During its holiday week, the Nice Premium team is pleased to offer you a compilation of its best articles. For this penultimate day, you will find the 5 most viewed interviews of the year on Nice Premium.
Nice-Premium: We are approaching 100 days of Christian Estrosi at the City Hall of Nice. The mayor of Nice will soon discuss his record, but you, Rudy Salles, what would your assessment be?
Rudy Salles: My primary achievement was restoring trust between tourism professionals, the city, and the tourist office so we can all work together. This was not the case before. All the professionals complained that there was a gap between the city hall and them, the tourist office and them. Today, things are repaired. In the hundred days, I interviewed a number of individuals to appoint the future director of the tourist office. On June 30, I will present the new director.
NP: What was your finding upon arriving in your position?
Rudy Salles: I observed a city that had lost all contact with its inhabitants. The city was poorly managed, with inadequate management and empty coffers. It was a bitter but very stimulating observation.
NP: In your opinion, what is missing in Nice’s tourism?
Rudy Salles: Nice was a sleeping beauty. It is a city with great potential, the most well-known city in the world after Paris. Worldwide, everyone knows where Nice is. It has high notoriety. However, there haven’t been any initiatives for a long time. We need major events. Not a single euro has been spent in 15 years on the convention center. We are going to build a prestige hall on the Sulzer site, a new exhibition center in the Plaine du Var to attract the largest events like in Barcelona, Zurich, or London.
NP: What are your major projects?
Rudy Salles: There’s the carnival. It has been diminished and sent to the Quai des Etats Unis. It needs to return to the cauldron of Place Masséna. We need to work there to accommodate the decorations. The flower battle will return to the Promenade des Anglais. For the rest, it is still too early to talk about it, but we want to create global events without competing with Monaco and Cannes.
NP: What will the 2009 carnival look like?
Rudy Salles: There will be free walkways and a new route: Place Masséna, Avenue de Verdun, then it will pass in front of the Théâtre de Verdure, the boulevard des Phocéens with two animation spots: Place Masséna and the space in front of the Théâtre de Verdure. They will allow for quality entertainment. We will increase the number of big heads. They went from 800 to 150 during Jacques Peyrat’s tenure. The floats will rediscover Nice’s identity. The carnival was created from images sent from Japan, the USA, and Russia. The carnival needs to regain an image. When you hear about the Rio Carnival, you know very well what it is. The Nice Carnival, one did not know what it was.
NP: Will the Carnival return to the neighborhoods?
Rudy Salles: I hope so. I launched a window display contest when I was a city councilor about twenty years ago. We will revive this idea. It will remind the whole city that it is the carnival.
NP: Blog, website: Rudy Salles is present on the Internet…
Rudy Salles: When you do something, you do it well or you don’t do it at all, otherwise it’s useless and no one looks at it. I discipline myself to write a post every day on my blog. I sometimes do it late in the evening or early in the morning. I give my point of view of the day on a certain number of subjects. On my website, I post information. It’s a bit more institutional. There’s the agenda, the order of the day for the National Assembly. I believe that is important. At a minimum, it’s 40,000 visits per month. Journalists come to see my blog before interviewing me.
I am vice-president of the National Assembly, and I am in charge of computing and new technologies. I am pushing the National Assembly to modernize in this area. I am launching the digitization of all documents of the National Assembly. I introduced laptops into the chamber. Before, it was forbidden. Wifi will be the next step. I pushed to put computers in all the deputies’ offices. This dates back about ten years. I was asked if I wanted them in all offices or only in some. I responded with a question: do you ask the same question when it comes to telephones? I realize I was right. There is a computer in every office and sometimes even two.
NP: The city hall’s website has flaws as well as its satellites. What do you think?
Rudy Salles: We need to address this. The tourist office site is not poorly done, but I want to improve it. We must modernize the Nice City’s site. On the Las Vegas website, when you click on it, it immediately appears in the language of the country you are in. There is a delay in this area. We must remedy this because it is often the first impression that people who come to visit us get. Real-time views of Nice are needed. Putting the Promenade des Anglais live will enthuse those who connect.
NP: You are in charge of the Mediterranean Parliament. What is its assessment?
Rudy Salles: The anniversary will be in the autumn. The record is remarkable. It was a crazy gamble that I launched in 2003. At that time, the Arabs replied to me: if there is Israel, no way. I managed to convince them by saying: when you have a problem with a country, it is better to talk than to throw bombs at each other. Finally, they accepted. At a recent meeting, the Israeli delegation was absent. The Arab countries raised their hand saying: “This is unacceptable, Israel is not here.” Just that illustrates the record of the Mediterranean Parliament. The Parliament has reached its cruising speed. The delegations work a lot. Libya, Syria are starting to come. Turkey is very active. It has become the Mediterranean forum where everyone discusses, meets, and works. In Monaco, in the autumn, there will be a plenary session. I want to organize a big dinner in Nice on this occasion. Christian Estrosi wishes to welcome his Mediterranean colleagues, especially since in Monaco I will be elected active president for the next two years. As an elected official from Nice, I intend to invest myself more since I want Nice to play a major role in the Union for the Mediterranean. If one day a capital should be designated, I would like Nice to be able to defend its colors. That is what we are going to work on.
NP: What will Rudy Salles’ holidays be like?
Rudy Salles: Initially, it will be in Nice. I will continue to work. I have reserved a week of vacation in August in the Gard, a region that I like a lot and where I have family. This will allow me to settle down. It will not be very long this year because the tourism deputy in summer is not on vacation at the same time as others. After that, the parliamentary session begins. I do not complain about it. It’s a choice. I love what I do. I do it with a lot of passion. I do not feel the need for a vacation like someone who does something reluctantly. I admit I would need to rest a little.
