IS FRANCE NUMBER ONE IN TOURISM?

Contrary to what the public authorities claim, France is not number one in tourism sector.

France claims to be the world leader in tourism. Indeed, when we look at the number of foreign visitors passing through the country, France is in the lead with 89 million people, ahead of Spain at 82 million and the United States at 76 million.

But according to experts, these figures are used to prove an "imposture". Essential points, however, missed, for example the turnover realized by all these tourists on the territory.

When we look at this indicator, France is in third place, with 54 billion euros in 2017, against 60 billion euros for Spain and 190 billion euros for the United States.

It is even worse if we look at the turnover in relation to the number of tourists: France is only 17th among the countries of the European Union! In fact, to know if France is performing well in terms of tourism, we must refer to the contribution the tourism sector to the country’ GDP. And there again, France is behind Spain with tourist receipts representing only 2.3% of GDP against 5.2% for its neighbor.