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diversified in terms of different categories of
accommodation such as hotels, second homes,
gites and open-air accommodation. In 1996, hotel
capacity in France consisted of nearly 20,000 hotels
and more than 600,000 rooms. The region around
Paris �Ile de France) accounted for 21 per cent of
total rooms, followed by the RhoÃne-Alps region �13
per cent) and by Provence-Alps-CoÃtes d'Azur �12
per cent). There are great concentrations of
commercial accommodation capacity in the regions
where France has its main tourism comparative
advantages. There is little supply of highcategory
hotels outside the region around Paris,
and this has a negative effect on France's international
positioning in the world market.
If the non-hotel accommodation sector is
compared with the hotel accommodation sector,
it is clear that the foundation of France's tourism
economy is no longer based on the traditional hotel
sector. Today, the majority of accommodation
capacity is second homes and lodgings. This
reflects changing trends of tourism behaviour
linked to the lengthening of holiday time. As a
result, domestic and international tourism demand
is increasingly oriented towards more competitive
accommodation such as the renting of second
homes, which are better adapted for long stays.
The main problem that French tourism will face
in the future will lie in its ability to adapt to new
conditions so as to be in the position of offering
creative products to new clientele from Eastern and
Central Europe and especially from Asia and
South America. Although the Ministry of Tourism
would like to attract 20 million additional international
arrivals, the economic impact of these extra
tourists may be reduced if average receipts fall and,
therefore, their contribution may have little effect
on the economy as a whole.
France's tourism policy took a different direction
at the end of the 1980s when it was taken out
of the public sector's responsibility and placed
under new institutional structures based on an
association between the public and the private
sectors. Tourism development and promotion
policies are now focused on the enterprises in the
sector. However, this trend towards a better
balance between the public and private sectors is
essentially limited to national level. In fact, regional
and local tourism policies are still conducted by
France 239
municipal public authorities, with consultation
rather than association with the private sector.
The main objectives of national policies are to
ensure greater and more efficient tourism activities
and to find ways of increasing flows of
arrivals. From the beginning of the 1990s until
1996, the number of international arrivals had
remained stable at around 60 million a year, which
meant that France was losing market share.
Moreover, the GDP expenditure allocated to
support the tourism sector is substantially higher
in other countries with well-established tourism.
For instance, the expenditure in Canada is three
times higher; it is nine times higher in Spain,
twelve times higher in Australia and up to
twenty-five times higher in Ireland.
Tourism arrival figures in 1998 reflect the
impact of France hosting the XVIth Soccer
World Cup. Although the statistics have not
been substantiated, according to the then President
of the International Federation of Football Associations,
France was expected to have generated an
extra 30 per cent in tourism from the event alone.
The French Secretary of State for Tourism
explained in an official press release on 21 January
1999 that the department had feared that staging
the World Cup would mean a fall in tourism
arrivals over the period, as Spain and Italy had
experienced when they hosted the event. In fact,
WTO statistics show that international arrivals to
France increased by 4.7 per cent in 1998 over
1997, nearly double the world's average growth
rate. These positive results have been helped by
excellent organisational abilities and coordination
by the French tourism industry in partnership
with the Secretariat of State for Tourism.
In summary, the development of tourism in
France has created and expanded large international
tourism groups such as ACCOR, Club
MeÂditerranneÂe, and Nouvelles FrontieÁres. However,
in the context of globalisation, these groups
are weak because they have no direct links to large
international financial groups and thus are vulnerable
to takeover bids in the markets. Furthermore,
France has not been able to take advantage of
investments by large American or Asian hotel
chains and corporations apart from the notable
exception of EuroDisney. The few investments that
have been realised, for instance, by Hilton,