Posted on 06/02/2016 1:44:32 PM PDT by Lorianne
France was the number one visited country in the world with 85 million foreign visitors last year. The Paris region (Ile-de-France) was swamped by 16 million. In Ile-de-France alone, the jobs of half a million people depend on tourism. It’s the region’s largest industry. Tourism accounts for 7% of the French economy and for 13% of the economy of the Ile-de-France.
France hosts the Euro 2016 soccer tournament this year. It will kick off on June 10 and last about a month, with games played around the country. About 2.5 million spectators are expected.
But last November, terrorist attacks killed 130 people in Paris. This followed the January 2015 attacks at Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket. The attacks in March this year in Brussels – less than 1.5 hours by train from Paris – reignited the global headlines. And now, after the headlines have finally receded, it’s a tumultuous, three-month bout of occasionally violent labor unrest, whose images have been gracing the media around the world.
And the inevitable happened: •Hotel bookings by Japanese tourists – who’re somewhat squeamish about tumults – collapsed by 56% in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to a statement by the tourism board of Paris on Monday. •Hotel bookings by Russians plunged 35%. •Hotel bookings by Chinese tourists, on whom all hopes had been pinned, the biggest growth factor in the industry, with a record 1.2 million showing up in Paris last year – well, they fell 14%.
“The start of 2016 is still feeling the disastrous consequences of the attacks in 2015,” the statement said. And then the social unrest: “The scenes of guerrilla-type action in central Paris, beamed around the world, reinforce the feeling of fear and misunderstanding from visitors in an already angst-filled climate.”
Hotel bookings for June through August have plunged 20% to 50% year-over-year, Evelyne Maes, head of the UMIH-Paris-Ile de France hotel federation, told Reuters.
Last week, the French trade association GNI had warned of “massive” cancellations by foreign visitors, adding: “A strike of that scope a few weeks before Euro 2016 and at the heart of the tourist season is more than unacceptable.”
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I will never step foot in Europe. Way to go Merkel.
I used to enjoy European travel. Their embrace of Merkel’s Muzzies has soured me on it anymore.
Man I wish I could edit that post.
Man I wish I could edit that post.
Being a Generation Xer had no desire to go to Soviet dominated Eastern Europe now it is the exact opposite.
Actively encouraging the constant importation of death cult-worshiping bio-trash has actual, real world consequences? Who knew?
Stay away from Yemen, too!
The French have surrendered once again. Hope they enjoy their Islamic overlords. They will wish the Nazis were ruling them instead.
Yeah isn’t that the irony hey? Hungary and Poland nice start there.
Maybe they haven’t brought in enough Muslims yet for the tourists to see. If they would offer Live Beheadings in one of the many Muslim/Sharia Compliant communities, or maybe Real Explosive Vests on Suicide Jihadi’s going off. I bet tourism would pick up.
The United States issued a travelers advisory for Europe.
My friends in Italy say the muslims are well behaved. It appears some were not and disappeared never to be seen or heard from again. (They sleep with the fishes)
Muslims keep blowing things up. You (France) seem to want lots of Muslims and don’t police their neighborhoods very well.
I predict a surge in tourism to Eastern Europe. That region was always unavailable to me during the cold war, but now the leaders there have more common sense and decency than their western counterparts.
islam and Stupidity destroys everything it touches.
Budapest and Prague are beautiful cities.
.
Now now...let’s be nice...
Keep those borders open, especially to Muslims and watch the total infrastructure and financial structure of the nation collapse. WTG there socialistas. Stupid is as stupid does.
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