Tourism in France: “Dream Big and Live Slow”

13 April 2023 Culture

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Dream big, live slow! This is the name of the new campaign to promote tourism in France, presented by Atout France and its partners. This new marketing campaign is better adapted to travellers’ aspirations, and encourages slower, more sustainable and more authentic tourism.

Atout France, the national agency for the development of tourism in France cooperated with the 13 regional tourism committees and some twenty private companies in the sector to launch the annual promotional campaign for 2023. After two previous editions “designed to revitalise, European tourist flows to France following the pandemic”, the challenge of the 2023 communication campaign is “to assert the sustainable positioning of the destination”.

Sustainable tourism, a major development

The agency prepared this marketing campaign based on the results of a study on a new awareness of sustainable tourism among customers.

For the minister in charge of the sector, sustainable tourism “is not a trending phase, it is a major change. And France must take the turn”. Since the end of the pandemic, said the minister, “tourist flows have tended to diversify. Tourist habits are changing and tourism must change with them, so that France continues to be a land of excellence for tourists”. This campaign is therefore “an opportunity to promote a new form of tourism, one that is more responsible, more respectful of our biodiversity, fostering contemplation and discovery”.

Dream big, live slow

According to Atout France, “France is a dream destination and is very popular in the collective imagination. It offers a real space of freedom, in the most beautiful of settings”. The 2023 campaign will therefore promote well-known and, above all, lesser-known sites and territories, in order to encourage the spread of visitor flows throughout the country, while inviting people to use soft and environmentally-friendly means to discover new things.
The 2023 edition is thus presented as “an ode to dreaming big”, but also to take the time, “to feel from the inside the places visited and to let go, for an in-depth discovery of the land, crafts, villages and local gastronomy, to take the time to live privileged moments” and this, all year round! The mechanism focuses on spring and autumn, thus contributing to the continuation of the efforts of professionals in terms of "de-seasonalisation”.

The marked return of international tourists to France

The campaign began at the beginning of April in 10 European countries and will also be relayed, for the very first time, in the United States and Canada. Indeed, these “markets”, said Atout France, “currently record strong growth and still have significant development potential”.

It is indeed in a buoyant environment that this campaign is being launched. At the end of March, the Ministry of the Economy presented the results of the winter tourist season and the first trends for Spring. The figures in this report show a gradual return to pre-crisis levels and “prove the resilience and strong capacity to adapt of the tourism sector”, with a marked return of international clients. As a destination country, France continues to enjoy strong appeal among international customers and is regularly cited as the “preferred European destination” for holidays planned in the coming months.

France favoured by clients from the United States

Observers agree that the year 2022 was a successful one for French tourism. Indeed, France recorded 57.9 billion euros in international tourist revenue. The Ministry of the Economy points out that France is “one of the only destinations to record a growth in revenue compared to 2019 (+2.1%)”. France as a destination has in particular “picked up sharply with American tourists, with a 35% increase in revenue on the American market compared to 2019”.

In addition, an American specialist magazine, Travel Leisure, has just named the 23 most beautiful villages (or small towns) in the world. And the first of these is located in France: Gordes in the Vaucluse, in Provence! And Travel Leisure talks about “the magic of one of the most beautiful villages in France, if not the world”, a “must-see destination with cobbled streets, churches and a monastery punctuated by lavender fields that look like they were plucked from the pages of a storybook”...