Issue #102 - Paris Plays the Long Game After a Subdued Chinese New Year
The French capital is being revamped and revitalised ahead of a major date in 2024
Welcome to issue 102 of Asia Travel Re:Set - and bienvenue to all new subscribers who jumped aboard over the past couple of weeks.
Bonjour from the City of Light. It’s cold, damp, windy and gloomy - but, hey, it’s Paris.
By the time you read this, I’ll be boarding an A380 bound for KL, via Dubai.
So this issue is a brief reflection on Chinese New Year spent in a city patiently waiting for Chinese tourists to return, but getting on with its art of life in the meantime.
Thanks for checking-in
- “IN THE NEWS”
- Paris Plays the Long Game After a Subdued Chinese New Year
The French capital is being revamped and revitalised ahead of a major date in 2024
“IN THE NEWS”
I was delighted to join a stellar line up of tourism professionals from Australia, Belgium, Bhutan, Cambodia, Germany, Laos, Malaysia and Nepal for this week’s Chinese Tourists 2023 webinar. Well worth a watch/listen.
Many thanks to Sangeetha Amarthalingam for including some of my comments in this excellent article addressing the return of Chinese travellers to South East Asia.
Now Published! What will be the 88 decisive drivers shaping a new era of Chinese outbound tourism? Well, VFR and Business Travel stand out. As do Family Trips, Student Travel and Leisure FIT. But let's delve deeper...
The new China Outbound Tourism Handbook 2023: 88 Practical Ways to Prepare for the New Wave of Chinese Visitors examines 88 key travel, tourism, hospitality, technology, finance, retail, fashion, branding, marketing and lifestyle themes in China.
It discusses the developmental drivers of the first 25 years of Chinese outbound tourism since 1997, and assesses the outlook up to 2030. The main section is divided into 88 themes that will influence the next phase of Chinese outbound travel.
- Niche segments include: Winter Sports, Self-drive & RVs, Adventure Travel, Industrial Tourism and Weddings & Honeymoons...
- Consumer engagement strategies through Social Commerce, Mixed Reality Marketing, Virtual Idols and Livestreaming are covered...
- We address the latest developments in Duty-free Shopping, Camping & Glamping, Travel Fashion and Themed Hotel Staycations…
- Plus, we explore important issues around Environmental Sustainability, Climate Impact and Nature Tourism...
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Paris Plays the Long Game After a Subdued Chinese New Year
The French capital is being revamped and revitalised ahead of a major date in 2024
The ground floor of Galeries Lafayette (Haussmann) is quieter than a ‘usual’ Chinese New Year
544 days to go.
The magisterial French capital is preparing ahead of time. Starting on 26 July 2024, Paris will host the Olympic Games for the third time. In preparation, the city is undergoing an extensive nip and tuck.
Much of central Paris - from the Place de la Concorde to the Academie Nationale de Musique and the area around the Louvre - is clad in scaffolding and construction dust. Cranes are everywhere.
The attention to upgrade detail is astonishing. Trust me, Paris is going to look amazing (if it doesn’t already!). It will be the hottest tourism ticket of summer 2024.
Paris has a point to prove, although not necessarily on its own behalf. Recent Olympics have been empty, soulless, Covid-blighted affairs. Think of the delayed Tokyo Summer Games in 2021 and Beijing Winter Games of 2022.
Paris wants to restore glamour and togetherness to the Olympics - and reinforce its status as a premier global events city before handing the baton to Los Angeles for 2028.
The Olympic reformation of Paris is well under way at the Opera
The makeover of this magnificent city is occurring at such a pace and scale that it was easy to overlook how subdued the city felt for Chinese New Year. It’s not that there were no Chinese shoppers in the grands magasins of Galeries Lafayette and Printemps - there were, just not very many (although plentiful Malaysian, Korean, Thai and Filipino voices were heard, plus a few Indians, too]. Fewer selfies around the Tour Eiffel and Arc de Triomphe. No Chinese tour groups.
The Chinese tourism recovery in this highly cherished metropolis is yet to begin.
January 2023 marked the 4th consecutive year that Chinese New Year failed to bring the Chinese tourist numbers Paris once took for granted. January, let’s face it, is not a great time to visit. It’s grey and cold. But so, too, is October and expectations are high that the Chinese National Day holiday will see a resumption of service as (pre-pandemic) normal.
To make this happen, it will require flight capacities to increase, ticket prices to drop - demand to rebuild. All the things we have been talking about for several months.
That’s not to say Paris was dull over the past week. How could it be?
K-Pop stars were the talk of Paris Fashion Week, and the IMCAS aesthetic beauty show gathered elegantly sculpted and manicured global delegates at the Palais des Congres. I stayed at one of the delegate hotels and can confirm that the morning breakfast buffet was a highly botoxified affair.
And, of course, Paris is a gorgeous architectural canvas on which brands paint their latest creative collaborations. This relentlessly imaginative sense of luxury retail reinvention entices travellers from across Asia.
Entering Galeries Lafayette on Haussmann, the store was pumping out Fade to Grey by Visage (it was for a Gris Dior window display, but what a classic banger of a tune!). The gorgeous Art Nouveau detailing of the cupola is - apparently for the first time - commemorated in a new accessories collection.
Across town, its Champs Elysees sibling store combined Web3 fashion, art, lifestyle and the metaverse for the pop-up Venir a la vie experience. And - meta-sceptics, I hear you - it was pretty cool. Tourists loved it.
Venir a la vie: Metaverse, Web3 & NFT experiences meet upscale retail at Galeries Lafayette Champs Elysees
Next stop was the sumptuous Place Vendome, where Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s latest polka-dot partnership with Louis Vuitton is visualised in selfie-friendly mirrors across the store’s cultured facade. And, yes, of course I did!
Paris will always attract tourists from everywhere - and it is so comfortable in its own skin that it relies on nowhere else but from within. The soul of Paris is Paris.
That said, 9 days here over Chinese New Year highlighted the challenges ahead of restoring Chinese volume tourism a la 2019. And say what you want about that, but volume is a concept that the world’s mega-destinations covet and thrive upon.
Paris is a gigantic economic engine partly powered by tourism. Its couture houses, restaurants and attractions want Chinese tourists to return.
Yes, the Chinese will soon return. Yes, Asian tourists are here in ever larger numbers. And yes, the 2024 Olympics will attract a sizeable quantity of visitors simply because it is Paris - and because it will put on a spectacular party.
In the meantime, the French capital is closely watching the countdown to the Opening Ceremony on 26 July 2024.
And, that’s a wrap for Issue 102.
The Asia Travel Re:Set newsletter will return on 12 February.
Until then, find me on LinkedIn, the Asia Travel Re:Set website and The South East Asia Travel Show.
Happy Travels,
Gary