Abstract
G
rowth of the budget of households for leisure and travels, increase in the free time of employees, retirement of the “Baby-Boomers” who want to travel more, general decrease in the air transportation prices… The European tourism market takes advantages from a structural positive situation. Nevertheless, the world tourism industry is not standing still. It is performing in an environment which has experienced strong changes these last years. Especially since 2001, the tourism market has gone through a difficult phase due to the slowing down of the world economy and international pressures (Roussel 2003: 1).
More generally, since fifty years, mass tourism has developed in a large scale and has had consequences on tour-operators which must adapt to an increasing demand. Competition in this market is strong and most of the companies had suffered consequences of the “war of prices”, more or less deeply.
In this way, creating in 1967, Nouvelles Frontières (literally traduced “new borders”, in French) has been launched into this market since its beginning phase. This company is a generalist tour-operator which performs on the wide tourism market in France ( turnover of 250.1 billion of Euros in 2006, according to the French Tourism Directorate (2007: 4)). Since 1967, Nouvelles Frontières has known a strong growth to become the leader of the French market in front of Club Méditerranée, its first competitor.
