The tourism sector suffered in France during the first quarter. According to Insee, it is one of the consequences of the “yellow vests” movement.
It is still too early to know if 2019 will manage to save the day, but it hasn’t started off very well.
Foreign tourists, just like French tourists, avoided France as a destination between January and March. According to its first provisional estimate, the number of overnight stays dropped by 2.5% across the entire country. The decline is much more pronounced among foreign tourists than among French residents: -4.8% and -1.5%, respectively.
In the last quarter of 2018, tourist traffic had increased by 2%, while for the entire year the number of overnight stays reached a record level (438 million, a growth of 2.4% compared to 2017).
The downturn was also felt in hotels, where attendance fell by 1.3% (compared to a rise of 1.5% in the last quarter of 2018). It was only the upscale establishments that managed to maintain the level of overnight stays.
In Ile-de-France, hoteliers suffered more than elsewhere, with a decrease of 4.6%, affecting both foreign tourists and the French. It should be noted that provincial cities performed better than Ile-de-France, limiting the decline to 0.8% over the first three months.
Insee offers an explanation: the “yellow vests” movement harmed activity, particularly in Paris, where the violent events that accompanied the protests were spectacular… and the images were widely broadcasted around the world.
The drop in tourist traffic recorded in the first quarter marks a pause: since the fourth quarter of 2018, the tourism sector had been experiencing continuous growth in traffic.
