LES VACANCES - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 45

“I was not surprised by the success of our project,” he said. “I was reassured. Bordeaux
is extremely attractive now.”
On the role of tourism, Juppé was just as strong. “Surely, I thought, it will be attractive
to tourists. And that was very, very important that it attract tourists. That would be our fin-
ancial foundation. Those fifteen years of work of rejuvenation led to Bordeaux becoming
a World Heritage city.”
When I asked how much it helped that he was a mayor with national and international
experience and connections, he smiled again. “Ah, that is a specialty of France. That we
work at all levels. Above all, yes, it helps very much that I had been a minister and a mayor.
It works together.”
One of the most perceptive comments came from Robert Parker, the American wine
expert who is careful with his praise. Parker has visited Bordeaux as often as three times a
year for decades to taste and give scores to the wine. His ratings are revered and feared the
world over.
After the renovation Parker gave the city of Bordeaux a personal rating: “I remember
the old days and the rotten, abandoned buildings on the waterfront; now it is a ravishing
destination.”
• • •
“Tourism cannot be outsourced.” Philippe Maud'hui of ATOUT France made that declar-
ation in his crowded office on the Place de Catalogne, surrounded by stacks of documents
and data showing how much tourism contributes to the economy and how. It is so obvious
it was startling. But the fact that tourism is the rare industry that will never be replaced
by factories in Vietnam or by I.T. centers in India is often forgotten, he said, and another
reason why the French government is investing time and energy in it.
ATOUT France alone has 480 employees, more than half of whom are posted overseas
to thirty-five countries to sell the merits of a vacation in France as tourism diplomats. The
newest offices were opened in Brazil, China and India. The agency's budget is $106 milli-
on, with only $46 million paid by the national government. (The rest comes from private
businesses and local public partners.) While Maud'hui says this isn't enough to keep up
with the competition, it is enough to underwrite the extensive research done to help shape
government policy, describe tourism's economic contributions, pinpoint who comes to
France and why, and then plot the future.
In a series of interviews in Paris, Maud'hui and other French officials gave me thick
books with a full profile of tourists and tourism in France: which nationality prefers to
come to Paris for luxury shopping, who goes hiking in the mountains, who goes to casinos
and who rents homes in the countryside. They know that Disneyland outside of Paris is the
most visited site and that the Louvre remains the most popular museum in France, and