France aims for 100 million tourists per year, Fabius

France aims to attract 100 million foreign tourists per year to France, compared to 83 million in 2012. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced an action plan to pull in even more people to the world’s most-visited country at a national conference on tourism on Thursday.

The Château de Chenonceau is the most-visited site in the Loire Valley Tony Cross

Fabius said the tourism action plan would focus on five different areas - gastronomy and wine, sport and mountains, ecotourism, luxury products and handicrafts, and urban

tourism.

He said he would also work to classify more sites as tourist zones so that more shops and businesses can remain open on Sundays.

Thanks to its historic sites, artistic heritage and gastronomy, France tops the world tourism league, with 2012’s 83 million visitors was a 1.8 per cent rise on the previous year.

That earned 77.7 billion euros – 9.7 per cent of French GDP - with 30 per cent coming from international visitors and 70 per cent from domestic tourism spending.

About 2.9 million people are employed in the sector, representing 10.9 per cent of the workforce.

But visitors are not always pleased with the reception they are offered, especially in Paris, leading Jean-Yves Durance, the vice-president of Paris chamber of commerce, to tell RFI that France needs to be nicer to tourists.

Paris and London recently had a public argument over which was the most popular tourist destination.

Read: Paris still tops world tourist league despite competition from London.