MSNBC reports that last year, American tourism was down 40% versus a decade ago. Worse, the Paris tourism office says 2009 traffic was down another 3.4% versus the prior year.
Surprisingly, while we only read of a double-dip recession, French tourism officials expect that Americans will be coming back “as the the U.S. economy improves. I have no doubt they are correct, but I don’t thing that will mean in 2011.
Americans remains the most frequent foreign visitors to Paris. We still see a lot of our countrymen in the streets, but maybe because we are right in the 6th most of the time near high-traffic areas. More striking are the number of Asian visitors, especially from China and India, which in itself is symbolic of where economic dynamism is these days.
