Tourism as a right: a "frivolous claim" against degrowth?

Social movements and academic sectors gather information on the negative consequences of tourism development. These consequences affect the rights of the local population, and favour global processes such as Climate Change. In light of this situation, numerous voices are calling for a slowdown in the growth of tourism. They are even calling for its degrowth. The strategy of the tourism sector has been to put forward discourses and actions aimed at preventing the application of limitations to its activity. This article focuses on an action promoted by the UNWTO: the aim to turn tourism into a human right. First, the text offers a critical analysis of what this idea is based on and the debate it has generated. It then investigates its motives. The work concludes that by legitimizing tourism as a supposed human right, it would allow the debate to centre on a conflict of rights (the right of the citizen as a tourist against the rights of the citizen as a resident of a territory or as a worker). Because a debate between rights always ends up in stalemate. This way, degrowth proposals in tourism would be neutralized.