Tourism Situation Analysis of France

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the tourism situation in France, including the visitor market, tourism products, supply and demand, tourist characteristics, tourist experiences, and tourism trends.

Tourism situation analysis

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Visitor market..............................................................................................................................1
Tourism products.........................................................................................................................1
Supply and demand......................................................................................................................2
Tourist characteristics..................................................................................................................3
Tourists experiences....................................................................................................................4
Tourism trends.............................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Tourism situation analysis refers to the evaluation of a visitor attraction or of a visitor’s
region in order to analyse the performance of that tourism region for the purpose of determining
the potential of earning profit (Spandre and et.al., 2019). The main aim of this report is to
conduct a tourism situational analysis of a particular country. For the fulfilment of this aim, the
country which has been selected or analysis is France.
MAIN BODY
Visitor market
A visitor market is a tourism market which includes people and businesses that are
associated with the tourism industry of a region. In case of France, the visitor market is wider as
it is the most contributing country of Europe in terms of tourism. Both domestic and international
tourism in France has a significant impact on the economy of this country. Most popular regions
of France’s visitor market include Paris and Marseille. The visitor market of France contributes
immense amount towards the Gross domestic product of this country and employment of this
country has also been increased as tourism has helped in creating millions of jobs every year
(Moreno-Gené and et.al., 2018). The visitor market of France includes all tourism related
businesses of this region including every personnel engaged in such businesses. There are
various elements such as tourism products and characteristics that will help in conduct a tourism
situation analysis of France and all these elements are considered as follows:
Tourism products
Tourism products refers to the services and goods which a visitor’s attraction or a region
offers to their visitors in exchange of money (Seraphin, 2017). For every region, such tourism
products can differ based on the history and culture of that tourist region. France is the most
visited country in the world and this position of France is because of its products and services
which are offered by this country. The tourism products which are tourism oriented includes
accommodations, transportation, tour operators, historical and cultural sites, restaurants and
more. These products are analysed below:
Accommodations – This is a tourism product which is essential for the visitors as these
products cater the staying requirements of tourists. In the case of France, this destination offers
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different types of accommodation properties according to the requirements of the visitors. The
visitors of France include people of all age, sex and income group and considering this, France
has thousands of accommodation properties including hotels, motels, hostels, camping sites,
guest house and more.
Historical and cultural sites – France has a valued heritage and numerous historical sites
that attracts millions of visitors every year. France offers multiple heritage sites which are
included in historical products of this destination. Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum, Palace of
Versailles and more (Cró and Martins, 2020).
Souvenir outlets – Souvenirs are the tangible products which visitors buy from the tourists’
destination in memory of their visit. France is famous for their little Eiffel tower souvenirs and
this product of Souvenir outlets increase the overall value of France as a tourist destination.
Transportation – This product is also an essential product for the visitors of France as this
product allows the visitors to travel with ease and convenience. The government of France is
well aware about the contribution of tourism industry in their country, due to which government
of this country make sure that the tourists can travel by using both air and surface transportation.
The air transportation facility of France is one of the best facilities in world and is connected to
almost every country of the world which expands the scope for tourism industry of this country.
Food and beverages – This product is also an element that attracts visitors towards a tourist
destination. France has various restaurants, food carts and food courts that offer authentic French
food experience which attracts visitors from all around the world (Sharif and Afshan, 2016).
All the products which are stated above are the tourism products that adds value in the
visitors’ experience visiting France.
Supply and demand
Supply and demand are two different but widely related terms that helps in analysing the
performance of an industry. Demand refers to the requirement of a good or service by the
consumers in market and supply refers to the ability of a producer to fulfil that demand with the
continuous and effective supply of the demanded good or service. In case of tourism industry of
France, there is a gap between the supply and demand of the tourism products of this country.
There is a high demand of accommodations from both international and domestic client
base but due to limited hotels and resorts, the demand of international tourists is fulfilled first
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despite of domestic client and this creates a gap between the supply and demand of resorts for
domestic clients.
Another identified gap between the demand and supply in France is of their ski vacation.
By analysing the trends, France has created an ability of catering thousands of ski vacations but
the demand of such vacations realised to be low resulting in a demand – supply gap (Cristobal-
