Alain St.Ange in Alicante: Tourism can no longer be measured only by the number of arrivals
Alain St.Ange, Seychelles ambassador-at-large and former minister of tourism, called on the tourism sector to change the way it defines the success of destinations. In his opening address at the Clevenard Open Project 2026 conference in Alicante, he said that the number of arrivals and growth in tourist traffic can no longer be the only measures of progress if, at the same time, there is no monitoring of how much tourism actually brings to residents, local businesses and the community as a whole. According to reports from the conference, St.Ange emphasized that the value of tourism must be assessed through employment, entrepreneurial opportunities, local ownership, investment, cultural preservation and the ability of a destination to retain the benefits of visitor spending over the long term. His message fits into the increasingly strong international debate about whether tourism, after the return of record global figures, should move away from the logic of growth at any cost toward a model in which economic, social and environmental impacts are just as important as traffic itself.
The Clevenard Open Project 2026 conference is being held from August 27 to 30 at the Palacio de Congresos Alicante, according to the organizers' program, and brings together representatives of tourism, business, diplomacy, culture and the creative industries. St.Ange appeared as the keynote speaker at the international gathering. His presentation focused on the tourism sector's responsibility toward communities that receive guests, as well as on the need for data held by governments, tourism organizations and companies to be linked to concrete decisions. Instead of destinations presenting success primarily through a new record in the number of guests, he called for questions that are more immediate for residents: who gets a job, how many local businesses enter the tourism value chain, whether revenue remains in the destination and whether residents can influence the development of the place in which they live.
A record number of trips is no longer a sufficient indicator
In Alicante, St.Ange warned that the global tourism debate is still often reduced to arrivals, volume and the question of how many additional visitors can be attracted in the next season. He pointed out that such an approach can obscure the difference between high traffic and the actual value that tourism leaves at the destination. According to UN Tourism data published in January 2026, approximately 1.52 billion international overnight tourist arrivals were recorded worldwide during 2025, about four percent more than a year earlier and approximately 60 million more than in 2024. Europe remained the world's largest destination region with 793 million international tourists. These figures confirm the scale of the sector St.Ange was discussing, but at the same time show why arrival statistics alone cannot provide a complete answer to the question of how beneficial tourism is for a particular community.
His key thesis was that volume is not the same as value. The spending of one guest can flow to a taxi driver, a market vendor, a small family-run accommodation provider, a restaurateur or a farmer supplying a hotel, but the mere fact that money moves through a destination does not show how much of it actually remains there. The difference becomes particularly important in economies that depend heavily on tourism, including small island states such as Seychelles. In such environments, tourism is not just one of many sectors, but can have a major impact on employment, foreign-currency earnings, transport, infrastructure and the development of small businesses. Therefore, according to St.Ange, it is necessary to monitor the depth of the local economic impact, not merely the breadth of tourist traffic.
Such an approach is not separate from current international policies. In its Tourism Trends and Policies 2026 report, the OECD states that governments are increasingly reassessing the way tourism is managed and trying to balance economic benefits with social and environmental impacts. The organization particularly warns that the benefits and costs of tourism are not always evenly distributed and that large numbers of visitors can create pressure on infrastructure, public services, housing and residents' everyday lives. At the same time, destinations with lower levels of tourist traffic may remain outside the main flows of investment and revenue. For this reason, increasing emphasis is being placed on local value creation, destination resilience and community involvement in development management.
Data should lead to decisions, not merely promotional records
One of the central parts of St.Ange's speech concerned tourism data. According to reports by Travel Daily News and eTurboNews, he said that the information collected by the sector must be linked to decisions that are actually made. This means that statistics should not serve only to announce record seasons, but also to assess the quality of jobs, the impact on local entrepreneurship, the sustainability of investments and the distribution of revenue. A destination recording millions of arrivals may at the same time face problems with low wages, seasonal employment, rising living costs or a large outflow of revenue to companies outside the local economy. Without measuring these elements, high tourist traffic can create an image of success that is not equally visible in residents' everyday lives.
Measuring the broader impact of tourism has, in fact, become an important topic for international institutions in recent years. The Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism, developed by UN Tourism and its partners and endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2024, was designed as an internationally harmonized way to monitor the economic, social and environmental aspects of tourism. In this way, the sector is trying to move away from reliance on a few traditional indicators, such as arrivals, overnight stays and total spending, toward a system in which impacts on the community, environment and local economy can also be compared. Spain was among the countries that participated in the pilot implementation of this approach, according to United Nations documents.
For tourism policy, such a change means that it is important to know not only how many guests are arriving, but also where they spend, which activities benefit from that spending, what kinds of jobs are created and how much local suppliers participate in supply chains. Data can also show whether pressure is increasing on transport, water, waste, housing stock or protected areas, and in which parts of the destination the burden becomes greater than the benefit. In Alicante, St.Ange insisted on precisely this connection between statistics and decisions as a matter of credibility. If data are collected but no policies, investment priorities and management measures are derived from them, their contribution to development is limited.
Local ownership as a question of distributing tourism revenue
Another important message from his appearance concerned ownership and community participation. According to the eTurboNews report, St.Ange argued that real transformation happens when local people have genuine ownership, when decisions are made with communities rather than instead of them, and when profits remain in local circulation. Such a formulation raises one of the key questions of sustainable tourism: how much of visitors' spending ends up with local workers, small entrepreneurs, food producers, craftspeople, transport operators and accommodation owners, and how much leaves the destination through imports, external ownership or centralized business models.
