Britons urged to not go to well-liked French vacationer websites after pressing warning
Britons will likely be among the many targets of a marketing campaign launched by French officers aiming to cut back the variety of vacationers in well-liked locations. This effort will embody 40 French excursions and the assistance of international social media influencers, set to shine the highlight on lesser-known areas.
While France is not driving folks away from its soil, it needs them to unfold extra evenly to different locations, as tourism minister Olivia Grégoire stated in the intervening time some 80 per cent of the vacationers visiting the nation give attention to simply 20 per cent of it.
She additionally informed French day by day Le Figaro: “If we want to free up sites that are overly frequented, we need to bring other destinations to the fore and other tourist itineraries.”
A community of embassies and consulates will relay the brand new message because the Government plans to “manage tourism flows” in numerous methods, the Telegraph wrote.
Overcrowding, officers shared has turn out to be “sometimes a threat” to the setting and the standard of lifetime of residents, and may severely hinder the expertise of vacationers.
Jean-François Rial, head of the Paris Tourist Office, stated: “Over-tourism is the worst enemy of tourism. There are so many beautiful places where there is no one.”
The marketing campaign will likely be delivered in English in addition to in different languages to advertise “tourism for four seasons better spread over the country”.
The France Tourism Alliance, which pushed for this marketing campaign, really helpful that operators promote much less well-liked, however equally lovely, websites to battle overcrowding.
It additionally instructed a marketing campaign of “de-marketing” of some vacation hotspots, which would come with exhibiting how overcrowded sure well-liked areas can get in a bid to make them much less interesting.
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This technique has already been adopted over the previous few years by numerous well-liked French cities together with Marseille in 2021 and Porto Vecchio, in Corsica, in 2022.
Last month, officers in Normandy shared photos of vacationers who, after heading to Mont Saint-Michel, have been caught in unbearably lengthy queues created by the very fact some 60,000 folks had descended to the abbey and village through the Ascension Day vacation weekend.
Another approach of regulating tourism is imposing day by day quotas at websites, coming with scheduled ticketing and heftier costs.
Thomas Velter, head of the native vacationer authority, informed France Info: “It wouldn’t be desirable to put turnstiles at the foot of Mont-Saint-Michel but we will very soon have to regulate the flow.”
Other areas have already resorted to setting numerous day by day guests for the sake of the setting and locals.
Olivier Carre, mayor of the island of Bréhat in Brittany which counts solely 377 residents, issued a decree limiting the variety of day vacationers to 4,700 between July 14 and August 25.
This got here after final yr, the island noticed as much as 15 occasions its inhabitants arriving on its shores in a single day.
Among the components contributing to worldwide vacationers favouring one space greater than others are movies and TV collection, corresponding to Netflix‘s Lupin, set in Paris and Normandy, and Emily in Paris.