Entering the Anthropocene, defined as the era during which human activities have become forces capable of influencing the climate and the environment on a planetary scale, raises many questions for tourism. Glacier tourism sites and practices, although not uniquely, are changing along with their environment. These changes raise the question of how climate change influences the motivations of those involved in tourism and, more specifically, allow us to envisage the emergence of reflexive tourism. Reflexive tourism is understood to be an awareness by tourists themselves of the issues - in this case, environmental issues - raised by current lifestyles, and offers a broader approach to the contradictions faced by societies in the context of the challenges of ecological transition. By analysing the implementation of the project to rehabilitate one of France’s most famous glacier sites, Montenvers and its Mer de Glace, this article aims to examine the rationale behind the development of tourism in such a site, while highlighting its contradictions. Interviews with site and project stakeholders reveal a clear tension between a logic of sustainability leading to reflexive tourism, and an economic logic of investment and the quest for profitability. Beyond this case study, this work considers more generally the figure of tourism as a symbol of societal contradictions between discourse and practice in the Anthropocene.