France wants to boost tourism to 100million visitors a year and has told locals to be friendlier and more hospitable to foreigners.
The nation needs to shake off its reputation for being unfriendly and learn to be more hospitable, commerce minister Fleur Pellerin said at a national tourism conference in Paris.
France is the world’s most visited country, attracting 83 million tourists in 2012, but the government had now fixed a target of 100 million tourists by 2015, Mr Fabius said.
The nationwide tourist action plan comes after repeated international surveys have found that the French capital is one of the world’s most hostile places for foreign visitors.
Last year after the Paris Tourist Board issued a ‘politeness manual’ to service industry workers in bid to change the city’s reputation for being the rudest place on earth.
Paris attempted a similar campaign three years earlier, hiring ‘smile ambassadors’ to be friendly to visitors at the city’s main attractions.
