From Olympics, weddings to UPI payments, France is going all out to woo Indian tourists

Olympics, UPI payment and weddings are driving travel to France from Indian.

The chance of a dinner with Neeraj Chopra or seeing the Indian hockey team live has driven travel from India to Paris. Sure, the City of Lights has always drawn hordes of tourists like moths to a flame, and the Summer Olympic Games torch is an added attraction.

But France is not relying on Olympics 2024 alone to woo Indian travellers. The European nation is also counting on easing things for them by, for instance, enabling easy payments through global industry bellwether UPI. And given that India is a nation known for celebrating marriages in style, it is no surprise that the French are tapping into the large destination wedding market.

Admittedly, the Games are not as big a draw for a country that is not overly passionate about sports outside of cricket. While the Indian attendance at the Paris Olympics is nothing to sneeze at, the country still ranks 30th in terms of ticket holders to the 2024 Games.

Olympics impact

"There is interest for sure for the Olympics among Indians but I don't think that alone is going to be one of the factors that's going to contribute to the increasing tourist arrivals from India. It will be one of the factors that will contribute but India is not sighted as one of the (top) three source markets for the Olympics. A lot of the traffic comes from Europe itself. The recovery from India will be led by travelling for events, wedding," Sheetal Munshaw, director, Atout France (the French tourism development agency) in India, told Moneycontrol.

The top 10 markets in terms of ticket holders for the Paris Olympics are the US, UK, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland and Australia. Overall, Munshaw expects a long-term impact of Olympic 2024 on France tourism.

"A lot of facilities that have been set up that will be part of the infrastructure tomorrow as well and those are going to become contributors to revenue generated by tourism in the future. For example, some of those venues are going to be great places for people to conduct incentive gala dinners and so on. So they (venues) will continue to be part of the legacy that the Olympics will leave with us," she said.

Easy payments

According to Munshaw, what's driving tourism from India to France is the easy payments facilitated at iconic places in the French capital. "Today, Indians being able to buy their Eiffel Tower tickets through UPI or go and shop at Galeries Lafayette, which is one of the most iconic departmental stores, through UPI only goes out to show that it's a very conducive time for Indians to travel to France. The French really want to receive more Indians," she said.

Recently, Jio Financial Services announced the launch of its JioFinance app in Paris with the city becoming the global hub of the moment for sports enthusiasts. "To make it convenient for Indian travellers to transact digitally, JioFinance will enable international payments for buying tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower through its official website, La Tour Eiffel; as well as for in-store shopping at the iconic Parisian department store, Galeries Lafayette Paris Hausmann," the company said.

Destination wedding 

The country is also a preferred market for Indians looking to host destination weddings.

"Typically, I would say we have a group size of about 500 to 900 for weddings. It's multiple groups of this size. The average size of these weddings is 500-800 people," Munshaw said.

Atout France is also conducting a familiarisation trip for Indian wedding planners to give a sense of what the country has on offer. "Such trips will give an understanding of what it really takes to host an Indian wedding in France like timing flexibilities or ensuring that people can have caterers who can do an Indian meal," said Munshaw.

France is more than being about tourist traps, though. The MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) segment too is seeing good traction from India.

"The group size is about 350-500, but we have seen some really big groups of 3,500-2,000 people as well. So for MICE, we have anywhere between 200 and 2,000 people coming from India to France."

The director of Atout France in India expects both segments to grow as France has always been a very attractive destination for Indians. "Also, it's a lot more than Paris today. They (Indian tourists) don't just want to go to Paris, they want to go beyond Paris."

Wooing Indian tourists

France is expecting a full post-pandemic recovery from India in terms of arrivals this year. "We had 550,000 tourists from India coming to France in 2023. This number was 700,000 in 2019. We have seen a recovery of 70-80 percent in arrivals from India. Going by the trend this year we should be at the same level as pre-COVID," Munshaw underlined.

The wait time to get a visa for France has increased in the post-Covid period. "Getting a France visa takes 3-10 working days. Pre-COVID, the French embassy and consulate used to deliver visas in 48 hours. That has been suspended because a new system was put into place. The change is not very dramatic; the system still remains very efficient," Munshaw said.

Interestingly, the country that has the bragging rights as the world's leading tourist destination is no longer attracting Indian tourists from the metros.

"It's no longer just Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru. There is a lot of traction from cities like Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Raipur, among others," Munshaw highlighted.

Moreover, Indian spending in France has also gone up, said Munshaw.

"Spends have increased because we see an appetite for Indians willing to pay more provided there's value for money but they're not shy from spending. The airfares have increased significantly post-COVID. There's also a surge in terms of pricing for hotels worldwide. There's no comparison of what we used to pay pre- and post-pandemic. And all this hasn't deterred the Indian traveler from traveling," she said.