For a few decades now, some small French towns have been world famous.
But to the question ” which are the most popular small French towns in 2023? », the booking portal Holidu provides an answer.
When you see Le Havre from Deauville, it’s going to rain
If since 2020, the series Emily in Paris has revived a certain fervor for the French capital in the eyes of millions of Netflix subscribers, many small towns in France also benefit from significant international influence.
” These cities where you only meet a few souls a year, suddenly turn out to be the most popular destinations in provincial France. », Explains the reservation portal Holidu, which had fun making a ranking of the ten most popular French cities in 2023 according to Instagram hashtags and web searches.
And in this little game, the first place goes to the city of Deauville in Normandy, which has… only 3,595 inhabitants. The notoriety of this small Norman town is obviously (partly) explained by its American film festival which, since 1975, has brought together thousands of film lovers (and stars) from all over the world.
You wanted to see Honfleur, and we saw Honfleur
And the success of Normandy does not stop at Deauville, since in second position in the ranking, we find the city of Honfleur and its 7,652 souls. The latter is famous for its old port and its colorful houses, without forgetting the port of Le Havre which can be reached by car via the Normandy bridge.
At the third position in the ranking, we migrate a little further south, since it is the city of Arcachon, which has just over 11,000 inhabitants. Note that Arcachon is the most popular city on Instagram, with more than 748,000 hashtags listed, but lags behind Deauville and Honfleur when it comes to web searches.
As a general rule, Normandy and Brittany are the big winners in the ranking, with no less than 8 cities in total, among the first 15 cities in the ranking. The Occitanie region has two listed towns, namely Lourdes and Collioure. The Ile de France is represented by Fontainebleau, Corsica by Bonifacio and the Pays de la Loire by Pornic.
Holidu specifies that all French cities between two thousand and twenty thousand inhabitants were considered for this study. The ranking was then drawn up with the average monthly number of searches on Google, accompanied by the terms “what to do in”, “going to” and “visiting”, without forgetting the Instagram hashtags relating to each municipality.
Source : Holidu
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