France’s Tourism Took a Nosedive in 2003

France, the country that receives the largest amount of tourists worldwide, came in instead for a slide in the number of visitors and revenues last year, especially caused by scores of American trippers who decided to remain aloof from the European nation.

Official stats indicates that the sum of foreign travelers that trekked to France last year was down 2.6 percent, dropping from 77 million in 2002 –one of the worst years ever for the world travel industry- to 75 million in 2003, French Tourism Vice Minister Leon Bertrand explained.

Nonetheless, the number of U.S. sunbathers that sallied forth to France plummeted a whopping 18.3 percent to just 2.4 million in 2003, after diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington went to seed dramatically over their seemingly clashing positions on the war in Iraq.

A downtrodden U.S. dollar against the European common currency also fanned the flames.

This plunge gives France quite a black eye because American travelers are big spenders who like shelling out more money than many other trippers from elsewhere, the official report goes on to state with abundance of figures.

The decline in revenues generated by U.S. tourists was particularly acute. For more than three decades, the United States has been the country with the largest contribution of revenues for the French travel industry.

“For a second year in a row, earnings generated by British tourists outnumbered the money spent by U.S. vacationers,” the report concludes.