: “I opened my company to the visit three years ago. It takes me one Sunday a month and my turnover increased by 12% in the first year,” says Pierre-Alain Vanderhaeghe, a cabinetmaker who receives 600 visitors a year in his workshop. “If you succeed in your visit, each new visitor is an apostle, we always gain in return,” he said in La Voix du Nord (June 2004).

For visitors, the challenge is to discover a sometimes-ancestral know-how. The guides are therefore most of the time (in 95% of cases) employees closely linked to the history of the company, who know its history and the manufacturing processes perfectly. At the Forges Royales de Guérigny, formerly specialized in the production of marine anchors for Royal ships, it is former blacksmiths who show these 18th century buildings closed since 1971. In addition, for production sites still in operation, having recourse to an employee helps limit the cost of setting up visits.

Less concerned with direct economic spinoffs, research laboratories, industrial and service companies are opening up more for reasons of communication or recruitment and training.

In any case, company visits are bound to become a major element of territorial development. The report of the National Tourism Council highlights, for example, the role of Aerospace, which gives the city of Toulouse and even the entire Midi-Pyrénées region the image of a dynamic territory focused on high technology. The economic spinoffs can also be significant: the Perrier company in Vergèze (Gard) has generated the creation of twenty permanent jobs and ten seasonal workers and could hire even more with the creation of a turtle park, an equestrian center and the opening of an organic farm.

A little taste in images of economic discovery tourism.

It was in 1884 that Louis-Napoléon Mattéi launched the Cap Corse Mattéi: anxious to fight the fevers of the time, he had the idea of mixing with the Muscat of the Cap Corse a decoction of aromatic plants, oranges and cinchona. The aperitif is the most famous on the island today.

Atlantic shipyards
The Queen Mary II was built in the Chantiers de l’Atlantique: this giant ocean liner required a 900 m long construction hold and a 424 m long and 95 m wide armament basin. The Chantiers de l’Atlantique not only build the most beautiful ships in the world, they also build warships or tankers. The bus tour covers 6 km. To avoid industrial espionage, photos are not allowed.

The factory town of Airbus
Saint-Nazaire is one of the four Airbus sites: it is a veritable factory-city that can be discovered by bus: assembly hall, equipment and tests for the front and center fuselages of European aircraft.

Some tracks elsewhere in Europe

The National Tourism Council lists in its report the main European initiatives for economic discovery tourism. To discover, therefore, if you go through these countries.

In Holland

– Keukenhof in Lisse, the largest bulb garden: millions of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, irises, lilies … form a 32-hectare multicolored carpet waving in the wind. Open only during the flowering season. In 2007, daily from March 22 to May 20 inclusive, from 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Adults: € 13, seniors: € 12, children (4-11 years): € 6. Phone.: (00-31-2) 52-465-555. Internet: www.keukenhof.nl.

– Delta Expo, the largest storm surge barrier. Permanent exhibition on the artificial island of Waterland Neeltje Jans, 80 km south-east of Rotterdam. Open all year from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Adults: € 9.50, seniors: € 8. Information from the Dutch tourist office: 01-43-12-34-20.

– The mills of Kinderdijk: 19 mills (classified as World Heritage by UNESCO) divided into two rows. On the one hand, they are used to keep the Nederwaard dry, and on the other, to pump water from the Overwaard. Their wings rotate on Saturday, in July and August. Some are open to the public. Information from the Dutch tourist office: 01-43-12-34-20.

Poland
The Wieliczka Salt Mine: about ten kilometers south-east of Krakow, this mine receives 700,000 visitors per year, and is registered on the first list of the cultural and natural inheritance of UNESCO since 1978. Salt was one of the main sources of wealth of the Polish kings, from where gigantic size of this mine exploited since the 13th century: 300 km of galleries on nine levels, depth of 327 m, area of 10 km2. Renowned for its microclimate, it has a sanatorium 200 m underground. Only the three upper levels are open to the public. From April to October, open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. From November to March, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entrance: € 7.70. Guided tours (in French in summer only). Information, reservation by tel.: 00-48-12-278-73-02 or e-mail: turystyka@kopalnia.pl. Internet: www.kopalnia.pl.

In Great Britain
– Black Sheep Brewery in Wellgarth, North Yorkshire. Free admission. Internet: www.blacksheep.co.uk

– Bradwell Power Station at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. Exhibition on energy production, nuclear and the environment. Visits to the power plant and reactors. Internet: https://bradwellb.co.uk/

– A list of all British workplaces is available from the British tourist office in Paris: 01-58-36-50-50 or e-mail: gbinfo@visitbritain.org. Internet: www.visitbritain.fr.

In Swiss

The “watchmaking route”: the country logically highlights its main know-how by proposing the “watchmaking route” which includes 22 museums and factories located on the Jura Arc. An opportunity to discover the first tools of artisan watchmakers or masterpieces of world watchmaking while crossing beautiful landscapes. Routes, timetables and prices at 00-41-32-492-71-32. Internet: www.watchvalley.ch.

In Germany

The “route of fire” : this route offers to discover through North Rhine-Westphalia, a mine, a crystal factory, a blast furnace, a glass museum, a weapons museum, the TGV station, the tourist center wool and fashion, the home of metallurgy, etc. An original conversion of German industrial heritage saved from demolition. Information from the German national tourist office: 01-40-20-01-88. Internet: www.germany.travel/fr/index.html and www.route-industriekultur.de.

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