Fourteen professional organizations and associations from the French tourism sector announced last week that they will be uniting under the same confederation, mainly in order to “champion tourism issues in the context of the future government”.
This “Confederation of tourism players” has set itself the goal “of coming together and representing, in a unified way, the interests shared by professionals from the tourism and travel sectors; of defending French tourism issues in the context of the future government and the upcoming majority”, but also of “promoting and defending the tourism industry as a whole”, they wrote in a statement.
At the beginning of June, many of the sector's stakeholders considered it to be “crucial, in the aftermath of the legislative elections, to appoint a State Secretariat dedicated to Tourism and the Attractiveness of France”.
The French tourism Confederation brings together, among others, “Les Entreprises du Voyage (EDV)” ,”Les Domaines Skiables de France (DSF)”, “Le Syndicat des Entreprises Du Tour Operating (SETO)”, “L'Union des Métiers et des Industries de l'Hôtellerie (UMIH)” and “L'Union Française des Métiers de l'Evénement (UNIMEV)”.
It is a reminder that “tourism deserves an attention proportional to its economic weight and its potential for growth”, because “in France, it is responsible for 350 000 companies, 83 million international tourists in 2016, and 2 million employees – equivalent to 1 employment opportunity for every 85 tourists and 160 billion euros in turnover (7.4% of the GDP), twice the turnover of the agricultural sector” according to the confederation statement.