If you want to admire the Hall of Mirrors or the Queen's Gardens, this might be the time to take advantage. Since the beginning of the deconfinement, the former residence of Louis XIV has faced a very significant drop in attendance, due to a lack of foreign tourists. A situation certainly pleasant for French visitors, but worrying for the establishment.
“Per day, we are around 10,000, more during the weekend, less during the week, because our visitors are almost exclusively French. We see foreigners, Germans, Dutch and some Italians coming bit by bit, ”said Catherine Pégard, president of the public establishment of the Palace of Versailles, on RTL radio. Usually, the castle, which is 80% visited by foreigners, accommodates 30,000 people a day during this period, she added.
45 million euros in losses
"Financially, we do not find it at all", she lamented, adding that the establishment which reopened to the public on June 6 had "lost 45 million" euros since confinement.
"It gives us a lot to think about what we have to be, what we have to do, it is our whole model which, if I may say so, has collapsed", she said, recalling that "of all history, the closure of the castle only happened once, at the time of the declaration of the second world war »
However, she assured "not to make savings" on staff, both for the 1,000 or so employees of the castle as for the 20,000 other people "who work around" the site. The Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, for its part saw its attendance divided by four in July, with 10,000 visitors per day, a level however in line with the forecasts of its management.
Economy
Paris: The tourism situation in the capital is "extremely worrying"
Culture
Louvre Museum, Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles ... We put on the tourist trilogy of hell
- Virus
- Paris
- Tourism
- Covid 19
- Coronavirus
- Versailles
- Castle of Versailles