Published on : Friday, April 12, 2019
At French tourist accommodation, the number of nights spent by people, including hotels, campsites and youth hostels, increased to 438.2 million in 2018, up 9 million on 2017, INSEE said.
The report did not comprise figures for home-sharing platforms like Airbnb.
International tourists fuelled the rush, with huge increases in Italian, Spanish and German tourists, reported by accommodation providers.
The rush came in a year “marked by large-scale nationwide social movements on two occasions,” INSEE noted, mentioning two months of rolling rail strikes between April to June and the “yellow vest” anti-government complaints that started in mid-November.
The weekly demonstrations, which concluded regularly in rioting and looting in Paris and other major cities, caused a 5.3 percent drop in Paris hotel stays in December, the statistics showed.
Countrywide, the impact was marginal, with only a 1.1 percent fall reported over the month.
Tourist industry operators are anxious that 2019 will be less generous, with plans of Britain to leave the European Union causing an apprehension of a decline in cross-Channel visits.
Tags: french tourism