PARIS — Five years of meticulous restoration, orchestrated by France’s finest craftsmen. A donation of 841 million euros, the fruit of an international outpouring of solidarity. And an octave, eight days of exceptional masses and openings to celebrate. The rebirth of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral, consumed by flames in April 2019, deserves nothing less.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Broadcast around the world, the reopening ceremony on Saturday will be hosted by embattled French President Emmanuel Macron, welcoming foreign dignitaries, and shining the spotlight on the singular jewel of the Île de la Cité.
Like postcards of this summer’s Olympic Games, these images are sure to whet tourists’ appetites. Everything is ready to welcome them.
“It’s time to rediscover Notre-Dame, to reopen its doors to the 14 to 15 million worshippers and visitors we’re expecting,” said Monsignor Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, the cathedral’s rector.
A bonus
It’s hard to predict when they’ll arrive. This weekend, the cathedral will only be open to select visitors, and the Paris tourist office is not anticipating “any peak in visitor numbers” for the French capital as a whole.
Yet tourism professionals are unanimous: December will be an excellent year for Paris. Thomas Deschamps, director of Paris’ tourism observatory, forecasts a “1 to 3% increase in visitor numbers,” with a major peak of around 20% on New Year’s Eve. This trend is confirmed by the Paris region’s Union of hotel trades and industries (UMIH), which has already set its sights on 75-80% hotel occupancy rates.
“This year, there will also be a Notre-Dame effect.”
“Tourists like to come to Paris to celebrate the end of the year on the Champs-Elysées or to see the department stores’ holiday window decorations. This year, there will also be a Notre-Dame effect,” says Frank Delvau, president of the region’s UMIH. “Hotels and restaurants near the cathedral are anticipating a good upturn in business, which is positive because it was complicated for them during the restoration works.”
Pierre Rabadan, president of the Paris Tourist Office, sees Notre-Dame as “an additional attraction.”
“The fire piqued curiosity about our ability to renovate,” he says, pointing out that the cathedral — along with the Louvre, the Château de Versailles and the Eiffel Tower — belongs to the very select club of the “Big Four,” the quartet of tourist attractions that can’t be ignored.
“The images of the Olympic Games have lifted Paris,” says Jean-François Rial, CEO of the Voyageurs du monde travel agency. “And after a disappointing summer, there’s been a strong rebound this autumn with a very high flow of tourists. Of course, the reopening of Notre-Dame will add to this, but it’s a bonus, almost a detail.”
Managing the crowds
So how will the church manage Notre-Dame’s reunion with its visitors after such a long absence? The diocese is counting on 3 million additional visitors a year. Limited by its 5,500 square meters, the cathedral has a security capacity of 2,700 people — 3,000 maximum — and 1,500 seats for mass.
Work to complete the façade and redesign the forecourt is expected to take another three years and will continue to complicate circulation around the cathedral. Nevertheless, the monument will remain free of charge, and the diocese did not want to separate the faithful from the tourists.
“We thought of it as a whole, because this encounter is the richness of the church and because to understand this monument, you also need to understand its function,” says Sybille Bellamy-Brown, head of visitor management. She suggests everyone to “get organized, become aware of the craze and be proactive to plan their visit,” in the coming months.
In practical terms, the diocese has equipped itself with a new flow regulation tool. It will still be possible, as in the past, to enter on the spur of the moment, waiting patiently in the long line. But it will now also be possible to book 48 hours in advance, via the website or a dedicated application.
“Visitors don’t reserve a place, they’ll just get a free half-hour slot during which they’re guaranteed to get in,” Bellamy-Brown explains. The diocese will use the tool to adjust entrances according to its schedule and the number of visitors. This way, time slots can be freed up on the same day.
“Instead of waiting in line, the visitor, assured of entering later, will be able to take advantage of this freed-up time to visit one of the monuments nearby,” she says. By spreading visitors over a wider area, this system also helps limit the inevitable overcrowding of the forecourt.
More tourists without overtourism?
Better management of these these crowds that overflow onto the streets, and a more equitable distribution of visitors throughout the capital, is a global concern for Paris. The city will invest 50 million euros to create a new forecourt with a real reception area for the cathedral.
“We’re proud to be reopening Notre-Dame, and this gives us the opportunity to promote our vision of a different kind of tourism, one that’s more responsible and more peaceful. People need to be able to visit Paris in good conditions, but without it taking up all the space in the city,” says Rabadan, also a deputy mayor.
“One of the major issues is coexisting with Parisians,” he says, both in the public space and, more broadly, within apartment buildings, which are sometimes swamped by furnished tourist accommodations.
If we reach 40 or 45 million tourists, we could have problems.
Elected officials and industry professionals are trying to navigate these narrow waters. Happy to see tourists returning to the capital, they’re also fearful of the excesses that have upset Barcelona residents and led New Yorkers to oust Airbnb.
This all begs the question: Is Paris on the verge of overtourism?
“We’re already on the edge, with 35 million tourists a year. If we reach 40 or 45 million, we could have problems,” Deputy Mayor in charge of Tourism Frédéric Hocquard warned in October.
But for UMIH’s Delvau “we can’t talk about overtourism when we’re at -7% compared to 2019.” That’s a sentiment shared by Deschamps of Paris’ tourism observatory. “There is some over-visiting, but we can’t really talk about over-tourism, in the sense that there’s no rejection by the population,” he says.
“The risk exists, but it’s also possible to welcome more tourists without overtourism. To do so, we need to work hard to educate and promote other sites in the Paris region — in short, we need a real strategy,” says Rial of Voyageurs du Monde.
A real strategy
At the end of August, the regional audit chamber called on the Paris region to better coordinate its tourism management to improve clarity and avoid duplications.
Elected officials from the center-right Democratic Movement (MoDem) have proposed giving control back to Paris’ 20 arrondissements (districts). At the end of November, the Paris Council approved their initiative to create a tourism strategy for each arrondissement, to reduce pressure on certain sites and promote less-frequented districts.
“There are many other experiences to be had, such as the French art de vivre embodied by Parisian bistros, which may soon be classified as intangible heritage by UNESCO,” Delvau says.
Rethinking tourism, as Paris will be doing at a conference next spring, also means anticipating the trajectory of a capital where summers will be increasingly hot — which explains the addition of 160 trees and a water feature on Notre-Dame’s future forecourt — and where cars are disappearing from the city center.
For the time being, the Île de la Cité, where the cathedral sits in the middle of the River Seine, has been removed from the car-free zone, where transit vehicles are banned. But with 15 months to go before the municipal elections, the issue will almost certainly come up again.
