Felicity Long
Although the Rendez-Vous en France trade show, an annual event put on by Atout France, is typically a chance to look forward to the coming year’s plans to promote tourism, the organizers of the 2025 event can be forgiven for taking a well-deserved moment to look back.
For the record, Atout France is the marketing arm of the French government tourist office, charged with promoting international visits to the destination.
The moment of nostalgia at this year’s event was, of course, the 2024 Paris Games, which were widely considered to be nothing short of a blockbuster success.
This isn’t always the case. Preparing for the Olympics is expensive, often requires major upgrades to infrastructure and can be onerous for locals, who regard the hordes of visitors as a double-edged sword.
But for a variety of reasons, the Paris Olympics was a hit, not only for visitors watching in person and viewers watching from abroad, but also — the most astonishing part — for locals, who welcomed visitors with uncharacteristic warmth and bonhomie. Mind you, the country was recovering its equilibrium from a blisteringly divisive round of elections, the war in Ukraine had everyone on edge and the economy was concerningly wobbly.
A shot of global excitement and international goodwill in what many regard as among the most beautiful cities in the world was just what the French needed, and boy did the Games deliver.
The U.S. topped the list of international visitors during the Games of the nearly 8 million fans who watched in person, and some 5 billion people followed the Games remotely.
What they saw, in addition to the excitement of the competitions, was a destination ready for its close-up.
Of course, the Games weren’t the only big news in 2024 — the reopening of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in December, a mere five years after the devastating fire in 2019, lifted the spirits of locals and has drawn so many tourists to the site that would-be visitors can expect to wait in long lines for admittance.
In the future from Atout France
Looking ahead, Atout France is promoting a celebration of the artist Cezanne, with exhibitions of his works in Aix-en-Provence from June 28 to Oct. 12.
Also noteworthy this year is the 10th anniversary of the Musee des Confluences, a design-forward exhibition space in Lyon located at the merging point of the Rhine and Saone rivers in France’s second largest city, where the 2024 Rendez-Vous en France was held.
Meanwhile, the Loire Valley is marking the 25th Anniversary of the Loire River’s Unesco recognition this year with an entire menu of events, and Normandy is commemorating the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings.
Next year’s Rendez-Vous en France will take place in Nice from March 31 to April 2.