Fransi and et.al., 2018).
Tourist characteristics
Tourists characteristics or features are the attributes of visitors which helps in
distinguishing them from other visitors. There are different criterion using which tourist can be
categorised such as age, gender, income level, occupation and others. Visitors visiting France
also has few distinct features.
(Source: Number of domestic leisure and business trips taken in France from 2011 to 2017,
2020)
From the above graph, it can be seen that the number of leisure trips are much higher than
business trips in case of France which implies France has a tourist charcateristic of leisure. This
feature also indicates that the viistors who visit this location are of higher income groups. France
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is an exotic location that people visit for leisure purposes and experience a vacation. The above
graph clearly shows that from 2011, France is experiencing high leisure toursists than business
trips.
Another tourists characteristic is the indepdence; this feature is gained from the statistic
below according to which a total of 51% of the visitors has planned their trip to France on their
own without any support from travel agencies, associations or tourists offices.
(Source: Intermediaries chosen for bookings, 2008)
Tourists experiences
Under this section, usual and common experiences of visitors visiting France will be
analysed. According to the France tourism statistics, it has been observed that France is the top
visited country in the world and Paris is the second visited city in the world. These statistic
makes it clear that the tourism experiences visiting France is overall good (Gay, 2020).
Tourism trends
Trends refers to the changes which is observed in the patterns of tourism industry (Taunay,
L’hostis and Johnson, 2020). There are various notable trends in the tourism industry of France
and some of them are analysed below:
There is an increasing trend in overnight arrivals in France. According to the statistics of
France tourism, the overnight visitors in 2018 were 89.3 million which was an increase of total
3% from the overnight visitors of 2017.
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Another tourist trend that has been observed in case of France is that the global number of
tourists to France doubles in every 15 years. This trend has been caused by continuous
enhancement of tourism facilities in France and awareness regarding new tourist destinations
(Kolupaeva and Galimzyanova, 2019).
Another pattern or trend for tourism in France which has been observed for past few decades
is that the popular age of visitors visiting France is 25 to 44 and the least popular age of visitors
visiting this country is 15 to 24 years.
It has also been observed and concluded as a trend that around 70% of the visitors or tourists
are European. Considering this, it has been also seen that in the year 2017, 70 million tourists out
of 90 million were from Europe. After Europe, China is observed to be at second position of
visitors who visit France. In 2013, France has 1.7 million Chinese visitors that resulted in 23.4%
of overall tourist in this region (Mura, Mognard and Sharif, 2017).
Besides tourism, it has been seen that people visit France for education and business
purposes. France is popular with international students as it has attracted 325000 international
students in a year that makes it 12% growth in every year.
Besides Eiffel tower and other heritage attractions in France, this country has trend to attract
visitors for its Disney attractions as well. The average trip of tourist in this region is approx.
days that is even higher than the trips to United Kingdom (France Tourism Statistics, 2020).
Above trends shows the patterns of tourists visiting France; these trends help in analysing
the situation of France as a tourist destination.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been analysed that France has a dominating position when it
comes to tourist destination. The above report helps in concluding that France is enhancing its
facilities due to which its tourism industry is continuously growing.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cristobal-Fransi, E. and et.al., 2018. Ski tourism and web marketing strategies: The case of ski
resorts in France and Spain. Sustainability, 10(8), p.2920.
Cró, S. and Martins, A.M., 2020. Foreign Direct Investment in the tourism sector: The case of
France. Tourism Management Perspectives, 33, p.100614.’
Gay, J.C., 2020. Colonialism and tourism in a French territory at the southern end of the world:
the case of New Caledonia. Journal of Tourism History, 12(1), pp.48-70.
Kolupaeva, E.V. and Galimzyanova, L.R., 2019. French Policy in the Sphere of Tourism. J. Pol.
& L., 12, p.71.
Moreno-Gené, J. and et.al., 2018. The economic sustainability of snow tourism: the case of ski
resorts in Austria, France, and Italy. Sustainability, 10(9), p.3012.
Mura, P., Mognard, E. and Sharif, S.P., 2017. Tourism research in non-English-speaking
academic systems. Tourism Recreation Research, 42(4), pp.436-445.
Seraphin, H., 2017. Terrorism and tourism in France: the limitations of dark tourism. Worldwide
Hospitality and Tourism Themes.
Sharif, A. and Afshan, S., 2016. Tourism development and real effective exchange rate revisited
by wavelet based analysis: Evidence from France. Journal of Finance and Economics
Research, 1(2), pp.101-118.
Spandre, P. and et.al., 2019. Winter tourism under climate change in the Pyrenees and the French
Alps: relevance of snowmaking as a technical adaptation. Cryosphere, 13, pp.1325-1347.
Taunay, B., L’hostis, M. and Johnson, P.C., 2020. Geographical limits of outbound Chinese
tourism in France. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 12(1),
pp.66-81.
Online
Intermediaries chosen for bookings, 2008. [Online]. Available through:
<entreprises.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services/etudes-et-statistiques/stats-tourisme/
chiffres-cles/chiffres_cles08_gb.pdf>
Number of domestic leisure and business trips taken in France from 2011 to 2017, 2020.
[Online]. Available through: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/462940/domestic-
leisure-and-business-trips-by-french-tourists/>
France Tourism Statistics. 2020. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.condorferries.co.uk/france-tourism-statistics>
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