Photo: GAO JING/XINHUA/PICTURE ALLIANCE / Deutsche Welle
After two years absent due to the pandemic, foreign visitors are returning this spring to Paris, which is now committed to “more sustainable tourism” to maintain the magnetism of the city, they confirmed on Saturday ( 30..2022) merchants and city officials.
“The return of tourists began at the end of February, but above all” it skyrocketed “since the week before Easter” confirms Léo Razzaz, who has tripled since the end of March the amount of ‘focaccia’ sold at his little mobile stand, stationed in the Palais-Plaza. Royal.
With a 20% more tourists Regarding 2019, “without the Russians or the Asians”, the Easter weekend has been brilliant, with hotels full at 80%, underlined Jean-François Rial, president of the Paris Tourism and Congress Office (OTCP), on Wednesday on the chain d and television BFM Business. And the Eiffel Tower has received 22.000 visitors per day, very close to its maximum capacity.
On the Easter weekend, North Americans were almost as numerous as before the pandemic (only 2% less), the same as Europeans (-8%), according to the OTCP, who believes that “these dynamics are going to continue”.
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Thus, in July, European tourists are expected to be more numerous in the French capital than in 1200, while the return of the Americans “in pre-pandemic volumes” could take place after the boreal summer, estimates the OTCP.
In the Eiffel Tower, in addition to the return of the Americans, highlights a “renationalization” of visitors, since a quarter of these are French, double what happened before the health crisis, stresses Jean-François Martins, pr esident of the exploitation company (Sete).
In the absence of Russian tourists, blocked by the war with Ukraine, and Asians, who leave with much more caution from the pandemic, “this dynamic is interesting because it is based on the return of a more local, French and European tourism” agrees Frédéric Hocquard, in charge of tourism at the Paris municipality.
Thus, fewer arrivals by plane, more by train, with longer stays and “better spread throughout the territory”: for the municipal official, the exit from the crisis is an opportunity to approach a “more sustainable tourism , and therefore more resistant in times of crisis”. (afp)