L'actractivité touristique des grandes métropoles européennes

As far as urban tourism is concerned, the « French handicap » is well known : The city of Paris is far more attractive to tourists than the other French cities, the regional capitals in particular. Nevertheless, the 1982 Decentralisation Bill is beginning to bear fruit, including on the tourism point of view, and the French Minister of Tourism wants to help this by proving conclusively how these regional capitals are playing the part of incoming and outgoing gateways, and how this role can be emphasized for the benefit of the city itself and the benefit of its surrounding areas.
Thus a survey on 6 French and 8 European big cities has been carried out to put forward this gateway role and the way it operates. The survey gives a strong confirmation of the remarkable gateway role of the regional capitals, and shows how reciprocal the tourism flows can be. But it also demonstrates the poor cooperation between the regional (or provincial) authorities and the municipalities ; beyond this lack of cooperation, the international influence of these cities is at stake.