President of France Emmanuel Macron has unveiled a five-year plan to “reinvent” the country’s tourism model. Speaking yesterday from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in the Lot, where he is currently as part of a tour around the country, Macron declared that this year “Holidays are in France”.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 2, 2021
1. Support for the industry
Macron showed his support for the tourism industry, assuring that, “holidays will be possible this summer” and encouraging the French people to go ahead and book their trips, preferably in France. “In particular, I want to say in 2021, the holidays are in France and it’s even better”, he added. Praising the country’s “magnificent countryside” and “sublime villages”, he urged that “in France we therefore have the possibility of welcoming our compatriots in the best conditions”.
Tourism in France, as in many other countries, has struggled greatly during the Covid-19 crisis, particularly during the summer of 2020 which saw almost no foreign tourists. Macron announced a new five year plan for tourism, involving investments in the sector in addition to the aid already provided to help deal with the health crisis. He stated, “The sector, which has benefited from 30 billion in aid since the start of the crisis (…) will benefit from a new plan to reconquer and reinvent the model”.
EN DIRECT | Cet été, redécouvrons nos territoires de France pour les vacances ! Déclaration du Président @EmmanuelMacron depuis Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.https://t.co/TxGRulcXGl
— Élysée (@Elysee) June 2, 2021
2. The new tourism plan: “reinvention of the model”
The new plan involves several aspects, one being “fully enhancing our heritage, and therefore having a ‘green tourism, heritage tourism’ strategy and investing there too” in order to “highlight (…) our natural heritage, our architectural heritage ” which will be “in synergy with our tourist offer”, Macron announced. He stated that the plan will also “improve the quality of our infrastructures” and “increase our reception capacity”, by helping professionals to invest and by continuing to invest “in our tourism infrastructures, whether they are cycle paths, transport conditions, reception, etc.” and to “ develop our hotel offer, our offer in terms of campsites ”.
Another aspect to the new plan is “improved training, improved qualifications, and lifelong support”. Macron announced, “We are going to invest to improve, to allow bridges between the various trades of the tourism sector, hotels, cafes, restaurants, of all modes of reception”. He also promised investments in digital, saying, “We reserve through digital technology and sometimes it is foreign platforms that capture part of the value. (…) What we want is to help invest in the whole sector, so that companies in the tourism sector can themselves digitise but also build our French platforms in order to keep value in our country”.
