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With 80 million foreign tourists, France continues to be the most popular travel destination. This is particularly evident in places like Mont Saint Michel. But how much tourism can a country tolerate?
They walk side by side through the streets of Mont Saint Michel. Visitors from all over the world, some with suitcases, some with prams, some in wheelchairs – everyone pushes their way up to the famous abbey church. It’s like this all day long, especially in the summer and mainly between 11am and 4pm. This year, the small community in Normandy is expecting three million guests, more than ever before.
Mont Saint Michel, this islet in the French Wadden Sea, is the most visited tourist attraction in France after the capital Paris – even though only about 30 people live in the small community. For the first time this year they tried to regulate the flow of visitors a little. Really only a little, because of course you don’t want to scare anyone away. After all, the guests bring in a lot of money.
Parking cheaper in the morning and in the evening
Thomas Velter, head of the Mont Saint Michel public facility, describes it this way: “Our first measure is communication. We want to encourage visitors on social media, in the press and other media to come before 10 or 11 a.m. or after 4 p.m in the afternoon, i.e. off-peak at Mont Saint Michel.”
As a bonus, the parking spaces are a few euros cheaper – and even free in the evenings from September. And you can see the sunset, says Mayor Jacques Bono. Visitor quotas are not an option for him or for Vetter. Because then you would become a kind of amusement park. But Mont Saint Michel is not like that.
Already a magnet for visitors in the Middle Ages
But is information enough to limit mass tourism? Didier Arrino of Protourisme, an association that seeks new avenues in tourism, isn’t so sure. “Perhaps we should introduce quotas,” he reflects. “The Mont Saint Michel is like the Eiffel Tower – a flagship site of our country, unique and irreplaceable. You have to regulate and inform so that the flow of visitors is better distributed.” But you also have to look at how you do justice to the place: “When the shops on Mont Saint Michel are full of knick-knacks from China, is that really what we want to offer tourists? We should rather give the place its identity back.”
The Klosterberg, whose abbey church is dedicated to Archangel Michael, is celebrating its 1000th anniversary this year. It has always been a popular travel destination. In the Middle Ages hordes of pilgrims came, many hoping for miraculous cures. For a time during the French Revolution and the years after, the church served as a prison. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that Benedictine monks settled again – and the flow of visitors never stopped.
At that time, people reached the island via a dam. The result: the bay gradually silted up. Between 2005 and 2015, the causeway was replaced by a jetty, which moved tourist parking to the mainland. Since then, the Klosterberg has been completely washed by seawater 50 to 90 times a year. Environment saved – but guests keep coming.
“They let the market take care of it”
But Mont Saint Michel is a long way from “surtourisme”, i.e. too much tourism. No reason to restrict visits, according to both the municipality and the responsible authority. France’s Minister of Tourism Olivia Grégoire sees it this way: “I think the term ‘Surtourisme’ is a misconception. In truth, these are only peak values. That means there are a lot of visitors at a certain time and for a certain period of time. But not all year round.”
Still, crowds are considered a problem in some popular French travel destinations. The small island of Bréhat in Brittany introduced a visitor cap for the first time this summer. In Étretat, also on the north French coast, many residents groan under the tourists. Images on social media platforms are shared hundreds of thousands of times, attracting more and more people.
The result: far too many cars in the small town, skyrocketing prices, danger for the famous rocks on the coast. Didier Arrino from Protourisme thinks the problem is a bit home-made. “Where there is unrest, communities have turned a blind eye for too long and have not made good decisions in the past. They have let the market take care of it.”
Lunar prices for apartments in Paris
In France’s capital Paris, the consequences of excessive tourism are also being felt. According to the city, 65,000 apartments are offered on the Internet platform Airbnb – many of them for tourists all year round. And that despite the fact that living space in Paris is rare. Apartments are already being proposed at lunar prices for the period of the Olympic Games next summer.
80 percent of tourism in France is concentrated in 20 percent of the towns and regions. The Alliance France Tourisme (AFT), an association of companies from the tourism industry, published some recommendations at the beginning of the summer season. For example, travelers should look at destinations other than the usual ones. Pre-reservations for particularly popular attractions are also useful.
The most beautiful from far away
Finally, the AFT recommends smoothing out the tourism season. That will be difficult, however, because the whole of France is traditionally on vacation in July and August – the vast majority of French people in their own country. The French government has just announced that the 2023 season went almost as well as before the pandemic – despite inflation. Around 80 million guests came from abroad, and one or the other was certainly at Mont Saint Michel.
If you don’t feel like romping around with tens of thousands on the small island, you can take the advice of some Internet travel sites to heart. The most beautiful since Mont Saint Michel, they say, if you look at the monastery mountain from afar.