TOURISM – The French are not known to be very good at foreign languages. When it comes to traveling, 43% of tourists from France favor destinations where French is spoken, according to a study carried out by the Ifop polling institute for the travel site Kayak.
Among the ten favorite French-speaking destinations for French tourists, Morocco comes out on top. Canada, Guadeloupe, Réunion and Martinique (the latter three being French overseas regions) complete the top 5. Followed by Vietnam, Senegal, Switzerland, Mauritius and Belgium.
According to the survey carried out at the end of November among a representative sample of 1,060 people aged 15 and over, « the French-speaking world is considered very important for more than half » of French tourists.
« Nearly 70% of people consider it crucial to be able to express themselves in the local language of the country visited. This proves their respect for other cultures but also their reservation about not being perfectly bilingual », indicates the study.
If Morocco remains a favorite tourist destination for the French, fewer of them went there this year. Tourist arrivals from France actually fell by 2% between January and September 2016 compared to the same period last year, according to the latest report from the Tourism Observatory.
8.1 million tourists (foreigners and Moroccans living abroad) visited the kingdom this year, according to figures as of the end of September, a very slight increase compared to 2015 thanks to the arrivals of MRE. The number of foreign tourists in Morocco decreased by 3.6% compared to last year.
source: huffpostmaghreb
