France tourism is down, but people are still coming in droves

There's no doubt about it that this summer, Paris tourism industry wondered what hit them. Through conferences in different areas of France, Paris tourism officials have confirmed that the number of visitors traveling to the beautiful city of love has dropped roughly 10 percent from about one year ago. The city has seen better days and with this huge amount of reluctant visitors to come, Paris has experienced a loss of about €450 million. 

Despite all the recent attacks that have left a hole in Paris's heart, tourists are still deciding to come, but why? You would think that something as bad as terrorism, that causes profound fear and subsequent anxiety, would repel all to come to Paris. Yet, some people still decide to come and embrace the inner beauty. According to the travelmarketreport, 95% of the tourists coming to Paris are unhindered; 40.5 million in 2016 compared to 45 million in 2015. 

Many online forums users have stated they will continue coming to Paris despite the attacks for reasons such as: Paris is beautiful, Paris is educational, Paris is love and Paris is just irresistible. Overall, the general response one can get from all of these users is, 'we don't give a shit, nothing can stop us from coming to Paris'. Many of the users, also tourists of Paris, mentioned that the reasons they aren't coming back to Paris as much isn't because of the attacks but because of the high airfares and the dismal exchange rates. More and more of the Parisian tourists are young and therefore don't always have the means to pay for a ticket to a city where you have to pay even to use public toilets.

Parisian restaurants and hotels have cut their prices back, in some cases more than 50%, just to attract more people. They feel as if tourists are not coming to them anymore but again from online forum users responses to 'is Paris a safe place to go' they state that because of budget issues they prefer to use Airbnb.