By dint of never coming back, we will soon tell each other about tourist Paris like a Breton legend, the groups of Japanese replacing the korrigans: “Some say that, at the time, you had to queue to climb the Eiffel Tower …” In spring 2020, hoteliers were on the lookout for September. In the fall, they waited for the spring of 2021, and it is a cycle that now seems endless because back to school is coming, but not the customers. The lookouts take out the telescope: we are already lighting a candle for the end of the year celebrations.
At the beginning of August, only a third of the professionals questioned by the regional tourism committee anticipated a positive development in their activity at the start of the school year. “The echoes that I have are catastrophic, assures Franck Trouet, Ile-de-France delegate of the National Group of Independents (GNI), an employers’ organization in the hotel and restaurant industry. And we can not think that it is the fault of the sanitary pass – this is not the problem in Paris, where customers have the pass. But as long as the epidemic does not ebb sustainably, we cannot hope that activity will restart. “
Less catastrophist, Emmanuel Sauvage, boss of the upscale group Evok Hotels, sees “Lights on green thanks to the sanitary pass, which makes it possible to organize events”. “Possible social movements and recruitment difficulties” Worries him more than a level of reservations which remains low, between 25% and 30% in September in his four Parisian hotels.
Gloomy summer
The summer was, unsurprisingly, as gloomy as the weather, although progressing compared to 2020. Ile-de-France, where tourism represents 9% of salaried employment and 7% of gross domestic product, has watched with envy the coasts overflowing with people, barely disturbed by the eruption of the sanitary pass in the middle of summer.
The Eiffel Tower has three times fewer visitors than the same period in normal times, the Louvre, four times fewer
The Compagnie des Bateaux-Mouches only sailed at weekends, from the end of July. Local customers have ensured attendance at Parc Astérix and Disneyland Paris, where the tonnage of 28,000 daily visitors is regularly reached, according to a union source. But the Eiffel Tower has three times fewer visitors than at the same period in normal times, the Louvre four times fewer. The French are there in majority.
According to the Office du tourisme et des congrès de Paris, Greater Paris will have attracted between 3.6 and 4.7 million tourists between June and August, less than half of the figure for 2019. Reservations were, in July, followed an inverse curve to that of the Delta variant.
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