Terrorist attacks, strikes and serious flooding have cost Paris an estimated €750m (US$847.5m, £640m) according to new statistics, with tourism chiefs calling for action in the face of an “industrial disaster” for the French capital.
France relies heavily on its tourism industry, with the sector generating 7 per cent of its annual GDP.
But its numbers have dipped significantly since the terrorist attack in November were 130 people were killed, which also followed an attack in January 2015 on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Strikes and floods have also played a part, with major visitor attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre
closed as a result.
Between January and June 2016, Paris welcomed a million fewer visitors compared with the same period in 2015. Figures from the French capital’s tourist board also shows that hotel stays are down 8.5 per cent in the Ile-de-France region, with an 11.5 per cent decline in foreign tourists. Paris’ most popular visitor attraction – Disneyland Paris – has also been feeling the sting, with numbers down 11 per cent between April and June.
The largest decline came from Japan, where numbers have almost halved for the first half of 2016. Russian visitors have also dropped by more than a third, while Italian visits are down a quarter and Chinese visitors by a fifth.
The statistics paint a worrying picture, even more so considering that Paris was one of the host cities for this summer’s European football championships, which failed to arrest the decline in visitor numbers.
"It's time to realise that the tourism sector is going through an industrial disaster," Paris region tourist board head Frederic Valletoux said in a statement.
"This is no longer the time for communication campaigns but to set up a relief plan."
In order to address the problem, Valletoux called for major investment into the region’s tourism sector to help protect jobs, also calling for the government and trades union to address the issue.
Wider France has taken several hits in recent months, most recently when a gunman drove a truck into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people. Two weeks after that two men killed a priest in Normandy, pledging allegiance to terrorist group the Islamic State (IS).
