The French tourism industry is in an “unprecedented decline” according to figures released yesterday by the country’s tourism ministry.
Today’s Financial Times reports that France has been hit by “the combination of cancelled festivals, forest fires, transatlantic tensions, contagious diseases, public sector strikes and a strong euro”, all of which have combined to “prove too much for even the most Francophile tourists”.
The ministry’s report for July notes: “German tourists have lost their fondness for France; meanwhile, American and Asian visitor numbers have dropped steeply as a result of the Iraq crisis and SARS.”
The biggest decline is in the number of visitors from the US; in May there were 40 per cent fewer American visitors than the previous year; this comes on top of a 15 per cent reverse between 2001 and 2002 and a 10 per cent decline the previous year.
The Financial Times goes on to report that upmarket hotels have seen foreign business fall by 15 per cent, and in Paris, occupancy rates have fallen six per cent to 67.4 per cent.
