Do tourist offices still serve any purpose? This question is raised again on the occasion of the definitive closure, Sunday January 12, of the last remaining office of the Paris tourist office. Finished the store with its advisors, its brochures, its maps of Paris and its souvenir mugs of the capital: the office will continue to carry out its missions, but by means of its website, its digital application and social networks.
This decision, coming from the world’s leading tourist destination (around 50 million visitors per year in Ile-de-France), may come as a surprise. Particularly at a time when Paris is banking on the heritage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to attract visitors. In addition, physical tourist offices continue to exist in many European capitals, such as London, Madrid or Rome – these cities even have several offices.
This was also the case in Paris until recently. At the start of 2017, the tourist office – its official name is Paris je t’aime – had five offices, which had welcomed 424,000 people. Their declining attendance, combined with significant costs, led to their closure. In reality, the right formula for attracting visitors and developing commercial activity, in a context disrupted by the proliferation of information on the Internet, has not been found.
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