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TOURISM

’50 shades of holidays’: How France hopes to lure back tourists this summer

France on Tuesday joined the race to woo tourists on the move again after a year of having their wings clipped by Covid-19, launching a multi-million-euro campaign targeted mainly at Europeans.

Published: 11 May 2021 15:48 CEST
'50 shades of holidays': How France hopes to lure back tourists this summer
Come back to France this summer, you know you want to . . . Photo: Eric Cabanis/AFP

In 2019 France was the world’s top tourism destination (and several years before that, come to mention it) with 90 million visitors, and with Covid restrictions lifting and vaccination rates picking up, the country is looking to retain its ranking.

Here’s how it plans to do it:

Spending money

On Tuesday, the tourism minister launched a multi-million euro campaign aimed at attracting tourists back.

“France is kind of the world in miniature,” Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, the junior minister at the foreign ministry in charge of tourism, told a virtual press conference.

“It’s 50 shades of holidays. Everyone can choose their own,” he added.

French State Secretary in charge of tourism Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne.(Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

The “What Really Matters” campaign promotes the country’s lifestyle, including its food and culture, in 10 European markets – Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

With plenty of rural spaces, outdoor activities and sparsely populated areas, France will also be hoping to appeal to people who want to avoid the crowds this summer.

READ ALSO 10 of the best Covid-compliant activities in France this summer 

Dissing the neighbours

Of course France is not the only country to have thought of this, many European countries are launching their own campaigns.

Greece is extolling the virtues of sun-kissed “Covid-free” islands where everyone is vaccinated against the virus and Croatia has drawn up a map of “Covid-free zones” on its islands.

Italy, which is counting on a tourist revival to emerge from a deep recession, said last week it was ready to welcome back travellers.

“It’s time for you to book your holidays in Italy!” Prime Minister Mario Draghi declared.

But France seems not above taking a swipe at its rivals.

Comparing the campaign to that of Switzerland, which is fronted by tennis champion Roger Federer, the head of France’s tourism development agency, Caroline Leboucher, said France sparked “more emotion” than the “cold sanitary perfection” of the Swiss.

Meanwhile Didier Arino, head of the Protourisme consulting firm, said: “It’s not difficult to come to France for our European neighbours whereas for the Greek islands you have to take a plane or a boat.”

READ ALSO Discover France’s 14 most beautiful and well-loved villages

Reopening

Emerging from its third wave of Covid cases and with increasing vaccination rates, the French government has also laid out a detailed programme of reopening, which will see bars, cafés and restaurants allowed to reopen their outdoor spaces from May 19th and indoors from June.

Tourist attractions, museums and cultural spaces will also be reopening from May 19th, albeit with restrictions in place.

IN DETAIL France’s calendar for reopening from lockdown

Staycationing

Tourism revenue in France amounted to €57 billion in 2019, the year before the pandemic, representing around 7.5 percent of GDP, but a significant proportion of France’s tourism revenue has always come from domestic tourism.

French people frequently ‘staycation’ even in normal times, often decamping from cities to the beach or the mountains for the month of August to enjoy a more relaxed pace of life and time with the family.

Lemoyne has this year urged the French to “go blue, white and red” – or holiday in France – to show their support for the embattled tourist businesses.

“Our tourism operators have suffered a lot,” he pleaded.

Waiving restrictions?

France might be keen to welcome back foreign tourists but that has not, so far, lead to any relaxation of the entry requirements to the country.

At present people can travel to France for any reason – including tourism – from the EU or Schengen zone, plus seven non-EU countries including the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

All arrivals, however, have to present a negative Covid test on arrival and there are no immediate plans to change this.

READ ALSO Everything you need to know about travel between France and the UK 

Travel from outside the EU – including the USA – is set to restart from June 9th.

READ ALSO When can Americans travel to France again?

By contrast Greece, Iceland and Croatia have already waived restrictions for fully vaccinated travellers from EU countries, as well as the US, Britain and Israel, in order to ensure they do not lose bookings.

Vaccine passport

With the holiday season set to start next month, pressure is growing on the European Commission to finalise a highly-anticipated EU-wide digital health pass.

The pass, which will allow people who are fully vaccinated, have already had Covid-19 or who have tested negative for the virus to travel within the Bloc, is seen as a key tool to save the summer holiday period.

While it will initially be used only for travel within the Bloc, the EU is working on the pass being mutually recognised with certificates from non-EU countries, particularly the United States.

Announcing a four-stage timetable for reopening the country after a third lockdown last month, President Emmanuel Macron gave June 9th as the prospective date for the return of non-EU tourists.

France has already begun work on its own ‘health passport’ which is operational via the TousAntiCovid tracking app, and people now getting vaccinated in France are receiving certificates with QR codes that can be scanned into the app to create a ‘passport’.

READ ALSO How can you access France’s ‘health passport’?

However more work needs to be done to ensure that the French pass is accepted and compatible with technology from other countries.

The ‘health passport’ is set to come into operation from June 9th.

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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