The Heritage & Tourism morning, organized by the Department of Val d’Oise, with the agency {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES]took place on Thursday, October 20, 2022 at the Abbaye de Maubuisson. At this event, thanks to numerous feedbacks (8), more than sixty tourism and heritage players were able to discuss the major role played by heritage sites in terms of tourist and territorial attractiveness. The morning’s first 4 speakers discussed the ways in which heritage can contribute to :
- Enhance the local accommodation offer (Valère Rousseau, Atout France) ;
- Entering into the logic of third places (Marie Floquet, Sinny&Ooko);
- Experimenting in close collaboration with the region’s entrepreneurial fabric (Margherita Balzerani, Louvre Lens Vallée);
- Create a unique shared offer between cultural and tourist establishments (Vincent Varache, Le Club des 9).
Before delving into the morning’s presentations, a few words about the venue.
1. Val d’Oise , an area rich in heritage, Maubuisson Abbey, a place of innovation.
Located northwest of Paris, between Normandy and Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, the Val d’Oise département (1,246 km2) welcomed more than 408,000 visitors to its heritage sites in 2019, making it the number one reason for visiting the département’s excursionists (without overnight stays) and visitors (with overnight stays) (60% of those surveyed). 78% of these visitors are from the Paris region, 47% from Val-d’Ois. They are attracted by more than twenty exceptional sites such as the Château de La Roche-Guyon, the Château d’Auvers, the Abbaye de Royaumont and the recently opened Maison impressionniste Claude Monet in Argenteuil (for more information, see Les chiffres clés 2019 du tourisme en Val d’Oise – année de référence). Such a wealth of heritage is fertile ground for ambitious and innovative territorial, social and societal projects.
Ambitious prospects illustrated by the Centre d’art contemporain de l’abbaye de Maubuisson, venue for this Matinée. Since 2019, this former 13th-century Cistercian abbey has offered 2 to 3 contemporary art exhibitions a year, a space for artistic residencies, a café and an incubator for cultural enterprises. With a resolutely contemporary program (such as the group exhibition De Profundis Ascendam, presented at the end of the event) and an innovative interactive sound trail(AVA, Assistante Virtuelle d’Archéologie), Maubuisson Abbey was the ideal place to bring together Val d’Oise professionals for this morning’s event.
2. How to create an accommodation offer in a heritage site? The example of the Réinventer le Patrimoine program.
“Supply does not create demand. The hotel industry is a support for an activity, such as culture,” shared Valère Rousseau, coordinator of the Réinventer le Patrimoine program. With a number of illustrative project examples, he reviewed the challenges, methodology and implications of introducing accommodation to heritage sites.
Founded in 2020, Reinventing Heritage is an engineering program piloted by the Banque des territoires, the Agence nationale de la cohésion des territoires, Atout France and the French Ministry of Culture, to support public or private players who own a heritage monument towards a viable economic project. Covering the entire project management process – from defining the project to securing financing – this ambitious national program has assisted more than 15 owners in their search for a new social, economic and sustainable project for their monument.
By way of example, Valère presented the creation of a hotel offering on Charleville-Mézière’s famous Place Ducale for touring professionals. After an initial phase of adjusting the project to the specific needs and constraints of business tourism, Atout France then helped the municipality define a viable business model and select a service provider. In Burgundy, the Fondation François Schneider also benefited from the advice of the Atout France program to formalize its project at Pontigny Abbey – the sale of which was recently made official. This ambitious program is based on a multi-faceted offer, with the aim of providing a relevant economic model to complement the hotel offer on this site, which comprises 6,000 m2 of buildings and 9 hectares of land. This example, like that of the new hotel proposed at the Domaine de Chaumont-Sur-Loire, illustrates the specific nature of business models for heritage sites, the mere existence of which in no way guarantees the presence of the public (the renovation of the architectural building and the very high management costs must therefore be taken into account right from the project design stage).
The formalization of a hotel offer calls for a rigorous methodology to adjust the project to the specific nature and challenges of heritage sites. It’s an approach that lies at the heart of Marie Floquet’s approach to the many sites created by her agency, Sinny&Ooko.
3. How can heritage sites be transformed into meeting places? Feedback from Sinny&Ooko.
“We favor a content-driven approach. Our aim? To make these places of attraction for local audiences, spaces of transition, to make desirable uses that are bound to be transformed by the various successive crises we are experiencing,” insisted Marie Floquet, Director of Social and Environmental Impact Strategy at Sinny&Ooko. Sinny&Ooko, an agency dedicated to third-party spaces, reinvents living spaces mainly in urban environments and industrial heritage sites. Founded in 2008, it directly manages four third places: the Recyclerie, the Pavillon des canaux, the Cité Fertile and the Bar à Bulles. In addition, S&O offers engineering services for local authorities, individuals and associations wishing to receive training or advice in the creation or management of third-party sites throughout France, via its Campus des tiers-lieux. Over 50 projects have been opened or are currently under development.
