A l'école des chevaliers - Guided tour for children

Stéphane Devrieux, who was born in Lyon and has lived in Grasse and Antibes, has been based in Toulon for the past year. He was previously General Manager of the Saint-Étienne Metropolitan Tourist Office, after having spent ten years as Director of the Ain Tourist Development Agency.

There, I was in charge of the mountain section, which gave me the opportunity to work closely with the Haut-Jura Regional Nature Park, with whom we set up the "Montagne du Jura" brand. In Saint-Etienne, I also worked closely with another regional nature park, Pilat.

The Metropolitan Tourist Office covers twelve communes, from Six-Fours to Hyères, " with 200 km of coastline, the Embiez archipelago and the Golden Islands, as well as Provencal villages and the three major cities of Hyères, Toulon and La Seyne-sur-Mer ".

Since the transition to intercommunality in 2017, we've moved to a single operation with six ^{directorates1} at the metropolis and twelve information offices across the territory. Our challenge today is to give visitors the desire and the opportunity to discover the whole region all year round. For example, we can tell people who have come to visit the coast "don't miss out on these winegrowers who are opening their doors to you"..

As soon as Stéphane Devrieux arrived in Toulon, he got in touch with the Port-Cros National Park..

It was a logical step for me, as I've always worked with the same approach, the same philosophy of tourism as that of the natural parks. Tourism in which the natural park structures are very powerful vectors of image for us, who have a strong awareness-raising role to play. Explaining what's being done to enable people to get to know it better and therefore understand it better... That's precisely what our tours are all about.

What motivates the Metropolitan Office's commitment to the Esprit Parc National approach?

To assert our awareness of nature conservation and our desire to promote the National Park as a major player in the field of environmental knowledge, awareness and protection. As far as we're concerned, it's not at all antagonistic to develop tourism and be committed to protecting nature... And in any case, it won't work for long if we don't do that. These are balances to be maintained. In fact, today's national parks base their mission on respect for this balance between economic activity and environmental protection. I attended the 60th anniversary of the National Park, and listened to the testimonials... it's clear that it's possible!

And then the brand also brings a well-known image, it speaks to the public because there are values attached to national parks... We also display CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) commitments and this is something we're going to be working on a lot... So the "brand" aspect is important. After Paris, the Var is the department that receives the most tourists, so we have to be exemplary! We need to raise awareness of the need to protect the area, while showing that it's a living territory, we need to manage the balance, we need to help people discover the area, we need to try to spread out the flows in space and time, and we need to rely on the brands that carry us through. In the future, I'd like us to develop other products in other partner towns.

1. Communication / Marketing and sales / Relations with professionals / Sectors (boating, diving, wine tourism, gastronomy, etc.) / Reception / Support functions.