France has kicked off a fresh campaign to woo back Asean tourists, a market whose growth has been sluggish since the deadly terror attacks a year ago.
The France Tourism Development Agency, known as Atout France, has teamed with up with 13 French firms, including Air France and Club Med, to launch a series of roadshows in four targeted countries in Southeast Asia.
They are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, which constitute the bulk of visitors from the region to France.
The launch of the Douce France (Sweet France) roadshow coincides with the first anniversary of the terror attacks in the French capital, which killed 130 people and devastated the country's tourism industry.
In spite of the adverse effect of the terrorist attacks, total tourist arrivals in the first 10 months of this year rose by 8.1%, and combined arrivals from Asean are still on the rise.
Asean tourist arrivals look certain to be just over 600,000 this year compared to nearly 500,000 last year, Morad Tayebi, Atout France's Asean regional director, told the Bangkok Post.
The expectation is for Asean arrivals to grow to about 700,000 next year if everything goes well, he said, acknowledging that restoring confidence will take time.
The Singapore-based official believes travel confidence will be fully restored over the next six months as the French government is doing it utmost to prevent such deadly incidents from happening again.
Among France's key Asean source markets, only arrivals from Singapore and Malaysia declined in the past year, while other Asean countries saw an increase.
Last year Malaysia ranked top in terms of Asean arrivals with 150,000, followed by Thailand with 130,000 and Singapore with 120,000.
Asean as a whole represents France's second-largest tourist market in Asia after China.
Thai arrivals this year are expected to surpass 130,000, rising to some 170,000 next year, Mr Tayebi said.
In Thailand, Atout France is working to speed up the visa application process, identified as the major impediment for Thai tourists, to make them on par with Indonesia and China in order to increase tourist figures.
"We're trying to enable Thais to get tourist visas within 48 hours after submission of the application," Mr Tayebi said.
Atout France also expects to see a similar jump in traffic from Indonesia following the visa streamlining that went into effect in January.
By next year, Indonesia will surpass Malaysia as France's largest source market from Asean with over 150,000 visitors, Mr Tayebi said.
The US$60 visa fee is probably not an issue because the amount is small relative to overall travel costs, but streamlining the visa process makes a big difference, he said.
The French government aims to attract 100 million foreign visitors in 2020, compared with 85 million last year.