overseas departments. This was partly due to Air France's (and Air Madagascar's) monopoly of flights to the island. Other organisations started to get involved, including Club Med in the first half of the 1970s and Novotel in 1976. But it took the deregulation of air traffic (between 1983 and 1986) and the end of Air France's monopoly (allowing Union de Transports Aériens) for tourism to start to develop spontaneously. The island gained a specific body for tourism in 1989. It was called the Réunion Tourism Committee (the CTR). Tourism truly developed during the 1990s and became one of the island's important economic resources. 1990–2004: the big tourist boom Tourism started to develop beyond anything previously known in Réunion. A second airport, Pierrefonds near Saint-Pierre, opened to commercial traffic in 1998. In January of that year the Observatoire du développement de La Réunion noted that the general public were still sensitive to the development of the new sector, although it created many new jobs on the island. Tourism brought 370,000 visitors to the Intense Island (as it had been named by the CTR), with a turnover of 1.7 million francs. In 2000, the turnover from tourism overtook that of the local sugar industry. The authorities were confronted with new problems: land management, and the effect of tourism on local culture. Initiatives answering that question began to multiply, such as the start of villa holidays in the west of the island. In 2001, several communes elaborated on the concept of creole village, celebrating the diversity of Réunion heritage. Fifteen villages sought to highlight their individuality. For Bourg-Murat, this meant life at the door of the volcano; for Entre-Deux it was Creole huts and houses. The island started to publish a list of top-quality establishments in 1995 to rewarded the best providers of accommodation and catering. By 2002, the list included 70 different establishments. The emphasis was on marketing, the idea being to increase tourism it was important to publicise Réunion and show the world a positive image. The 10 years of effort yielded fruit: Réunion had 426,000 tourists in 2002 and was the fifth most popular destination for tourists from the French mainland. The regions of the island did not develop equally – tourism mostly benefited the north and the beaches to the west. Their success encouraged other communes who had previously been more concerned about the new sector, for example Saint-Louis