Paris (AFP)

Paris and the Ile-de-France are aiming for tourist attendance to the highest for 2019, despite a start of the year disturbed by the demonstrations of "yellow vests" that have cooled some foreign visitors.

"We suffer from two handicaps: the social movements that occupied the Parisian tourist ground practically every Saturday for weeks, and also the effects of Brexit which had an impact on British tourism", summarized Tuesday Valérie Pécresse, president of the region, at a press point.

But she insisted that the trend has "reversed" since April, with a month of June particularly buoyant thanks to the Women's World Cup football or the air show at Le Bourget.

A "significant improvement that augurs good results for the following months," said the Regional Committee for Tourism (CRT) Ile-de-France in its statement.

In 2018, the Ile-de-France had broken its record attendance, with 35 million hotel arrivals from both French and foreign tourists - which corresponds to some 50 million visitors.

But in the first six months of 2019, hotel spending in Paris and Ile-de-France stagnated, posting a slight decline of 0.1% compared to the first half of 2018.

This is the first quarter - while the movement of "yellow vests" started in November 2018 was still continuing - the decline was the strongest: -4.8% for foreign visitors, -3.4% for the hexagonal tourists.

But in total for the half-year, the stays of French tourists (+ 0.3%) made it possible to offset almost entirely the loss of foreign customers (-0.5%).

If the attendance of Japanese, Spanish and American tourists has increased over the semester, the decline is marked on the side of the British (304,000 overnight stays). Despite this Brexit effect, the United Kingdom remains the second "emitter" country of tourists to Ile-de-France, behind the United States.

- "avoid a yoyo effect" -

The arrival of Chinese visitors also slowed down (42,000 overnight stays), with the Ile-de-France region highlighting the "economic difficulties" in China.

"The goal is to maintain attendance records for the past two years," says Eric Jeunemaitre, president of the CRT IDF.

After the sharp decline in attendance in the first quarter, "we wanted to limit the breakage, and especially + restabilize + tourism to avoid a yoyo effect, we can not afford to have a tourism that collapses a year on the ground. 'other', emphasized Valérie Pécresse.

She said that the CRT had thus "targeted priorities" among some destinations, such as Spain, the United States and Japan, to "bring back quickly" tourists. "And it worked, now we have to continue to advance tourism," said the president of the region.

Regarding the performance of the summer season, "the trends are rather positive," says the Regional Committee of Tourism which is based on a survey conducted with hotels in the Ile-de-France.

For the months of August to October however, international air bookings are down 0.9%, compared to the same period a year earlier.

The government's goal is to reach 100 million foreign visitors by 2020, up from 87 million last year.

© 2019 AFP