Life is still far from normal in the French capital, with reduced tourist numbers offering little festive cheer to Parisian cafe owners
Erik Modenese scans the half-filled terraces of the bars, cafes and restaurants lining rue Montorgueil in central Paris, and ruminates that nearly seven weeks after the deadly 13 November terror attacks, business – and life – has yet to return to normal.
“We’re all still around 10% lower than usual despite the magnificent spring-like weather. New Year’s Eve activity will be down too,” says Modenese, manager of the Le Compas restaurant-bar north of les Halles which, like other Parisian bars and clubs, saw business slump by nearly half following the attacks.
“Parisians are finally starting to go out again, but the tourists still aren’t back in big numbers,” he says. “The attacks are still having an impact.”
Less than two months after coordinated terror strikes on popular nightlife spots in and around the French capital left 130 people dead and hundreds injured, concerns about renewed violence still influence the activities of residents, tourists and officials. Heightened security measures are also changing the look and atmosphere of daily life.
Thousands of military and police reinforcements have been deployed across the city and country, with patrolling soldiers in purple berets, matching khaki uniforms and flak vests, automatic weapons gripped to their chests now a common sight. On Christmas Eve alone, 120,000 security forces guarded churches and public venues across France. Paris police authorities say 9,000 officers – more than 80% of the area’s total force – will be deployed across the capital on 31 December.
Terror fears are also dampening the run-up to Paris’s New Year’s Eve festivities – traditionally a high point on the city’s tourism calendar. This year, Paris’s official celebrations are being scaled back, with authorities expecting fewer French and foreign visitors at year-end events that frequently draw more than 600,000 revellers to the Champs Elysées.
In announcing the modified new year agenda, Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, acknowledged “the event will be above all symbolic” amid enduring terror fears, aiming instead “at sending out a message to the whole world – Paris is standing and the Parisians continue to live”.
But symbolism alone won’t bring relief to suffering businesses that depend on Parisians living, socialising and celebrating in quasi-public venues.
“It will be a disappointing new year, especially for bars and cafes relying heavily on tourists, and popular neighbourhood hangouts such as those targeted in the attacks,” says Alexandre Bernard, manager of the Café Père et Fils on the rue Montmartre near the Paris Bourse – whose own 50% drop in business following the attacks has been reversed amid daytime custom from surrounding office buildings.
Generally, Bernard says, “This will be a hard year for the sector … and it may only be the start if extremists keep the terror pressure high into 2016.”
Travel research company ForwardKeys said in a 24 November report that future airline bookings to Paris, which plunged after the strikes, are still 27% lower than last year. Industry organisations also estimate hotel room reservations in the city have recovered only half of their 30% post-attack slide.
The CSCAD union representing Paris nightclub, theatre, restaurant and bar owners says activity remains up to 40% lower than in the last two months of 2014, with tourist revenues down 60-80%. Those declines are even more damaging, the CSCAS says, because of affected businesses also being forced to boost security spending.
Andres, 26 – who like Hughes lives in London – says the sight of police patrolling with automatic weapons at the ready “can actually be more unsettling than reassuring if you aren’t used to seeing that in public”.
But both add they never seriously considered altering their plans to visit Paris after the November attacks, and suspect people are misreading the current terror threat and French responses to it.
“That’s sort of ‘lightning striking twice in the same spot’ logic,” says Hughes, 31, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. “There’s probably no time safer to come here than now.”
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