Salon Occ’ygène: tourism and solidarity

Nearly 190 exhibitors for this first Occ’ygène show, a new regional meeting place for tourism, hiking and leisure at the MEETT in Toulouse, until tomorrow evening: everyone will be able to check this weekend that Occitania is not not for nothing the favorite tourist region of the French and in the top 5 European destinations… Everything is there to relax and grow happy.

A first reminder, in essence, that the President of the Region Carole Delga did yesterday morning by inaugurating this event, stressing that with its 220 million overnight stays, tourism remains the second economic sector in Occitania. Beyond that, alongside Vincent Garel, president of the Regional Committee for Tourism and Leisure (CRTL) and Muriel Abadie, vice-president in charge of sustainable tourism, she also presented the program “Occitanie, solidarity destination”. Because if Occ’ygène is now a living room, it is first of all the name of the card set up in 2020 by the regional council, “to promote access to holidays for all”, also symbolized by the train at 1 €.

“Fighting the tourist divide” while “a third of French people do not go on vacation”: in the face of crises, this will remain more than ever the ambition, in 2023, the elected officials have in fact underlined by launching with Lionel Flasseur, President of Essentiem, an unprecedented fund supported by the CRTL and funded by around fifteen early sponsors, including the Groupe Dépêche du Midi: the Occ’ygène fund. A public/private partnership which will make it possible to “support the development of generous, fair, accessible and responsible tourism” and to open up access to leisure activities for the most vulnerable families, but also to support solidarity projects.