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238 France
for ethnic tourism and adventure tourism.
While their handicrafts and culture are increasingly
commoditised �see commercialisation), the environments
which sustain their ways of life are
endangered.
France
ERIC McGUCKIN, USA
With 70 million international tourists in 1998,
France was the leading destination in the world in
terms of arrivals and third in terms of receipts. It
owes its success to a diversified supply that is
regularly upgraded and to steady demand from all
the regions of the world �but mainly from Europe).
Although France has often maintained its leading
position since the end of the 1980s, the number of
arrivals stagnated during the first half of the 1990s
at around 60 million, while expenditure on tourism
by French tourists abroad has increased steadily
by an average of 3.2 per cent a year since 1991.
However, from 1996 the number of arrivals to
France rose steeply, to reach the top position in
1998. Compared with its closest competitors,
Spain �47.7 million) and the United States
�47.1 million), it is by far the world's greatest tourist
receptor country, with 11.2 per cent of total world
arrivals. The Secretariat of State for Tourism
reports that domestic tourism is also very
healthy. Accommodation surveys show that bed
nights increased by 2.6 per cent in 1998 over 1997
�plus 6 per cent in hotels, plus 11 per cent in rented
second homes and lodgings, and plus 19 per cent
in `gites').
According to the World Tourism Organization,
France received $29.7 billion from tourism in
1998, an increase of 6 per cent on the previous
year. The balance of payments surplus
amounted to over $11 billion, the highest of all
export sectors ahead of the aerospace and the
agriculture and food industries. Employment in
sectors associated with tourism activity in France
accounts for more than one million jobs, 75 per
cent of which are permanent. In 1997, the
government's stated intention was to create
100,000 new jobs in the following three years.
France has a great diversity of resources. This
creates comparative and specific advantages which
explain its success in international tourism.
France is the only European country with Atlantic
and Mediterranean coasts, and also has two
mountain ranges, the Alps and the Pyrennees.
These tourism resources are well developed.
Traditionally the main resources were the coasts,
where beach tourism developed in the nineteenth
century, and those resources based around heritage,
arts and crafts which represent the origins of
urban tourism and cultural tourism. Recently,
mountain tourism, green tourism, business
travel, conventions and congresses and
theme parks have become established.
French tourism development started in the
fourteenth century when the first British tourists
visited the French Riviera, notably Nice and
Monaco, and Pau in the Pyrennees, where the
first golf course in France was built. From the onset,
the economic activity of tourism was supported by
strong domestic demand. During the same period
�the Second Empire), tourism in the Basque coast
and Biarritz also took off. Thus, its industry is
characterised by the importance of its domestic
market, which developed hospitality and accommodation
superstructures over the whole
territory and which served as a solid basis of the
growth of international arrivals.
The industry expanded rapidly with the arrival
of mass tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. During
this period new regions became established, for
instance the Aquitaine and in particular the
Languedoc-Rousillion with the seaside resort of
Cape d'Agde, which has the greatest hotel
capacity of all the coastal regions in France. This
qualitative and quantitative transformation of the
supply resulted in an economic boom and
the creation of employment in regions which,
until then, had been bypassed by economic
development. However, the phenomenon of
overexploitation of the Mediterranean coastal
regions has resulted since the early 1990s in a
return to such neglected forms of tourism as
nature tourism, the discovery of the environment
and ecotourism.
The industry comprises 165,000 enterprises in
the hotel, cafeÂ, restaurant, travel agency and
tour operator sectors. The supply is greatly