After the deadly attack which killed 17 people and
shook the entire nation for three days, French authorities and representatives
of the Paris tourist industry will set off on a world tour next month to
reassure visitors and agents that the French capital is safe.
'We're going to the UK at the end of February, to
Los Angeles in March, Italy, Spain and Germany in April, Hong Kong in May and Tokyo
in June,' said Francois Navarro, managing director of the Comite Regional du
Tourisme Paris Ile-de-France, a body financed by the regional government.
In the meantime the organization is telling
embassies and tour operators that the city's museums, monuments, big stores and
amusement parks have more police watching them, 'and at the airports, at this
stage, it won't take longer to travel by plane even though security has been
reinforced', he said.
Navarro said his organization had made inquiries
among tour operators and travel agents around the world, and that so far there
had been no impact, with no cancellations expected.
He said he was confident Paris would manage a slight
increase in the number of visitors this year, with growth notably coming from
the Middle East, South Korea and China.
France is the most visited country in the world. Almost
85 million foreigners a year support a 150 billion euro industry that delivers
seven per cent of the nation's GDP.
In Ile-de-France, a region which includes Paris,
550,000 jobs depend on tourism, making it the country's biggest industry. The
city had 47 million visitors in 2014, about half of them from abroad.
In 2013, the vast majority of visitors to France
were from other European countries, but about 3.1 million came from the United
States and 1.7 million from China, according to government figures.
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