French tourism still flourishing

[NormanH]

Despite la crise

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10173805/How-France-is-benefiting-from-Chinese-tourists-over-Britain.html

All smoke and mirrors perhaps but it is valuable income.

[Aly]

I think there is alot of wishful thinking here. To begin with France has lots of  traffic (bothways) enroute to somewhere else. Hence the Germans are the top visitors more likely they are heading for Spain. The Brits, Belgians, Dutch, Swiss, Italians etc  cross the channel and borders some enroute South others North and some staying in France. These statistics do not differenciate between staying tourists and those passing through. Without doubt  France gets lots of tourists especially Paris and Nice but not sure I believe these figures particularly as the French cannot even give accurate figures for the numbers of ethnic minorites, religions etc living in France.

[Russethouse]

 Any trip to the London tourist spots or a visit to Bicester shopping village will make you wonder about these statistics .........[:)]

At Bicester many stores really cater for them, petite sizes, multi language signs etc.....and many find they have to head to the luggage outlet stores at the end of the day, to buy a case to carry it all home.....[:D]

[YCCMB]

Something which really fascinates me: I have, over the past few years, had quite a large number of Japanese students, and, without exception, they have made the crossing to France, purely to visit the Mont St Michel. And my Russian students did likewise the other week, marvelling at the place, but also at the fact that on their overnight trip, they could only locate two restaurants that were open: one of which was a Japanese one!

So, I'm sure there are large numbers of visitors from SE Asia to France. I am also sure they mostly seem to stay a maximum of 48 hours.

But the real mystery to me is WHY? I don't mean that in a nasty way. What I can't fathom is why go so far for such a short time, and why only to that one place?

[NormanH]

I think that the others go to Carcassonne...

[idun]

A good friend of ours use to organise holidays for asian tourists, mainly japanese and what they had to do was organise sight seeing in as many possible places as possible. Off the bus, take some snaps, and as the old saying goes, 'everyone back on the bus'.

Still, I don't know how many of you have gone on french voyage organisé, but we always found every trip we went on was like that. That as well as too many of our fellow voyagers always being late, ie if it was announced that we were leaving at 9 too many would swan along at 9.15. Maybe these asian holiday makers were better disciplined re leaving times, but it sounded as if the holiday would be pretty similar to french ones to me.

Now about the rich tourists, no idea where they would go. Am I wrong in believing that many rich chinese own property in London, so Paris would really be a holiday?

[idun]

 French news today.

Lots of tourists, but especially the chinese are being attacked and robbed in Paris.

How much it could people off, I do not know, but one thing is for sure, it must be very frightening and upsetting, not good at any time, but especially not on holiday.

[Ron Bolus]

Sacred Blue[:)]------we don't get any of that sort of thing in Gard or even next door in Provence.

In Uzes, the Chinese restaurant is Thai.

And in Avignon, having thought we 'd been dining at a Chinese for 3 years, we find it's been Vietnamese all the time.

Let's leave the People's Republic to send their tourists to Paris, see the Eiffel and then move on to that island over

La Manche that is sinking under the weight of a population that is bigger than that of France, which is of course a tad bigger than the island in question [:(]

[idun]

But I thought that it was a general rule in France that chinese restos in most of France, (but maybe not Paris) were run by vietnamese people, simply because Indo-Chine used to be ruled by the french.

The only chinese people I encountered in France, were professionals, a dentist, a doctor and a scientist.