The Cité Fertile is a very inspiring example in this respect. A platform for experimentation for Sinny&Ooko, this third-location center in Pantin, Seine-Saint-Denis, offers a wide range of activities to reach both the working population (restaurant, bar, evening events, etc.) and the 47% of the French population who are not in the workforce (minors, senior citizens, the unemployed, etc.). For the latter, the Cité organizes a range of activities accessible during the week, promoting them through local communication campaigns (e.g. door-to-door in activity centers, schools, EHPADs, etc.).
Hybridization is necessary to support a project of this scale with very few public subsidies. Three types of offer are proposed to maximize the social and economic impact of the premises: events (20% of the agency’s overall revenue), workspaces (space rental) and various activities (repairing objects, maintaining gardens or vegetable plots…).
The challenges associated with such collaborative projects are numerous. Among them, the challenge of establishing cooperation between public structures (owners, decision-makers, etc.), managers and the many local partners directly or indirectly involved in the development of the “tiers-lieu”. Many collective solutions are possible, such as the association between the Paname Brewing Company and Sinny&Ooko at Cité Fertile. The challenge of coordination and territorial development is reminiscent of the Louvre-Lens Vallée incubator presented by Margherita Balzerani.
4. How do you develop a business incubator to serve your region? The Louvre-Lens Vallée example of eco-transition.
The Louvre-Lens Vallée incubator was created in 2013 by the Communauté d’Agglomération de Lens-Liévin to help revitalize the region following the opening of Musée du Louvre-Lens. Strong partnership links with the Louvre-Lens have given this incubator a DNA focused on the cultural and creative industries, bringing together numerous players from the Hauts-de-France region: entrepreneurs, students, citizens, creators, artists, designers…
For the Lens incubator, a major project was recently carried out in terms of territorial coordination on the theme of eco-transition. In October 2022, Margherita Balzerani, the director of Louvre-Lens Vallée, organized the 6th edition of the Culturathon to initiate collective and constructive reflection. This event brought together almost 70 students to work collaboratively for 36 hours with a number of professionals from the French Ministry of Culture, Louvre-Lens, 9-9bis, Main Square Festival, Culture Commune (national stage), Arkéos (Douai archaeological museum and park)… Two proposals are currently being incubated at Louvre-Lens Vallée following this event.
An original initiative to provide concrete solutions for eco-responsibility in the cultural sector. This initiative underlines the importance of coordinated work between the various cultural, tourist and heritage structures in a region, as was also the case with the Club des 9.
5. How to coordinate several tourist sites in different regions? Case study from the Paris region with the Club des 9.
Following the impact of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, nine tourist sites located to the north of the Ile de France have joined forces to create a new visitor dynamic: the Châteaux of Compiègne, Pierrefonds, Ecouen and Chantilly, Parc Astérix, the Abbeys of Royaumont and Chaalis, the Sea of Sand and Sherwood Parc. Vincent Varache, project coordinator, came to present this strategic alliance between players located in two distinct départements, Oise and Val d’Oise.
To create momentum, a three-phase strategic plan has been drawn up for 2022 to initiate a threefold pooling of pricing, communications and events:
- A 20% discount is offered at network ticket offices to visitors purchasing a full-price ticket at one of the nine sites;
- In terms of communication, two audiovisual productions have been put together by Club des 9 to promote harmony between the various cultural and tourist attractions on the sites concerned;
- Last but not least, two month-long event campaigns, spread across all nine sites, were organized for Easter and Halloween.
A cross-territorial initiative designed to encourage visitors to roam between tourist sites. And it underlines the effectiveness of pooling offers and services between tourism players with different profiles, from heritage to art and leisure.
On a daily basis, heritage sites contribute to the development of their region’s appeal. This can be achieved through hybrid business models supported by ambitious programs such as Reinventing Heritage or the Campus des tiers lieux. They can also be part of a dynamic of regional networking and pooling (like the Louvre-Lens Vallée or the Club des 9). The attractiveness of a heritage site can also be enriched by offering new and memorable itineraries and visitor experiences, a theme that will be addressed in the 2nd part of this morning’s session.
Many thanks to the many guests who shared their projects, as well as to the professionals from Val d’Oise and France who attended our Matinée, and to Emeline Parizel..
Baudouin Duchange
