French tourism is pursued by the ten plagues of Egypt: after sixteen months of the Covid-19 pandemic, here is the Delta variant which reappears and a “cold drop” which freezes three quarters of the country in an autumnal atmosphere. The meteorological phenomenon, indicating a pocket of cold air in a warmer environment, made the start of summer not very conducive to escapades and increased uncertainty, both for summer visitors and for tourist operators. Even embarrassment in the wake of the presidential announcements of July 12. Summer attendance, which promises to be higher than that of 2019 – a record year for French hosts – will it suffer?
Tourism professionals have approached the season with the ardor of those who have long been constrained. Their main concern in the face of deconfinement? Find enough staff to satisfy a France seized with a consumer frenzy. The reservation boxes turned red, for August, like last year, but also for July. And those weekends in June! We were going to see what we were going to see: the country was going to swap hydroalcoholic gel for sunscreen. A few weeks after the start of the season, and as the busiest period begins, the discourse remains positive – with the major exception of the Paris region, still deprived of international customers.
Bookings for rentals in campsites – 40% of market overnight stays each summer – are ahead of 2019 and 2020, with bare pitches showing a slight delay due to fewer foreign customers. Pierre & Vacances-Center Parcs also claims “Extremely favorable trends” and better than the last few years, as well as a length of stay dropping from seven to nine nights. Same satisfaction with Gîtes de France and Holiday Villages France.
“As expected, all those who usually go abroad stay here”, summarizes Stéphane Villain, deputy president of DNA Tourisme, federation of institutional organizations. At home, in Charente-Maritime, the average length of stay fell from four days, before the crisis, to six, driven by the more frequent occupation of second homes.
The acclaimed coastline
Reservations on Airbnb, sent to World by the AirDNA site, go up everywhere compared to 2020. If we compare to 2019, the nights booked appear down by 15%. But the decrease is explained exclusively by the disaffection for Ile-de-France (- 65%) and all the big cities, with the notable exception of Marseille – Nice, Nantes, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Lyon , in that order, lose between 30% and 50%.
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