This summer, tourists to France will be European and few in number



Tourists take pictures of themselves in Toulouse, in the summer of 2020. – FRED SCHEIBER / SIPA

For two weeks, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, has been touring European capitals to praise the destination France this summer. He also met tour operators from the United States, who had gone “green” with Canada on Thursday, meaning that vaccinated Americans and Canadians can now come to France.

The objective is to attract customers so that France retains its place as the world’s leading tourist destination, which in 2019 brought in 57 billion euros (7.5% of GDP). The “return to normal” will however be disrupted by the various vaccine policies, the classification of countries by color, health fears of Covid-19 and competition from Spain, Italy and Greece.

“There is a big delay with German customers”

Health pass, countries classified as green, red or orange, vaccination status, quarantine on the way there or on the way back… Foreign tourists who will come to spend their holidays in France this summer should therefore be mainly European and few in number. Foreign customers will be “mainly European”, confirmed Didier Arino, director of the consulting company Protourisme, who notes “a very strong increase in customers from southern Europe, Spaniards and Italians, in terms of reservations”.

“There is a big delay with German and obviously British customers,” he further underlined. Certain countries like Germany had classified us in difficult zone, orange, which has an influence on their behavior. “The United Kingdom, which remains classified” orange “by France, had sent 13 million tourists to France in 2019 out of the 72 million Britons who left abroad, according to the French ambassador in London who s ‘expressed in early June in a videoconference with his counterparts and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne.

“Holidays in France are one of the fundamental rights”

“We are catching up with Dutch customers,” noted Didier Arino. In the Netherlands, “holidays in France are part of fundamental rights,” the French ambassador to the Netherlands noted with humor in early June. France is the first tourist destination in this country, where 50% of the population goes on vacation abroad, according to him.

Before the crisis, the Dutch represented 10% of the clientele of campsites (the Germans 7%, the English 5%, the Belgians 4% for 69% of French), according to Sébastien Manceau, associate expert in tourism within the firm Roland Berger. Percentages expected to drop this year. “Usually, Germans and Dutch represent 30% of our customers, there it will be 10%”, confirms Quentin Schaepelynck, Managing Director of Homair Vacances, specializing in mobile home stays.

Thank you “Emily in Paris” and “Lupine”

Beyond Europe, the United States which have just gone “green” remain fond of France, pushed “by the series” as Emily in Paris or Lupine, according to the French ambassador in Washington. As for Asians, “we will not see them again for a long time,” according to Didier Arino, “because they are only rarely vaccinated and because they have succeeded in controlling the pandemic by closing the borders: they have no interest in opening them so that their nationals come back to our regions ”.

If France does not expect to find its international tourists immediately, it hopes to fill this gap with national tourism. “This year, 38 million French people will go on vacation or short stay, and 35 million will go on vacation in commercial accommodation or short stay in July-August”, according to Didier Arino. “This already represents, compared to 2020, a record year, two million more people. We are going to be in the record for the record, ”he assures us.



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