The OECD also emphasizes in its 2026 report that the leakage of part of the revenue from a destination can reduce tourism's positive impact on local communities. The organization therefore recommends policies that strengthen local businesses, connect tourism with other sectors of the economy and spread benefits among a larger number of residents. This may involve local food procurement, integrating small producers into hotel supply chains, supporting domestic guides and transport operators, access to financing for small businesses or developing products that generate income outside a few of the most visited areas. Such measures do not necessarily mean less tourism, but rather a different distribution of the benefits generated by existing and future traffic.
Culture is not scenery for visitors
A particularly strong part of the speech concerned cultural identity. St.Ange warned of the difference between preserving culture and packaging it exclusively for tourist consumption. According to reports from the conference, he cited examples in which a ritual, religious space or local custom loses its original meaning when it is turned only into content for photographs or a performance adapted to guests' expectations. His message was not against cultural tourism, but against a model in which the community loses control over the way its history, religion, music, food, dance or tradition is presented and commercialized.
Successful cultural tourism, according to his approach, begins with recognizing that the community owns its own story. This means involving residents before a particular custom, place or identity is turned into a tourism product, as well as sharing the economic benefits with those who keep that culture alive. Such a model can create a market for traditional crafts, finance heritage preservation and show younger generations that their heritage has a value that is not reduced to a souvenir or a short performance. The opposite approach can generate short-term commercial benefit, but in the long term weaken the authenticity of precisely what made the destination attractive.
This issue also has broader developmental significance. Tourism demand can help preserve historic places and local skills only if the rules governing use, interpretation and revenue are acceptable to the community. When decisions about what will be shown, how a space will be used and who will earn from it are completely separated from residents, growth in visitor numbers can strengthen the feeling that the place is adapting to guests at the expense of the people who live there. St.Ange therefore distributed responsibility for quality tourism among several actors: public authorities that plan development, companies that decide how value will be distributed, travelers whose choices shape demand and communities that should have the opportunity to speak in their own name.
Alicante as a stage for a debate that is particularly relevant in Europe
The fact that the message was delivered in Spain gives it additional context. In its 2026 report, the OECD states that one of the objectives of Spain's strategic approach to tourism is the balanced coexistence of residents and visitors in destinations. More broadly, European tourism destinations have in recent years increasingly discussed how to manage concentrations of guests, pressure on infrastructure, seasonality and the relationship between tourism revenue and quality of life. At the same time, UN Tourism shows that Europe received more than half of all international tourists worldwide in 2025, which gives issues of capacity, visitor distribution and local benefits exceptionally high political and economic significance.
St.Ange's appearance can therefore be read as part of a broader change in the language of tourism policy. In the past, the main objective of many destinations was to increase the number of guests, the number of overnight stays and international visibility. Today, alongside these indicators, questions are increasingly being asked about revenue per visitor, the seasonal and spatial distribution of traffic, local procurement, wages, emissions, resource consumption, housing and resident satisfaction. The OECD explicitly states that local community support for tourism is not guaranteed and may weaken if economic benefits are not retained locally or if negative effects on space and residents' lives are not controlled. In other words, the long-term competitiveness of a destination is increasingly linked to its social acceptability.
From records toward shared benefits
At the end, St.Ange placed responsibility for the future of tourism more broadly than on state institutions and tourism boards alone. According to reports from his speech, he called on policymakers to plan for resilience, companies to be prepared to share ownership and profits, travelers to choose experiences that respect culture, and communities to actively shape the way they want to present their own place. Such a model is based on the idea that sustainability is not only environmental protection, but also a question of who participates in decisions, who bears the costs of tourism development and who ultimately receives the benefits.
For St.Ange himself, the topic also has a personal professional background. In April 2026, Seychelles President Patrick Herminie presented him with the instruments of appointment as ambassador-at-large, following approval by the National Assembly. The Office of the President of Seychelles announced at the time that the topics discussed included the resilience and competitiveness of the tourism sector, air connectivity and strengthening the country's international presence. Before taking up his diplomatic role, St.Ange held senior positions in Seychelles tourism, including a ministerial post, so the messages from Alicante continue his long-standing advocacy of tourism as a development tool, not merely a promotional one.
The most important message of his appearance is therefore not that the number of tourists should be ignored, but that it should be placed in a broader framework. Record arrivals can be a sign of strong demand and successful destination positioning, but in themselves they do not show whether residents have obtained better jobs, whether local entrepreneurs have become stronger, whether heritage has been preserved and whether revenue has remained in the community. More and more international institutions are now developing precisely such broader indicators, and the debate in Alicante showed how the issue of tourism is shifting from simply counting guests toward measuring genuine, long-term value. For destinations that want to retain the support of residents while remaining attractive to travelers, this change may become one of the key issues in tourism management in the years ahead.
Sources:
- Travel Daily News - report on Alain St.Ange's opening speech in Alicante, focusing on data, local value, culture and tourism responsibility (link)
- eTurboNews - detailed account of St.Ange's messages on local ownership, cultural identity, revenue distribution and shared responsibility for tourism development (link)
- Clevenard - official information about the Clevenard Open Project 2026, dates, location and Alain St.Ange's role as keynote speaker (link)
- State House Seychelles - official announcement on Alain St.Ange's appointment as ambassador-at-large and tourism priorities discussed with President Patrick Herminie (link)
- UN Tourism - data from the World Tourism Barometer on 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals in 2025 and regional results (link)
- OECD - Tourism Trends and Policies 2026, analysis of tourism's social benefits, local value creation, pressures on communities and destination management (link)
- United Nations, Statistics Division - documentation on the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism and the measurement of economic, social and environmental impacts (link)