Much Greater Paris

Like most of the world's favored travel destinations, tourism-dependent Paris is looking for ways to ride out what promises to be a dismal, recession-plagued 2009. There are bargains to be had, and the welcome mat will be out, defying Parisians' reputation for a certain aloofness when it comes to receiving visitors.

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Paris Expands

Yet it's not a lack of tourists that has Paris' city fathers concerned about the future. There will always be recessions, and tourists will always visit Paris, as long as there's a Louvre and an Eiffel Tower and that wondrous food. They have gone there for centuries, and tourism is the single most important industry in the metropolis of over 10 million. It generates more than $10 billion annually and accounts for nearly 150,000 jobs--or 12% of the city's employment. Paris is most frequently credited as the world's tourism capital, with nearly 35 million visitors in 2008 (compared with more than 15 million for No. 2 London, and 12 million for Hong Kong). Unlike many capitals, though, Paris has a unique balance of vacationers and business travelers. The latter have helped Paris maintain its lead over Singapore as the largest convention venue on earth.

Getting to Paris is already becoming easier. While London's maxed-out Heathrow Airport struggles to win approval to build a third runway, Paris' Charles de Gaulle--which has increased capacity 20% since 2006--already operates four, and CDG has even more space set aside for considerable expansion. That will be vital to keep pace with what some forecast to be a 75% to 100% increase in Paris-bound tourism in the next 20 years.

Handling that influx is what concerns the planners most at l'hôtel de ville, the city hall. Paris got a dose of overload when Japanese visitors, armed with the supercharged yen, arrived by the 747-load in the 1980s. Now think about Chinese and Indians arriving in similar numbers.

So how will the city of romance avoid being loved to death? The answer to that is something few might have expected. Increasing Paris' appeal to tourists, experts say, will involve throwing the city's arms open to its surrounding suburbs--including some associated more with blighted housing projects and periodic rioting than with culture-filled summer vacations.

"Whether you call it Paris métropole or a Greater Paris, structuring the city within the framework of an enlarged, better-organized region is a major key to both the future of Paris and its tourism industry," says Jean-Bernard Bros, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of tourism. In tourism terms, that's already happening, with people traveling to or staying near attractions such as Versailles and its famed château to the west or the Marne-la-Vallée home of Disneyland Paris to the east. But the plan is to now go farther in other directions and to all the suburbs.

Officials say that effort involves reintegrating suburbs and populations victimized by racial and economic disadvantage into more affluent French society--a remedial move the rest of the country must also make. But that challenge carries with it a considerable opportunity for Paris-area authorities figuring out how to keep up with an expected boom in tourism over the next two decades.