Abstract
To underline the importance of the brand image for branding a destination, this report follows an analysis of France's images and stereotypes as a destination. Where it has been defined that France benefits from a largely positive and attractive image, it has been seen that some weak points such as welcoming are damaging France's attractiveness.
Chinese outbound tourism has been closely observed for the past 10 years as all specialists are waiting to welcome these thousand million visitors ready to spend time and money over the globe. The need for analysis of Chinese outbound tourism by identifying key points such as their expectations could prove itself substantiated for the branding of a destination.
As some surveys and studies have been done on Chinese outbound tourism, using them provide the basis to confront the different findings. To bring to light France's particularity concerning Chinese tourists, it is necessary to organize interviews with professional of the tourism industry. This will give a strong insight to the current situation and help identify the problems.
It is interesting to put into relation Chinese tourists' desires and how France can respond to this demand. This report attempts to define France's advantages and weaknesses in terms of tourism destination; analyzing particularities of Chinese tourists is also a must for this dissertation and will enable to create a strategy to attract these desired tourists. By using branding theories such as the means-end chain, it will be possible to create such theories.
With more than 79 million visitors in 2006, France is the leading tourist destination (INSEE, 2006). As it is a platform in Europe, France has always been the top tourist country but things changed in 2007, when United-States ($85.7 billion) and Spain ($51.1 billion) took over the leadership in terms of tourism receipts and left France only with the "bronze medal" with $42.9 billion (one-third thanks to international arrivals) (Tourism observation Direction, 2007).
Still, there are some debates on the way to count the number of visitors; in 2000, the WTO defined tourism as "the activities developed by people who travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than one night and not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited"." (United-Nations and WTO, 2000). This definition includes a notion of time and it is argued that France also counted people just crossing the country and not staying overnight.
No matter the definition, France is definitely a "tourism" country, on an environmental, cultural, or economical point of view. It will be detailed further that France's landscapes are highly diversified and attract visitors who want to admire mountains, seaside and modern cities at once. On the same basis, French culture is particularly well known worldwide with elements such as gastronomy, architecture or arts. Economically, more than 894,000 salary jobs are generated directly by tourism and tourism hospitality and transport parks are particularly well developed (Direction du Tourisme, 2008).
Tags: Branding France as a tourist destination, Profile of the Chinese tourist, French culture, french hospitality
