Paris now tries to become tourist-friendly

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Paris now tries to become tourist-friendly

By Sarah DiLorenzo (Shanghai Daily) 09:57, August 07, 2013

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There are no trash cans on the Champs-Elysees. Paris’ department stores, as well as shops and restaurants across the country, are closed on Sundays. Shockingly, it can be hard to find a good meal. And pickpockets swarm the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

France has long had a reputation — particularly in the English-speaking world — for being a bit difficult to visit. We love to hate it, with its surly waiters and superior shopkeepers. But we also love to love it: More people visit France than any other country.

But now, after years of casually riding a reputation for stunning monuments and world-class food, the French are starting to talk about tourism as an economic benefit — and one they need to develop. This is a sea change in a country that has long prided itself on not doing anything as gauche as catering to visitors.

“The problem is that in France we don’t value jobs in tourism,” says Didier Arino, a director of the consultancy Protourisme. “We conflate services with servitude.”

In 2012, 83 million foreign tourists visited France, drawn by Paris, Alpine skiing and Mediterranean resorts.

But France has never sat atop the list of places where visitors spend the most. For several years it has been No. 3, behind the US and Spain.

France’s Socialist government has vowed to change this.

“I want to make France No. 1, period,” Tourism Minister Sylvia Pinel told reporters last year as a new government took the reins and laid out priorities. Improving France’s “welcome” was one of those — creating a true tourism policy for the first time.

Pinel wasn’t shy in linking the cultural and commercial: She called tourism a lever for growth and jobs, both of which France desperately needs. The country’s economy is in recession, and unemployment is nearly 11 percent. So it cannot afford to ignore the tourism industry, which accounts for more than 7 percent of the country’s GDP, more than the auto industry, she said.

But it could do a lot more: International visitors spent more than double in the US than they did in France in 2012 — US$126.2 billion, compared to US$53.7 billion, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. That despite the fact that France welcomed 20 percent more tourists.