Anyone who has ever stopped at the exquisite little tidal island of Mont Saint Michel in France knows that one of the biggest difficulties is knowing how to get around once there. There is only one access road to enter and exit and even take the mandatory Transfers from parking lines are confusing due to the enormous number of people trying to board the buses at any given time: 3 million people stopover each year . This weekend, transfers were temporarily suspended because there were too many other people. looking to climb the cobblestone streets to the majestic monastery at its summit.
Olivia Grégoire, France’s tourism minister, told Le Figaro newspaper that it is time to take national action to fight overtourism at this site and many others across the country. The French government needs to redirect the 80% of its tourists who stop at only 20% of its places, such as Mont Saint Michel and the very good Norman cliffs of Étretat.
The set-jetting trend is seen as responsible, and now other people are drawn to sites featured in Netflix’s Emily in Paris. Similarly, more people than usual invaded the cliffs of Étretat after seeing them in the hit Netflix series. Lupin.
Many European countries are looking to redirect tourists to lesser-known sites. The Netherlands introduced a crusade to redirect visitors in 2019 after seeing projections that tourism would increase by 50% to 29 million visitors by 2030. The Netherlands Tourist Board was tired of seeing other people trample tulip fields for selfies, categorically stating at the time that “we can now say that more is not better, and in fact not everywhere. “
Many sites are now charging entry fees across Europe to try to decrease overcrowding and protect areas for liveability and environmental reasons—Marseille’s majestic limestone Calanques need to be booked up in advance and Venice’s new entry fee are just two examples. These quotas will aim to radically cut the number of people from 2,500 per day in the case of the Sugiton Calanque in Marseille, to just 400.
For the French government, it is about showing, through influencers and social networks, how crowded those places are, to discourage other people from coming there. Last month, the tourism government released sad photos of the other 60,000 people who arrived. They stopped at Mont Saint Michel during the long Ascension Day holiday weekend in mid-May and were stranded waiting to move on to the monastery due to overcrowding. Similar campaigns were used in Marseille in 2021 and in Porto-Vecchio, Corsica, in 2022, as reported via El Telégrafo.
The new campaign will promote tourism during all four seasons and promote express travel, and the campaign will be in English and will be aimed especially at American and British tourists, who have returned en masse to France since the pandemic (37 million more people are expected ). will visit Paris this year, and many of them will also take the time to stop by France. As other people appear stuck in queues at prominent locations, it is hoped that potential visitors will take some time to think and head to the country. .
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