For the Easter holidays, Anne had planned to travel with her family to Vietnam. Ten days discovering the country was long in the making. The plane tickets had been paid for since early December: a Paris–Hanoi flight, with a stopover in Abu Dhabi. On site, everything was booked: hotels, treks and a cruise in Ha Long Bay.
“At the end of March, Etihad Airways canceled our outbound flight and offered another one instead, earlier in the morning,” Anne recounts. “Given the context, we didn’t take the risk of getting stuck at the airport. We canceled everything.” The visit to Vietnam will take place, at best, next Christmas. And this summer? “We’ll go to my sister’s and friends’, in France,” Anne decided.
This year had started well for tourism, despite a context of strained purchasing power. The war in the Middle East has since undermined all certainties. For now, bookings by the French for stays abroad are plummeting, without shifting to France. “The French are very much in wait-and-see mode,” notes Nicolas Dayot, president of the National Federation of Outdoor Hospitality (FNHPA), whose clientele is 70% domestic. “One might think that the war would encourage them to favor France this summer. That is not yet certain: since mid-March, demand in our campsites has clearly slowed. I have the feeling that the French who want to travel abroad are delaying their bookings but have not yet given up. And those on a tight budget are hesitating because of fuel prices.”
Two-thirds still haven’t booked
To date, bookings for the whole season are still broadly stable compared with last year, according to the FNHPA. But the post-Covid holiday euphoria is far behind. “The average spending is down 4%,” notes Nicolas Dayot. “Tent and caravan pitches, which are the cheapest, are more in demand than mobile homes and chalets.”
Between April 1 and 17, demand from the French for seasonal rentals in France—apartments and houses—for the coming months rose by 3.2% on the PAP platform for direct exchanges. With strong disparities from one region to another: +4.7% on the Côte d’Azur, +14.4% in Vendée-Charente, but -6.1% for Languedoc. “It’s not very worrying, because two-thirds of the French have not yet booked their holidays. They will do everything not to sacrifice them,” says Corinne Jolly, president of PAP. “But they will optimize spending. At this stage, we see that they favor Spain (+10.6%) more than France.”
Olivier Cohn, chief executive of Best Western France (335 hotels across the country), refuses to be alarmist. Travelers are deciding more and more at the last minute. But he has seen the wind change. January and February had been good for Best Western France, with a 4% increase in activity (RevPAR, the sector’s key indicator). The war in the Middle East has reversed the trend. There have not been many cancellations, but bookings for the coming months fell by 5% in March. “We anticipate slightly lower activity (a maximum of 5%) for April, May and June,” the executive warns. “However, I remain confident for this summer. I do not rule out having a good season. Everything will depend on fuel prices.”
Uncertainty about international visitors
While it seems likely that the French will opt for cheaper and closer holidays, the great unknown concerns foreign visitors to France. Visitors from the Middle East and Asia are expected to decline. But no one can say by how much. Everything suggests that our European neighbors will come, but they too are delaying their bookings. “For this summer, bookings for commercial accommodation (hotels, campsites, seasonal rentals, etc.) are 7% behind last year,” says Didier Arino, head of the specialist firm Protourisme. “But I am rather optimistic, because our location at the heart of Europe should allow us to benefit from European visitors favoring proximity to avoid excessively high transport costs.”
Paris and its wider Île-de-France region have fallback options. Visitors from the Middle East are likely to be missing, but they account for only 2% of annual foreign attendance. Parisian hoteliers expect a limited drop of 3% in occupancy rates for April, May and June. “We do not expect a sharp decline in visitor numbers, because we can rely on a very broad diversity of clientele,” insists Alexandra Dublanche, vice-president of the Île-de-France region. Americans are leading the way.
A 19.4% drop in business volume
Of the entire travel ecosystem, those to be pitied are not those who host tourists in France. They are the travel agents, tour operators and airlines that send French travelers abroad and are seeing demand collapse. According to Les Entreprises du Voyage, which brings together travel agencies in France, business volume fell by 19.4% in March, due to the combined effect of a decline in the number of bookings sold (-14.9%) and in the average spending (-5.4%). The drop in bookings for the coming months concerns all geographic areas, but long-haul travel is suffering the most, both in number of bookings (-29%) and in business volume (-27%).
“I expect the French air travel market (the overall level of passenger traffic) to fall by 5% to 7% this summer,” warns former head of Air Caraïbes and French Bee, Marc Rochet, now a consultant.
Gilles Roucolle, an air transport expert at consulting firm Oliver Wyman, says that worldwide, they expect a 3% reduction in passengers over the summer period. “That means 94 million travelers will be missing,” he adds.
Airlines risk being put on a strict diet because of soaring fuel prices, which account for 25% to 30% of a flight’s operating costs. “On a long-haul economy ticket, the fuel surcharge already easily reaches 40 to 50 euros,” notes Rochet. “For a family of four, that represents a significant budget.” And it is not over. Air France and KLM have just doubled the fuel surcharge on a long-haul round-trip in economy class: it now stands at 100 euros.
Moreover, to even partially offset the surge in jet feul prices, many airlines will raise their fares in the coming weeks. “We expect airlines to increase ticket prices by 10% to 12% for the summer in order to protect their margins,” says Gilles Roucolle.
Europe favored by Europeans
To top it all off, the image of travel has been somewhat tarnished by the misfortunes of holidaymakers stranded in Dubai, where they were spending a few days or making a connection. “As a result, Europeans have rediscovered that going abroad for holidays carries a degree of risk,” says Christine Ourmière-Widener, former executive at Air Caraïbes and French Bee. Not all players in air transport will be affected in the same way. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary is not worried about his segment, low-cost travel. “People who previously wanted either to go to the Middle East or to fly over the region during the holidays (to travel to Asia) are changing their minds and returning to Portugal, Spain, southern France, Italy, Greece,” he said in mid-March. In short, fewer long-haul flights and more medium-haul ones. Consulting firm Oliver Wyman also believes that southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) will come out ahead.
If the conflict in the Middle East appears to be easing, the situation nevertheless remains highly uncertain. This is putting tourism players to the test. More than ever, they are counting on last-minute bookings to save the 2026 season.
