Paris lost one million tourists in the 1st semester !

“All indicators are flashing red.

Frédéric Valletoux, President of the CRT Paris Île-de-France, was particularly concerned on Tuesday, August 23 2016, during a presentation of the tourist attendance numbers of the French capital.

Over the first semester of 2016, the Parisian hotel sector lost 1 million clients.

In total, with 14.9 million arrivals, the industry records a decrease of 6.4%, equalling a drop in revenues of 750 million euros.

The foreign cliente is the most affected, with a decline of 9.9%.

The capital lost 57,000 Americans, 79,000 Britons, 55,000 Germans, and especially 100,000 Chinese.

The Japanese even disappeared from the Top 10 of visitors, with a drop by 46%. Russians are on the decline by 35%.

The teams of the CRT are multiplying operations and promotional tours to reassure, insisting on safety above all. They are pedagogical when talking about the state of emergency, of which the concrete consequences are not well-know abroad.

Notably, they took Chinese tour-operators to the offices of the Prefecture to show them the video surveillance tools in operation.

As for French visitors, their decline is less drastic: 3.5%.

“We are first going to reconquer the province clientele because the international clientele will take longer to come back,” explains Frédéric Valletoux.

This collapse affects primarily intramural Paris that dropped by 11.4%.

The capital’s famous monuments are highly affected like the Grand Palais (-43%) or the Arc de Triomphe (-34%.)

The inner suburb (-6.1%) and the outer suburb (-4.4%) are less impacted. The Versailles estate is dropping by 19% and the Fontainebleau castle is doing quite well (-3%.)

The only upside in this gloomy situation is the increase of business tourism by 14.4%.

Frédéric Valletoux believes that these figures will necessarily have consequences on the 500,000 jobs and 75,000 companies of the sector.

“It is the first time in 10 years that the growth of tourism stops. We are facing a quick and unprecedented turnaround.”

Furthermore, professionals are not optimistic for the summer 2016: 71% believe that activities in July are on the decline compared to 2015 and 78% for the month of August.

Ultimately, should the trend continue, the drop for the branch is estimated at 1.5 billion euros between now and the end of the year out the 21 billions in revenues generated by the sector.

But the CRT will not stand idly by. It is asking the government to put everything in place to support the branch, via fiscal accompanying measures or the establishment of an emergency fund.

Because with the magnitude of the crisis, communication plans will not suffice.

“Stimulus campaigns are necessary, but we must go further, with a true Orsec plan. We need to review the fundamentals of the branch and use all the tools on hand to save this crucial sector for the local economy,” adds Frédéric Valletoux.

He hopes that this crisis will enable the different players to work together in improving the quality of tourism in the Ile-de-France region.

Paris a perdu un million de touristes au 1er semestre !